Community Management

It's that time of year again...time to recharge, regroup and re-evaluate the choices we've made over the past year. While you may have made some personal resolutions (and may have already made a few gym trips or gone to bed a little earlier to start out on the right foot), it's also a great time to make some resolutions for your community and where you would like it to be this time next year.

At eConverse, the word we’re using in 2018 to drive our designs, configurations, strategy and innovation is “personalization”. We’re striving to deliver very specific member experiences based on their interests, roles and actions to provide them with just what they’re looking for and lead them down a path of engagement.

Think about it…your users are interacting daily with sites like Facebook, Google and Amazon, which anticipate their needs and make suggestions. With a little creativity, some automation rules and some specifically-created content, you can bring some personalization to your community site.

Your permissions and community memberships will personalize the community-related content (discussions, library entries, announcements, events, blogs) but you can further personalize the experience with HTML content, which might also include images such as slides, images, content blocks or prompts to take specific actions.

Warning: Personalization is a very deep rabbit hole with lots of exciting possibilities. Start simple with large segmentations, such as engaged vs. non-engaged, or two large interest groups, then get smaller and more specific. When you consider that automation rule logic can be layered, the possibilities are endless.

Here’s how to get started:

• Look at your user profiles and what you know about your users. Demographics such as interests, areas of expertise, job role, region, etc. can be really helpful in customizing content.
• Take a deep dive into your metrics. Specifically, what actions do you really want people to be taking that they aren’t? This could be a specific profile field you would like filled out or an action such as making a first post.
• Think about how your content is segmented. Do you have special interest communities? Libraries related to specific topics? A topic-specific community is a great example of something that could be suggested to users who have indicated interest or an expertise in that topic but have yet to join that community.
• Develop a list of actions you could prompt users to take or content to point them to within your community site.

Here’s how to do it:

• Step 1: In Admin, create a new security role describing the sub-section you are creating the personalized content for. Example “No Profile Photo”.
• Step 2: Create a new automation rule adding all people to the “No Profile Photo” security group who do not have a profile photo. Turn on the toggle for “scheduled” so the rule will run on your automation rule schedule.
• Step 3: Add a content item, such as a block of text, a specific slide, a reminder badge, etc. and change the permissions to just the “No Profile Photo” security role.

Voila!  You’ve added a content item that is personalized to prompt a user to take an action they’ve not yet taken. Keep creating content like this and thinking of new opportunities and your Higher Logic site will be well on its way to providing the personalized experience your members are looking for.