Making Your Community More Responsive
Does your community have a low level of responsiveness?
Are there a large number of discussions with a small number of replies?
Do members have to wait a long time to receive a reply to a discussion?
There are a few simple tips to increase responsiveness.
- Ensure every discussion receives a reply within 24 hours. You need to work hard or have volunteers to do this.
- Create a weekly list of unanswered questions/toughest questions.
- Bump popular discussions towards the top of the community, let weaker discussions slide.
- Proactively recruit experts to take responsibility for certain topics. If someone makes an excellent contribution to a discussion, ask if s/he would like to be responsible for responding to discussions on that topic.
- Guide contributions with a list of topical issues newcomers might want to make a post about (and topics not to initiate a discussion about)
- Recruit members/groups with a particular interest in a specific topic.
- Write content about discussions taking place (“Mike asked a tricky discussion about ….”)
- Promote discussions through social media channels with links back to where members can reply.
This isn’t comprehensive, but it should be a good start.
Richard Millington is the founder of FeverBee Limited, an online community consultancy, and The Pillar Summit , an exclusive course in Professional Community Management. Richard’s clients have included the United Nations, The Global Fund, Novartis, AMD, BAE Systems and several youth & entertainment brands. Richard is also the the author of the Online Community Manifesto. 
Avectra, the leader in web based membership management software, is proud to partner with FeverBee Limited to help organizations around the world understand best practices for creating thriving online communities and build invaluable communities of their own. For more information on MemberFuse, Avectra’s private online community platform, and Avectra Social CRM for Associations, click here.
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