Best Practices, Community Spotlights, Community Management Talks, Ning News, Social Media, Quick Tips, Tools & Tech
Most communities have terrible newcomer to regular conversion ratios. If you can improve this, you can rapidly increase the number of active members in your community. Most other problems you think you have in your community pale in comparison to a terrible newcomer to regular conversion process.
In this five step process, you can design the perfect journey for your members from newcomer to regular. Treat these each as unique steps. You can optimize each one in turn. These steps are also numbered in the priority of importance. If you get the first step right, the rest might just take care of themselves.
Previously - Step One: Awareness; Step Two: First Visit; Step Three: Registration and Participation; Step Four: Return Visit
Step 5) Continued Participation
Goal: Socialize members, build strong relationships between participants.
To turn a newcomer into a regular, they need to be socialized.
They need to get to know other people in the community. They need to visit the community out of habit, not out of necessity.
This is where sense of community elements matter. You need regular events and activities for members. You need to highlight and facilitate self-disclosure related discussions between members.
You need to write content about members in the community (not just the established members, but newcomers too). Every member should feel like they have influence within the community. Provide opportunities for members to have ownership and influence over areas of the community.
Finally, provide an informal social ladder which members can claim through increased contributions. Reach out to the most active and rapidly rising contributors for support. Feature these members more frequently. Gamification can help for established communities, but it's not essential.
You need to move heaven and earth to ensure members interact with each other, and not just with you. Shared events, self-disclosure discussions, and content about members are the pillars. Other useful elements include creating a shared history or initiations/rituals after members have been around for a period of time.
To view all the Newcomer to Regular Journey steps, click here.
