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Staging Engagement

Created Mar 30 2021, 5:00 PM by Communities Reinvented
  • Member Engagement

Summary:

  • Staging engagement is a foundational tactic to spark online engagement and get over the hurdle of members not participating in online discussions or other community activities
  • Active discussions, especially in a new community, rarely happen organically. Instead, they need proper planning
  • Staging engagement means doing behind-the-scenes work to encourage people to respond to an online post or discussion. It involves contacting trusted members of your Community in the planning of the online discussion

What is Staging Engagement?

Staging Engagement is like playing a little bit of theater. It means doing behind-the-scenes work to encourage people to respond to an online post or discussion or more generally to engage in a community activity. It involves contacting trusted members of your Community directly, for example by email or by phone, and asking them to engage in an upcoming activity, such as a community discussion. For example, you may ask selected members to take a look at a community blog post and comment on it as a way to kickstart a conversation about the topic described in the blog post.  


Why do you need to stage engagement? 

Think of this scenario: you are building a new Community, and you have this sleek online platform where you hope at least some (if not most) of the interactions and knowledge sharing will take place. You have an interesting topic that you are convinced would draw a lively discussion. You post it on the platform, basking in anticipatory joy. A day goes by, a week goes by and you don’t get a single response. What is happening? Why are members not engaging? 

Especially with a new Community, where a lot of new members don’t know each other, it can be difficult to get people to share their thoughts in writing in an online forum. Some people are generally hesitant to post online. Other people are more inclined to engage in online conversations, but only with people they know or in spaces they trust. Furthermore, many people are not comfortable being the first to express a meaningful opinion in a public forum: it puts them in a vulnerable position. These are some of the things you need to keep in mind, and some of the challenges you need to overcome if you want to have active conversations in your Community. 

Staging engagement is a foundational tactic to spark online engagement and get over the hurdle of members not participating in online discussions.  


How do you stage engagement?

A key idea behind Staging Engagement is to get people committed to participating in an online discussion before you ever make it live. 

  1. Involve the Core Team and the Core Group (if there is one) in the planning of the discussion. Before you actually plan or post anything, brainstorm the question with the Core Team, and decide together when the discussion is going to take place. 

  2. Solicit volunteers from the Core Team and/or the wider community - typically, people you know well, and who have something to contribute on that topic - to commit to writing a thoughtful response to the post as soon as it goes live. 

  3. Remind volunteers to prepare responses a few days before the discussion is to go live

  4. Post the discussion topic on your platform, and immediately send a link to the people you identified beforehand as contributors, to ask them to post the response they had already prepared. 

  5. Once some of these posts go live, announce the discussion to the wider community, inviting everyone to contribute. When members click on the discussion and see that it is active, that others are responding, they are going to be more likely to participate.  

You can also stage engagement and get discussions started on content such as blog posts and videos. For example:  “I just posted a video on an interesting case regarding child protection in Rwanda, please take a look and post a comment in the Community’s online forum.” Remember to include the relevant links and make it as easy and as safe as possible for people to participate.


This article is part of the WBG Communities of Practice Toolkit licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License. The toolkit features practical resources to help you develop impactful Communities of Practice. 📖 Learn more about the Toolkit.  ▶ Access the Toolkit