When people choose to join a professional association, they’re often eager to be part of an active, connected community. With this in mind, associations have taken the concept of community to new levels, building online environments that allow for inspiration, shared experiences, and a sense of belonging.
Online communities have opened new avenues to member engagement—and they come with both opportunities and challenges. Forj gathered leaders from more than a dozen associations for a series of roundtable events dedicated to exploring their professional communities. In a four-part series, we’re sharing key insights from our focus groups on community and the member experience.
In the second installment, we’re identifying what members crave and how associations create and cultivate the content that resonates and drives active engagement. Use these insights to build and enhance your professional community’s content strategy.
Most associations place people at the heart of their communities, with a mission to serve them through learning, development, and networking opportunities. Online professional communities fulfill these needs in many ways, and time and again, our focus group participants said they put content at the center of their efforts to serve membership.
Some of the most common tactics association professionals leverage to make sure they give community members what they’re looking for include:
Creating and curating content to keep up with demand is a full-time job in many organizations. For professional associations, the need to consistently source material is just as strong.
Participants in our focus groups shared that they most often turn to these sources of content:
“[We source content by] asking membership to generate content [and] through dialogues on emerging trends." - Laura Chajkowski, CMP CMM CHS
Director of Congress and Events, Federation for the Humanities and Social Sciences
Managing an online professional community is no small task, especially when it comes to identifying opportunities to create and share constant content. Keeping resources and information up-to-date is one consideration, and making sure the content you’re curating truly resonates with the community is equally important.
Those in our focus groups shared the best practices that ensure their communities’ content is viewed as relevant:
Your online professional community is a dynamic platform with constant opportunities to reach members, and delivering timely, relevant content is essential to its success. But ultimately, your aim is to produce content that drives action by sparking dialogue, motivating contributions, and inspiring coming together.
Use these tactics to help you develop a content strategy that inspires members and encourages their engagement in the community.