Best Practices for Engaging Experiences
Work doesn't always have to feel like work. Engaging experiences can be created in so many ways. All it takes is a little creativity.
For your 365 community platform, you can curate many different engagement experiences with the help of the JUNO platform. When your organization, brand, and community are all in one place, you have the power to engage and bring people together from all over the world.
What are some best practices for creating engagement?
Lets face it, engagement can be challenging in any venue, especially when you are dealing with many different people with many different interests. However, engagement within your membership[ organization is critical for growth, because when people are learning more about each other and getting involved, there are more reasons to come back.
Where can you start?
First, let's start with interaction. With things in a digital setting, creating engagement isn’t as simple as asking everyone to meet for an office party; events need more effort to connect people. Within your 365 community platform you can create many different engaging events, but to get the most out of the digital interactions, attendees need to feel more committed to the experience.
As curators of the events, you must make sure everyone understands how to maneuver throughout the platform and how to interact with the digital event. At first, expect the experiences to be a little flatter than expected, because there is a good chance your community members have not participated in a community event digitally.
Whether that event is listening to a community leader or participating in a wine night, people must know how to interact with the platform so there can actually be interaction between your members. When your community understands the functionality of your platform and digital experience, the more normal and exciting these experiences will begin to feel.
What types of events?
As a community who understands its vision and its community members, it's important to create events that make sense to the community. For your first few virtual experiences, consider keeping it simple. Host a coffee chat where people can meet other community members and leaders, including you, can gain a better understanding of what your members want out of the experiences.
As you teach and learn about your community members, you can begin to get creative and host more dynamic engaging events such as a show-and-tell or BYOB after party. Consider hosting a community-driven “fantasy football” where members can compete with each other over the sports they love, root for their favorite teams together, and even earn cool company swag. Games are another great tool for engagement enabled on platforms like JUNO. Trivia, Jeopardy, poker, the list goes on! Make sure to utilize JUNO tools like Q&A, chat, 1:1 video and emoji to ramp up the engagement at your events.
Lastly, give your community the freedom to express their interests how they want. These experiences are designed to make work life more comfortable and enjoyable. Community members are sure to have creative ideas, and if they curate an event themselves, they will be much more invested to participate.
However you shape your community's engaging experiences, always remember why these are important: they bring people together. When people are learning more about each other and having a little fun, your community is growing together for a better tomorrow.