Now that I have a community, a community manager and member –what’s next, they ask. It all depends as one size doesn’t fit all.
I’ve been invited into many conversations regarding what to do once you have a community in place and what I’m consistently finding the
question that begs an answer is, “Do you have a cultivation plan?” What are you doing as a community manager to tend and nurture your members? Well, I’m spending time creating FAQs, facilitating webinars for training and answering support questions. Those are all excellent activities and what I find in my client engagements is that you
need to customize your cultivation plans to the community charter and have
participation architecture in mind as you evolve this notion of a plan.
Here are some elements to consider:
- Evaluate the health
- Provide feedback
- Give recognition
- Foster cross community connections
- Identify and develop community leaders
- Consider face to face element programs
- Incorporate social responsibilities
- Infuse notions of gamification
- Send out personal thank you notes – yah I said it, use the old school post
- Refresh your existing approach with on-boarding based based on analysis of members digital habitats
- Consider cultivating a welcome wagon
These are all examples of things that could be part of your cultivation plan. I encourage you to ensure that you are thinking about a myriad of approaches to tend and nurture your community as you do any garden. Good luck and continue to reach out to me with your feedback and
questions. There is no ‘right’ answer, rather it’s the journey, so consider it an adventure of how you can entice the wild horses to drink from a
