Top Reasons Your Managers Don’t Participate In The Online Community

According to the 2017 State of Community Management Report by Community Roundtable, the best membership websites have active participation of their top executives.  These communities draw their success from having everyone on board, from low ranking members to top managers.  Even so, most organizations don’t have their executives participate frequently in the online community.  This is a major reason why a majority of online communities fail to be effective so this post seeks to unfold possible reasons and offer solutions.

 

In most organizations, managers are normally busy but there are ways you can have them participate without consuming much of their time.  After they create a profile on the website, use it to post major announcements or blogs in order for members to take them seriously.  Another option worth considering is to sign welcome emails using your managers’ profile.

Aside from that, hold meetings from time to time where managers directly answer questions from members in a span of 30 minutes to 1 hour.  The questions may be about anything since these meetings only happen 3 or 4 times a year.  That adds up to just 3 or 4 hours per year but it could be highly effective towards increasing the participation of members on the online community.

 

Some managers fail to participate because they’re not sure what they should be doing.  Therefore, help them by creating a list of tasks they can accomplish such as answering questions and welcoming new members.  Take it a step further and show them specific questions they should answer and where to find new members.

A number of managers view membership websites as a fancy addition instead of being a vital part of the organization.  Show them the engagement rates of the online community and help them realize that high engagement leads to a higher retention of members.