I need your help and wise insight into a methodology for community interaction that I'm developing. I call this method: PREMIER. It's designed to help communities continue to grow and stay relevant and fresh. I'm using it educational and industry communities that I run.
- Post – Prompting for discussion through content. At this first level, you begin the task of caring and feeding your community. You're creating and curating interesting content regularly for your members that should ultimately invoke responses in Level 2. This content can be an article that stimulates discussion, or a prompt for your members to consider. This is where social media, such as Twitter, can play a role. From the perspective of a community manager, social media is another tool as a prompt for engagement.
- Respond – Answering questions or posting additional replies to members who post. Your content has ignited a discussion. Excellent! Now it's time to respond to your members' posts. Interestingly, support communities tend to focus mainly on this level, feeling comfortable and successful. However, real community success happens further along the PREMIER levels that follow.
- Engage – Asking follow-up questions, pointing to other similar questions. In this final level of care and feeding the nascent community, you're pointing out similarities in various discussions going on in the community. You're making connections to other members and places where your members can expand their thinking. The first signs of true vibrancy in a community begin when you engage your members in discussions that will lead to interactions between members, as you begin to take a back seat in the next level.
- Monitor and Facilitate – Stepping back and watching the discussion between members online. The foundations of a successful online community can be determined by the amount of monitoring and facilitation you're doing. At this level, your community has successfully passed the care and feeding levels of discussion (Levels 1-3). Now, you're watching the discussion and interjecting where you can help clarify or expand the conversation.
- Innovate – Creating ways to change up the discussion on the mode of discussion while remaining focused on the topic. Communities stay relevant and refreshing through innovation. I believe in the amended adage, "If it ain't broken, maybe you haven't tried to fix it!" At this level, you're exploring new ways to keep the discussion going. Multimedia, such as visual or audio content plays a role here. Gamification can also work here, as well. Try something new!
- Expand – Incorporating changes and expanding the topic. For longer discussions and to glean innovations from your community, you need to expand the discussion with relevant and clearly connected ideas that prompt more of the same from the discussion. I call this level, "Thinking Outside the TextBox," where community members are challenged to think critically.
- Reward – Giving back to participants. In this ultimate level of community success, you're rewarding your star community performers with both intrinsic and extrinsic rewards. You're highlighting the evangelists in your community, promoting them in the community, and sharing their enthusiasm with all members. They're helping to add content, events, and new members into your vibrant community.
Check out the levels of PREMIER. At what level is your community? How can I improve this methodology?
Thank you for your responses!