Succeed and Connect: Community Management Strategies

Expectations
Getting Started
Prepare Your Community for Launch
Set a Positive Tone
Keeping Your Community Going


Expectations:

Yellowdig communities can provide a vibrant space for your audience to interact, network, help each other, promote your objectives and events and provide resources. However to achieve these results, it’s important to note that Connect and Succeed communities are quite different from Yellowdig course associated Engage communities. 

One of the most important differences is that since there is no course grade associated with mandatory participation in your community, you’ll need to take some action to get members to join your community and keep them coming back. 

People participate in communities to meet their needs. Therefore, one of our most important pieces of advice is to be sure you design a community for your constituents around their needs, not yours.  
It’s worth noting that while you can create a successful community (and we’ll be there to help along the way) you should have realistic expectations:

• Don’t expect everyone you invite to join.  Yield is very dependent on the audience and how they are invited, but it is quite typical for less than 50% of those invited to ever enter the community.
• Don’t expect everyone who joins to post or comment and don’t expect everyone who posts or comments to do so regularly. There is a “rule” known as the 1% rule, which states that normally only 1% of online community participants create content. With Yellowdig, some incentives, and good content and management strategies we do expect to beat that, but under normal circumstances most of an audience will “lurk” and never post or comment.
• Lurking is important! Expect much of your audience to read and sometimes react to conversations without posting or commenting themselves. Do not discount passive participation or its value as a signal that the community is meeting a need.

Getting Started:

Audience and Community Owner Needs Assessment:

• You’ll want to do your best to understand the needs and motivations of your audience and then figure out how your intentions dovetail with what they already care about. Doing a needs assessment will help you create your initial topics for the community and understand how you can help make visiting your community a habit for your learners and alumni. Define and document who your audience is, any relevant things about their demographics, and consider what they all have in common and what they may have significant differences around.
• Given the audience, what kinds of conversations, content, or information might attract them to the community?  Is there any “regular” content that is easy to curate and share that your audience might build a habit of coming just to remain aware of (e.g., dining commons menus; sports or event schedules; university calendar milestones; etc.)?
• What are your goals for the community?  Is the content you consider important to share something that you actually think your audience is going to know they care about?  Is your content something the audience will actually want to  interact with?  Consider doing a focus group to better understand your audience or to invite your eventual community members to be part of the process of designing the community.

Dedicate a primary community manager for at least 10 hours per week.  Community managers will:

• Regularly curate a variety of content based on audience needs and interests.
• Encourage member interactions with one another and the material.
• Run contests or other topical events to encourage active participation.
• Coordinate other community managers or student ambassadors to help run and grow the community.
• Evangelize and advertise the community to encourage participation.

Prepare your community before launch:

• Create initial Yellowdig Topics based on the main areas that you expect members to have conversations about and that will allow them to find and contribute to those conversations.
• Use Yellowdig points in the community. They can motivate community members and allow you to easily find your most active users. For 'Connect' and 'Succeed' communities, it is generally recommended to remove word counts from the point system. Unlike course-based communities, mandatory word counts can discourage spontaneous interaction and reduce engagement. Focus on valuing quality and consistent participation over arbitrary length requirements.Send a “save the date” message to potential members to get them excited about the community to better ensure a “critical mass” of people start participating together.
• Populate the community with interesting examples of relevant content for each Yellowdig Topic so members can start engaging immediately.
• Have community leader post messages welcoming members to the community. Best with video.
• Use multimedia where possible. Avoid a wall of text.
• Post a poll sharing initial Yellowdig Topics and asking what others members would like to see
• If appropriate, have an initial contest with a valuable reward for people meeting a point threshold or other verifiable milestone. (For larger communities, meeting this threshold could enter member in raffle for the prize)
• Schedule a high-value event to take place in the community. (Ask me anything session with community leader or other notable member)
• Choose a method of inviting your audience to the community (email invitations sent from Yellowdig, through LMS, Yellowdig sharelink)
• Send an email letting them know that they are going to receive an invitation and provide steps for joining the community. We can help!
• Make sure that all new members are welcomed upon joining.
  • Respond to their initial post.
  • Weekly (Monthly) post @mentioning each new member and welcoming them.
     

Set a Positive Tone

Yellowdig communities thrive when members understand the value proposition immediately. Since participation isn't mandatory (like in a course community), your initial message must clearly define the community's purpose and set an encouraging, positive tone that makes participation feel rewarding, not required.

To make sure your community starts strong and immediately becomes a valued resource, create an introductory post and video that clearly defines its purpose and sets a positive, encouraging tone.

Crucial Step: You must pin this post to the top of the community feed for several days until all new members have had a chance to view it.

What your Introductory Post should include

This post should focus on the community's value proposition and expectations for a successful community manager/member relationship.

• Explain the "Why": Tell members why the community exists and what kind of interactions and support they should expect to find (e.g., networking, resource sharing, advice).
• Define Your Role: Clarify how you (the Community Manager) will participate—as a curator, connector, event organizer, and content provider.
• Set Expectations: Clearly state how and why they should participate. Emphasize that all forms of engagement (posting, replying, or even just reading/lurking) are valuable (reinforce the understanding that passive participation is okay).
• Encourage Multimedia: Use video for your initial message to signal that diverse forms of communication are welcome. 
• Follow Through: Your initial post and ongoing active role are key to modeling the desired behavior. Your engagement shows your commitment to the community's success.

Example Post Language

Here is sample language to introduce your video message:

👋 Welcome to our Yellowdig Community!

In the short video below, I've outlined the purpose of this community, what my role will be as the community lead, and how you can get the most out of this space. Please take a moment to watch it. Looking forward to our journey together!

Pro-tip: This post is for setting the tone. Save your detailed personal introduction for a separate "Introduce Yourself" thread!

Setting a Positive Tone Video Script

This is the script that goes with the video you will record. It focuses on empowerment, connection, and the value of participation, reinforcing the idea that the community is designed around their needs.

“Hi everybody, I'm [Your Name/Title], and I'm excited to welcome you to our [Community Name] community!

This space is designed just for you. Think of it as your go-to hub for connecting, finding resources, and getting advice.

Here, we're building a vibrant community where you can interact, network, and help each other succeed.

You have the power to start your own conversations—ask questions, share your experiences, or post interesting resources. I've set up Topics to help keep things organized. This is the place to ask a question and get real-world answers from your peers. Remember, we all succeed together!

My role is to be a curator and a connector. I'll be posting valuable content, running fun contests and events—like "Ask Me Anything" sessions—and helping to connect you with the right people.

Your participation is key! You don't have to post every day, but even lurking and reading is valuable. When you do post, you'll earn points and Accolades for your valuable contributions. 

A quick tip: When you're posting, use multimedia like photos and videos and keep your paragraphs focused and concise where possible.

My goal is to make visiting this community a habit for you—a quick stop every week to stay informed and stay connected.

So, dive in, check out the content we've already posted to get started, and introduce yourself! Let's learn together and build a strong network!”

Keeping Your Community Going: 

Community manager should:

• Welcome all new members to the community. This will provide some initial acknowledgement of their presence and will give new members an opportunity to ask any questions about the community.
• Invite community members to return to the community and  join conversations by:
  • Highlighting key quotes asking community members to share their opinions, experiences, etc., related to these conversations.
    • Create screenshots of key posts/comments, provide permalink to the particular post/comment, and  ask related questions via email/newsletter, portal, to invite members to respond. “What have you done in this situation?”  “What’s your opinion?”, “Can you help?”,  “Have you encountered something similar? How did you deal with it?
    • IMPORTANT: Invite people to specific conversations/activities in the community, rather than just reminding them to come back to the community. 

EXAMPLE email or social post inviting your members back to a conversation in your community:

• Spotlighting community members in community and outside community (Monthly newsletter), Institutional web pages and other communications going to your audience, LinkedIn, etc.
• Use Yellowdig Accolades to point out “must see” conversations and highlight  members with valuable contributions to the community. (You can share these in a monthly newsletter)
  • Accolades should also be used to direct your members to important community resources.
• Celebrate your most active community members with @mentions for your high point earners in a post every week/month/year.

• Provide a monthly newsletter to members via email  highlighting community members and providing direct links to the above conversations (try using a format similar to the image above).
• Regularly curate a variety of content that will meet the needs of the community and inspire conversations.
• Regularly review Topics usage in Community Health to ensure they are meeting community needs. Occasionally poll the community to ask what suggested Topics they may want to add.

The Yellowdig Success Team is here to help! Contact us at success@yellowdig.com

Audience: This help article is for Instructors, Designers, and Administrators. Students or Learners cannot access these settings.