Sengii Online Community Quick View
Welcome to Sengii: An Animated Video
Online communities are intended to bring your members together and inform them of the benefits of belonging to your association:
- Communication & networking
- A private and safe space
- Collaboration tools
- Knowledge sharing
- Access to resources and information
- Gaining insights
- Staying updated on industry trends
The community is an interactive way to present information and gain feedback unlike more traditional methods of presenting information, like a newsletter. Giving your members a safe space to voice their concerns and opinions is a great way to get feedback and insights.
Before launching an online community, define what engagement means for your organization. What are your goals? What are the needs of your members? Once you know what provides the most value and what engagement really means for your organization, you can direct your members’ attention more effectively.
Your organization should know the purpose and direction you want your community to go. Plan ahead and prepare a content strategy specifically designed to encourage member participation (Questions to kick start your community.
Think about your brand and theme. Having the right theme facilitates building a strong connection between your members, your goals and values.
There are many ways that you and your members can benefit from an online community. Your organization can use our tools to market to members, offer sponsorship opportunities, or even entice non members to become members by showing a preview of the community. People without accounts will not be able to access the information, only see a teaser of recent activity as shown in the image below; based upon permissions you define.
A big advantage is that almost everything can be accessed through email.
Members can:
- Receive emails with recent discussions, a daily or weekly digest, and immediate replies to their own threads.
- Reply by email, which allows users to reply directly to a thread or message from their inbox.
- Change their subscription and email settings.
Administrators or owners of the community can:
- Approve or reject discussions or requests to join groups.
Regardless of how you prefer to communicate, we offer options to accommodate your members preferences.
A quick look inside the community
Your community homepage contains a summary of the latest activity, options and navigation menus. It includes discussion posts, news, resources, groups you belong to and more. Your members can customize their homepage by rearranging or collapsing sections. An example of a community homepage is shown below.
The left menu contains options for the member to update their profile and settings, search for groups or other members, send private messages and begin a discussion thread. Encourage members to customize their profile, add a personal blog feed, and interact with other members. Humanize your community, people want to know they are talking to other people.
When you first launch the community we recommend you begin with an open forum, which offers a central place for all your members to connect. When a specific topic engenders a lot of discussion, you can then create a separate group. You may choose to allow your members to create groups and give them as much autonomy as you feel comfortable with.
Sometimes community groups need a champion, administrator, and/or moderator, responsible for starting discussions when things are quiet, keeping members up to date on changes, updating news and resources and ensuring that the community is adhering to your guidelines. You may want to assign at least one moderator/ champion to keep tabs on what is being posted and regulate member discussions. Alternatively, you may decide to appoint multiple moderators to share the load or designate them as experts on different topics.
We respect you and your members' privacy and we do not share your personal details with other community members. To private message someone within the community, you must search for them by name in the member directory or in your contact list.
Use the reporting tools to learn about your members’ habits, preferred method of communication, frequency, top contributors and readership.
Sengii has a gamification feature with a point system that assigns points based on participation and content creation. You can use these action points to reward your members with gift cards, branded products, member appreciation and other tangible benefits.
Remember, there is no one correct way to engage your members, everyone is different.
Gauge announcements and calls to action, ask members for feedback. Monitor the outcome of different strategies. Discuss what works and doesn’t. The goal is for members to immerse themselves in the community and make it a part of their lives. Sengii is here to support you. For any questions or concerns email help@sengii.com
