More Community Best Practices

More Community Best Practices

Originally shared by Google+

Community Management Best Practices: 3 easy steps to Achieve Immortality for you and your Community
This post was written by Community Vanguards member Azlin Bloor

The Foodies+ community has grown and grown over the last 4 years and is one of the most popular communities on Google+. Not quite immortality, but getting there.

Here’s a rundown on how we do it:

1. Hold regular themed events that encourage every member to participate. We’ve had:
· Themed Months – Healthy, Croatian, Tapas, Breakfasts, etc

· Weekly Hashtags – #JapaneseWednesday, #FrenchFriday

· Topical/Festive – Christmas, Chinese New Year, etc.

· Random Topics with catchy titles - Zing & Zany, Reigning Rice, Oodles of Noodles

The whole campaign is led by one member, who writes an introductory post, introducing the topic with any background information. This topic curator would have previously sounded out a handful of members. As soon as the introductory post goes live, the rest of the members are free to post relevant recipes related to the chosen topic. This continues for the rest of the month.

These regular campaigns inject an awesome rush of activity into the community, encouraging conversations that very often continue into the night.

2. Don’t just rely on the Mods
One of the things to note here is that Foodies+ views these regular themes as a way of promoting its members. Past topics have been curated not just by moderators but by valued members who not only post regularly but also spend a lot of their time talking to each other within the community, which is the foundation of our success.

3. Encourage all members to reshare each other’s posts with the public.
This not only promotes the members, but the community as well and has in turn, attracted good quality new members.

* Bonus Step! *
Taking the collaboration one step further, we also organise a non-virtual cookie swap amongst our members at Christmas and, more recently, we published our very first cookbook, for charity.
So there you have it. Immortality in 3 easy steps (with a little author’s licence). Now take action and see your community join the gods. Use your own imagination to come up with similar projects – better still, ask your members!

Visit Azlin's foodies Community: https://plus.google.com/communities/114884141077604568395
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