Six tips to succeed with your community engagement

So you have just been given what seems like an impossible task by your boss - to start up a community engagement program, with little budget, high expectations from management and maybe some vague strategic vision as your guide.

In these situations the road ahead for those new to community engagement (and even those of us who have worked in the field for many years), can seem a long and rocky one. 

I know - I’ve certainly been there a few times in my career! 

But fear not intrepid community engagement traveller, I have some tried and tested tips to help you set a great foundation for success and hopefully make your boss happy at the same time.

And it all comes down to six simple tips that will help you navigate the community engagement highway.

Tip #1 - Know WHY you want to engage

Seems obvious for an organisation to know right? Wrong!

Over my career I can’t tell you how many times, I’ve had a client or boss come to me with starry-eyed excitement wanting to start up some 'you beaut' community engagement program, but with absolutely no insight as to WHY. 

Some of the best WHYS I’ve heard include, “because the opposition are doing it”, “because we don’t seem to engage enough with the community”, “it seems like a good thing to do and I need to spend our budget”, “I want to impress the CEO” and well…you get the picture.

Before you even think about writing that strategic plan, setting up a twitter account, holding an event, or buying in a database solution, you need to be very clear on your strategic intent, as this sets up the platform for all your future engagement efforts. 

This task really is as simple as asking, “what do we want to achieve with our program?” The answer could be to boost sales by 20% in two years. Maybe it is to increase donations by $1 million within two years. Whatever the reasons, KNOW the reasons.

If you can’t articulate the WHY, then go to your Principal, Board of Directors, or CEO and ensure the WHY is agreed upon and articulated. If it isn’t crystal clear to you, save yourself the time, resources and guaranteed heartache, and reconsider your plans.

I’ve NEVER seen any program succeed where the fundamental element of WHY could not be clearly articulated. If you don’t know your goals, then your intended target audience has no hope either.

A vital strategic first step in community engagement is to know WHY you want to engage in the first place.

Tip #2 – Know WHO you want to engage with

My next tip - know WHO you want or need to engage with and their key characteristics.

Undertaking a simple customer persona analysis is the best way to figure out the key characteristics of your target audience, and it will give you invaluable insights as to HOW to engage with them. 

For example if your target audience is within the millennial age bracket, from experience, I would suggest that your communication channels need to be skewed heavily towards digital and social media. For an advancement office if your demographic is based around young business professionals under 40, it’s likely that any major gift approach has little chance of success, and a call out for volunteering, or even annual giving will likely have better results.

The best and first place to start is with your existing customers or supporters. Your existing customer database is a great way to help you determine key demographics information such as average age, postcode, gender, careers, purchase information, donations and so on.

If you get this process right, it then allows you to better tailor your key messages to the exact persona you want and in the ways they want, and so avoids the scatter gun approach many businesses unsuccessfully take.

Tip #3 - Research and plan the HOW

So you’ve got the WHY and WHO down and you are on your way. The next step is to unleash your inner nerd and let loose on all things research and planning to establish HOW you are going to engage with your clients.

Research

Getting your research right is hugely important. There’s no point creating an engagement program, messaging and platforms that no one is interested in, or are non-strategic.

Assuming you already have a well-defined target market, at this point you should ideally: 

• Research and test that your product, service or message resonates with your target market

AND

• Establish what are the best platforms to engage those target markets

You can approach this research in many ways. For example if you have the budget you may wish to hire professionals like me to do the work, or alternatively go it alone if your budget is tight. Either way it isn’t rocket science - but it is super important.

Surveys, competitor analysis and benchmarking, customer focus groups, demographic analysis, obtaining industry or government research and even connecting in with experienced industry mentors, can all be of great value when researching the HOW. 

Use anything and everything at your disposal, but make sure you thoroughly research your target market and find out what methods and messaging are going to hit the mark. In my experience if you nail this from the very start, the odds of succeeding with your engagement program into the future skyrockets.

Planning

Once your research is complete, you should then articulate your vision and methodology within a strategic plan that has realistic timelines and KPIs. I would suggest spanning no more than 3-5 years with your strategic plan - any longer is a waste of time as the world changes so quickly. This document should be supported by annual work plans, a marketing and communications plan and a clear budget framework. 

These all should be viewed as living documents that are constantly reviewed and renewed, so that your program remains relevant. This approach will also help ensure that your organisation has the ability to grasp new opportunities and be able to adapt quickly to dynamic market conditions.

Tip #4 – Use the KISS method: Keep it simply sustainable

A few years ago I was sought out to provide advice to a senior university academic who wanted to commence an alumni network for their faculty. The academic had an exciting engagement vision, had done her research and knew implicitly the WHO, WHY and HOW. Despite this, the academic was extremely downcast, and lamented that she had zero resources to do anything… or at least that is what she thought. 

We met over coffee and talked about her proposal, and during the course of the discussion, the academic happened to mention about all the ground-breaking research that the faculty was doing, and about some really interesting public lectures coming up on campus by a visiting world renowned academic. She also recounted to me, the impressive global successful stories of their graduates and outlined the many other public-facing activities the faculty was undertaking over the coming year. 

Hearing all this, I was led to ask whether faculty alumni were invited along to these events or were ever encouraged to be immersed into its research - ‘not usually’ was her surprising reply. My next question then was, 'would and should your alumni know about your research and upcoming events program?' – ‘maybe not and most definitely’ was the more promising reply. My last question to the academic was, 'why then aren’t they being given the opportunity?!?' All of a sudden the flicker of excitement became apparent in that academic’s eyes.

I went on to share some advice with that despondent academic, and it is the same advice that I want to share with you now. 

When starting out, keep your engagement program simply sustainable. By that, I mean seek out, consolidate and leverage off what you are already doing as an organisation before considering launching into anything new and potentially incurring high costs to do so. 

Using this example for instance, make sure your key stakeholders are the first invited to that monthly public lecture series your organisation is staging. Ensure they receive a front row seat and offer a cup of coffee or a networking drink afterwards. Allow them to bring a guest and invite them to sign up to receive your company’s biannual magazine on the night and make sure they receive it. Make them feel special and they will keep coming back for more, and what do you know - you now have the makings of a community engagement program!

The beauty of taking this simply sustainable approach is twofold. One, you will be seen to be offering a beneficial program or valued service to your stakeholders, with little or no additional cost to your organisation. It also gives you a chance to review overall interest in your offering, and if necessary, enable you to tweak it without putting too much on the line too early. As interest grows then you can look to slowly extend into other new program offerings. 

So remember to look past the obvious, as you might already have a community engagement program staring you straight in the face without realising it!

Another important factor is to ensure consistency of approach in everything you do with your program. The very best engagement programs that I’ve seen globally, ensure that the difference between the best and worst elements of their engagement practices are minimal to non-existent in the eyes of their customers. 

Aiming to take this very simple strategic approach will help you to develop a more consistent and dependable engagement brand right from the start, and one that your stakeholders will be proud to support.

I’m also happy to report that the despondent academic in my story took my advice, and the faculty network has since grown from very humble beginnings, to be one of the most active and connected in Australia. Importantly it is extremely well supported financially by members and industry sponsors alike.

Tip #5 - It’s a two way street

Any community engagement strategy is a two-way street.

We’ve all had that one friend, colleague or partner where everything is about them, and if it’s not in any given situation, they will soon find a way to make it about them! 

I don’t know about you, but this makes for a very one-sided relationship, and one that is not likely to hold my attention for long.

Community engagement programs are exactly the same. If your engagement approach is viewed as a one-way street, as your organisation looks to take a lot and give little back, then I guarantee you that your stakeholders will soon tire of your intrusion into their life and seek out a relationship that will more adequately fulfil their needs.

So my advice for any budding self-serving organisations - get over yourself and realise that it’s not all about you! Of course I mean this in the nicest possible way, because any community program must result in a win-win situation for both parties, but you need to ensure you get the balance right and keep it that way.

For example, a few years ago I headed up a team responsible for producing a quarterly magazine with worldwide distribution. Now the magazine overall was a solid production, well written, with some interesting photography. However the problem was that the top brass would insist upon having content such as staff awards and other highly internalised content front and centre. Now whilst I get that this type of content is very important to most organisations (internally at least), I suspected in this case that it was a yawn fest for our readers – a fact certainly supported by our falling subscription numbers.

This went on for a little while, as my pleas to lose the internal focus and concentrate more on the external fell on deaf ears with management - despite falling subscriptions. Eventually and exasperated, I decided to do some detailed research with our readers globally to find out exactly what they wanted to read in the magazine. 

The survey results came back very loud and clear. Human interest stories, research news and community partnership endeavours were VIP. Where did internal-related stories rank you may ask? Last - dead last! After presenting the overwhelming research results to the powers that be, I was never directed to include staff award stories ever again funnily enough. Later research undertaken went on to show significantly increased readership and content ratings from our stakeholders after this small but significant content shift was made.

So the morale of this story is:

1. Always do your research (refer Tip #1)
2. Always put yourself in the shoes of your stakeholders
3. Engagement is always a two way street - strike the balance!

Tip #6 – Patience is a virtue

A wise old man or lady once said, ‘Rome wasn’t built in a day’ and like the Eternal City, a community engagement program is no different.

Rome wasn't built in a day and neither is any sustainable community engagement success.

I don’t want to burst your community engagement bubbles, but it can take years of commitment and consistency of effort and presence before you will start to see significant impact on your organisation’s bottom line from a new or even re-imagined program. 

Consistency is key to help build momentum. If your community engagement program is inconsistent and infrequent in its messaging and approach you are doomed to fail. If you also think that you will get a cast of thousands to your first events, or have customers falling over themselves to read your magazine or social media posts, without first fostering a solid and consistent base of trust with them, then you will be sadly disappointed. It will take time, it will take consistency, and like any good relationship it will take trust. 

Remember your engagement program is likely one of many competing for your client’s attention. No matter how good or important you think your program is, to stand out from the crowd it must be consistently excellent, and if you can manage it, offers something the opposition doesn’t or won’t offer.

Another principle that I always advocate with new community engagement programs is to under promise and over deliver. Nothing kills momentum and trust quite like over promising and under delivering on your program. 

If you commence an engagement program promising a gold-plated Ferrari for every paying customer, when in reality your stakeholders are receiving nothing but busted roller skates, then any chance of a long term relationship is doomed, and in my experience usually becomes unsalvageable. 

The old saying ‘once bitten twice shy’ holds very true in community engagement. So start small and build your program up slowly to create real momentum and don’t over promise or fail to deliver on something you say you are going to. 

Conclusion

So there are my top six tips to build a strong foundation for what will hopefully be a great community engagement program. Whilst I can’t guarantee success by following these tips, from my experience, I can guarantee that you will give yourself every possible chance to succeed where others fail.

I wish you all the best with creating your next community engagement program and remember to dream big - because then everything becomes possible!

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