Best Practices for Building an Online Member Community

Lomesh Shah, Guest Blogger

This guest article was written and submitted by Lomesh Shah, CEO of Tradewing. Please see the end of this article for Lomesh's bio.

By: Lomesh Shah

Your museum has a number of stakeholders to consider, from volunteers and donors to business partners and community leaders. One group you should pay special attention to is your members. These donors go the extra mile to support you by chipping in member dues on a monthly or annual basis.

To maintain long-lasting relationships with these supporters, your museum needs to provide exclusive, valuable benefits. One way you can keep your members constantly engaged is to create an exclusive online community. 

In this guide, we’ll walk through the steps for building and maintaining an online member community for your museum. 

Invest in a private platform. 

To get started, you first need a platform to host your online community. Some organizations on a budget will use free social media sites like Facebook or LinkedIn to do this. This approach is a great option for organizations with limited staff and monetary capacity. If your museum has the capability, you could consider investing in software to host a private community. 

Tradewing’s guide to community management platforms highlights a few reasons why social media sites, while free, provide a different experience compared to dedicated member engagement sites:

• Focus. Social media is infamous for making it difficult to focus. For instance, a member might log in to Facebook to view your museum’s group but get distracted by a friend’s post, then an ad, and then a post from another group they’re in. By that point, they’ve likely forgotten their initial goal. With a platform dedicated solely to your online community, users will be there to engage specifically with your content and their fellow members. 
• Privacy. Social media sites generate revenue by selling users’ data to advertisers. This hidden cost means sacrificing your members’ privacy. Additionally, when using these platforms, you are ultimately beholden to the platform owner’s guidelines, which can limit your moderation abilities. 
• Professionalism. Most will agree that it feels more professional to be directed to a private webpage your museum owns rather than a social media link. Most community management platforms also come with custom branding options, allowing you to build a site that represents your specific organization. 

Be aware that association management software (AMS) and community engagement platforms are two different pieces of software. While an AMS can help you manage your members (i.e., collect dues, create and send communications, track member data), few have tools that facilitate open conversation between members. 

In contrast, community engagement platforms create social media-like sites dedicated specifically to your organization. On these microsites, members can post content, comment on each other’s posts, send direct messages, form groups, and more. 

Create a robust membership directory.

One of the best parts of joining a membership program is accessing the organization’s community. For your museum, like-minded individuals can connect with one another, increasing their connection to your organization and making it likelier that they’ll renew their memberships to avoid losing these relationships. 

Facilitate connections between members by setting up a member directory, which is essentially a list of your members. Some directories are more detailed and provide contact information, profile pictures, job titles, hobbies, and other relevant information. The more details you encourage members to add to their profiles, the easier it will be for them to find others with similar interests.

Alt text: An example member directory

While member directories can help members find each other, they also can share sensitive information about your community. As such, you should put privacy measures in place. 

For example, you might make a simplified version of your directory available on your website that only includes members’ names. Then, members who log into your online community can access full membership profiles that include contact information. This helps reduce spam and will make members feel more comfortable sharing identifying information. 

Provide engagement opportunities.

After bringing your members together online, give them something to do on your community platform. By providing engaging online experiences, your members will stay engaged year-round, making them more likely to renew their memberships. 

A few ways you can engage your members online include:

• Post content routinely. Maintain a blog where you post opinion pieces, news updates, and other interesting content regularly. This provides your members with valuable, unique content to interact with while also showcasing to search engines that your museum has an active website. 
• Pose discussion questions. To encourage members to connect with one another, get the ball rolling by posing discussion questions to your community. For example, you might ask members what their favorite exhibit at your museum is or encourage them to share a memorable experience about a past visit. This invites them to start casual conversations, which can lead to meaningful connections. 
• Encourage user-generated content. Social media sites stay active by inviting users to post and share their own content. You can do the same by commenting on or spotlighting top user posts. 

In addition to your online opportunities, make sure to keep up your schedule of in-person events. While your online community is a strong value-add, offline activities can spark interest in your membership program and lead to conversations and connections online. 

Experiment with gamification.

Give members an extra incentive to participate in your community with gamification features. Gamification is the act of adding game-like point and reward systems to activities to increase engagement. For example, a person looking to stay in shape might download a fitness app that creates a daily streak for every day they walk 10,000 steps, motivating them to hit their goal. 

When it comes to your community, you might reward members for participating in discussions, posting, sharing content, or signing up for activities. Essentially, if you want to encourage members to do something repeatedly, add a gamified incentive to it. 

Double the Donation’s guide to member engagement suggests a few types of gamification strategies for membership programs:

• Leaderboards. Create a sense of friendly competition among your members and let them see how they stack up against one another. For instance, your museum might create a leaderboard for donations, annual visits, or posts on your online community. 
• Badges. Award members’ accomplishments by providing them with badges. Let them display these electronic badges on their member profiles to show off their accomplishments and start conversations with other members. 
• Challenges. Issue daily or weekly challenges to encourage members to log into their accounts and engage with your online community regularly. These might be challenges to post, explore your virtual exhibits, or participate in a community activity. 

Gamification boosts engagement and retention by making your online community more rewarding to interact with. Even if there is no tangible prize associated with your gamified content, the points, badges, and leaderboard rankings create a sense of accomplishment that’s a reward in and of itself. 

An online community can elevate your membership program by giving your members a place to connect with your museum whenever they want. Spark discussions by posting content, encourage members to make connections, and invest in a platform that provides a positive, professional membership experience. 

About the author - Lomesh Shah

Lomesh Shah is the CEO of Tradewing. With over 20 years of experience of product marketing experience across a range of industries—including marketing, finances, and nonprofits, Lomesh has founded and lead product strategy teams for multiple thriving nonprofit software companies. With a focus on innovation today, Lomesh aims to provide software solutions that help associations thrive in a rapidly evolving digital landscape.