Loomio
Thu 16 Jul 2015 9:47AM

Strategies for online engagement - share your insights

ST Simon Tegg Public Seen by 201

Many people in this community lead and participate in all kinds of online communities and projects. The success of these initiatives often rests on engaging people in an action or series of actions.

What are some engagement strategies that have helped these initiatives succeed?

In Loomio’s case we’ve often found it useful to consider the following:

What value will a participant get from participating? Will participating solve a problem for the participant?

-For Loomio groups we make some general background assumptions:
People in the group share a collective identity and wish to take collective action. We also assume that it is usually inconvenient or unrealistic for the entire group to meet in person. Participating in a Loomio group solves the in-person meeting problem and provides the value of robust collective decisions.

Simplicity of the ‘ask’. How accessible is it?

-At Loomio, we believe that inviting diverse perspectives leads to better decisions. At the same time we realize that it's only natural for particpants' available time and commitment to vary. At any point there will always be a small number of people with lots of time and commitment and a larger number with less time and less commitment. If you want to engage the latter you have to make it really, really easy to participate.

How have others succeeded with online communities? What advice, tips, and strategies can we share?

SC

Steven Clift Thu 16 Jul 2015 4:59PM

While I am born of online communities where people share a passion for knowledge exchange - but not a collective identity nor are they taking action beyond learning from each other - these lessons might be useful:

http://bit.ly/onlinegroupsthatworkpublic

J

jacopo Fri 17 Jul 2015 8:25AM

Dear Simon

Long ago we realize in our own platform the same observations, people will participate where personal or direct stakes are in the game.

So one of the best strategy is to have a search and filter engine that permit easily to spot these "stakes" (geolocal or specific issues)

In relation to ease of use, our strategy is to make our very complex tool very flexible and let the groups managers to limit the functions available to the group based on user experience. Unfortunately democracy is not an easy system due to the multiple variables involved. The system should be tailored to each user and this responsibility lies on the group manager. Another good strategy is to create a loomio distributed support with the possibility to request one to one support in the best open source tradition.

I hope these can help you

Kind regards

Jacopo Tolja

Internationalisation Team Leader

Www.tecnologiedemocratiche..it ( http://Www.tecnologiedemocratiche.it ) Www.airesis.info ( http://Www.airesis.info )

Il 16/Lug/2015 11:50, "Simon Tegg (Loomio)" ha scritto:

Simon Tegg ha iniziato una discussione in Loomio Community:

Strategies for online engagement - share your insights ( https://www.loomio.org/d/byQk0g5i/strategies-for-online-engagement-share-your-insights?utm_campaign=thread_mailer&utm_medium=email&utm_source=new_discussion )

Many people in this community lead and participate in all kinds of online communities and projects. The success of these initiatives often rests on engaging people in an action or series of actions.

What are some engagement strategies that have helped these initiatives succeed?

In Loomio’s case we’ve often found it useful to consider the following:

What value will a participant get from participating? Will participating solve a problem for the participant?

-For Loomio groups we make some general background assumptions:

People in the group share a collective identity and wish to take collective action. We also assume that it is usually inconvenient or unrealistic for the entire group to meet in person. Participating in a Loomio group solves the in-person meeting problem and provides the value of robust collective decisions.

Simplicity of the ‘ask’. How accessible is it?

-At Loomio, we believe that inviting diverse perspectives leads to better decisions. At the same time we realize that it’s only natural for particpants’ available time and commitment to vary. At any point there will always be a small number of people with lots of time and commitment and a larger number with less time and less commitment. If you want to engage the latter you have to make it really, really easy to participate.

How have others succeeded with online communities? What advice, tips, and strategies can we share?

Reply to this email directly or view it on www.loomio.org ( https://www.loomio.org/d/byQk0g5i/strategies-for-online-engagement-share-your-insights?utm_campaign=thread_mailer&utm_medium=email&utm_source=new_discussion ).

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RBW

Rachel B. Wickert Mon 20 Jul 2015 4:00PM

Thanks @simontegg ! I've tried using loomio in different contexts. It has worked really well for ideation such as our logo storming for instance because the ask was simple but open. It has also been really useful as an add-on/extension to our decision-making process for the board of directors of our new charity www.newspringfund.org as a way to unclutter our official meetings.