Engagement How do you keep your community engaged during slow periods?

[Cedric]

Every community has several times where you'll encounter slow periods. Slow periods are something we cannot avoid, but they don’t have to be a cause for concern if managed effectively. As a community leader, it’s good to have some strategies in place to keep your members engaged and maintain momentum, even when things slow down. So, how can you encourage participation when activity wanes?

Create Special Events or Challenges​

One way to re-energize your community is by organizing special events or challenges that bring members together. Whether it’s a themed discussion week, a friendly competition, a giveaway or a collaborative event, offering something fresh can draw members back to the platform and get conversations flowing.

Highlight Existing Content​

Sometimes, members simply need a little nudge to re-engage. Slow periods are a great opportunity to shine a light on past discussions, articles, or resources that newer members might have missed. Re-sharing this content can spark interest and lead to new conversations or insights. Don't be afraid to bump old topics. Most people won't notice it's old.

Personal Outreach​

As a leader, reaching out to members individually can work wonders. Whether through personal messages, shoutouts, or recognizing their contributions, a bit of one-on-one interaction reignites interest and make members feel valued. Sometimes, just knowing their presence is missed is enough to bring them back.

Experiment with New Features or Formats​

Use slow periods to test out new content formats or features, such as polls, surveys, or live Q&A sessions. Breathe life into conversations and give members something exciting to look forward to.

Encourage Member-Driven Content​

Consider handing the reins to your members by inviting them to start their own discussions or create content. User-generated content not only encourages participation but also gives members a sense of ownership over the community.

Final Thoughts​

Slow periods don’t have to signal stagnation for your community. With proactive strategies, you can keep engagement high, even when things quiet down.

What tactics have you found most effective for keeping your community active during these slower times? Share your experiences and insights below!

 

[InMyOpinion]

I think you touched on everything I would have advised to do to help keep your community engaged during slow periods. Sometimes slow periods are inevitable and happens but there are some ways you can try to help your forum be more active during those slow times.

I think one great way to help is to quote and tag members in replies and threads that you make. That way they will get notified and be more likely to log on.

Another way is to create an event and challenges like you've mentioned. It will help keep members engaged and wanting to be a part of it.

I really enjoyed this thread though so thanks @Cedric for this great thread

 

[Nomad]

I have never done events on my forums, even if I do events, I do not think I would be able to get a lot of engagements. For your promotional events to succeed, you already need active members, if you do not have active members who post voluntarily, events might not help you. I think personal outreach can really work. In fact I have been using this method to bring activities for a long time

 

[fdk]

When I used to run my large football forum, I used to struggle to keep people engaged during the off-season (the end of the football season). I had to resort to introducing new highlighted forums for the discussion of pre-season football and transfer news and gossip, as well as running some community events, competitions and encouraging people to visit more of the off-topic areas of the forum. For the first year or two of our existence, summer's were quite slow, which is probably the opposite to the general trend for most other forums, but by year 3 our summers weren't far off our activity levels of the rest of the year which ultimately I was happy with.

 

[Cory]

December has been a pretty slow period for most forums I'm on, assuming people are out and about shopping, visiting friends and family, and getting ready for that "big day" to come. I haven't done much to combat the slowness of activity around the forum except for the usual stuff I always do. I did, however, start a small Christmas celebration event with some benefits for my user base. During slow periods, I tend to keep looking over my board and try to think of ideas to improve it while many members are MIA. Since I own a resource board, I don't expect my forum to have a wealth of posting activity, but I try to engage in discussion topics I can relate to.

 

[Shawn Gossman]

Great points @Cedric

I've been asking myself this question for a while now concerning the community I get paid to manage on Copyblogger.

A friend of mine who helped write a big paid newsletter now owned by HubSpot told me that when he did a paid community, he would make sure he wrote one really interesting discussion a day to keep everyone occupied for the day.

I think if we do just that, it would help during slower periods.

It's best to research these topics and create a content calendar so that you have a list of them to post.

With a forum, we want to create many of these but even just one can help keep the community active on a daily basis.