Community campaigns are any type of activity to increase engagement or growth of a community.
While this is an extremely broad term — and made even bigger by the fact that each community is unique.
But there are some commonalities. Primarily, community campaigns always have incentives. These incentives might not always be the same, but they are always there. Common incentives include:
- Money, of course
- Swag
- Preferences
- Access
- Recognition.
The list goes on, but whenever you are designing a community campaign, be sure to keep in mind that you need some sort of draw or reward for people. Something that will catch their attention, and ideally go beyond that to keep them interested. It's also good to note that money, at least the freebie-giveaway type, while one of the strongest draws, might not actually be the best incentive to keep people engaged over time, as it's usually in limited supply.
Campaign Outcomes
Next to consider is what a campaign can actually do.
The most often is to grow a community, whether that's Twitter followers, Discord members, or on another platform. But there are a good number of other outcomes.
Along with these primary goals, there are a host of secondary effects that good community campaigns can achieve. These include converting bypassers, strengthening existing members' bonds, and maybe even turning them into true fans, or gaining social clout and possibly a bit of free press.
On top of this, truly great community campaigns can set your community up to take ownership. If you ever want to launch or become a DAO, take note. You can't simply hand over the reins, but you need some baseline systems AND a strong community. Running good community campaigns to activate and identify leaders and collaborators is key.
Types of Campaigns
Once you have a feel for what your aims are, you can go about looking into the type of campaign that will fit your needs.
These are just a few, and give you a good starting place. But, remember to listen to your community, and keep trying to come up with campaigns that actually address their needs — or market needs.
And, of course, your standard growth campaigns often vary significantly from an engagement or activation campaign.
It's also important to take into account that different types of campaigns come with VERY different resource demands.
While money might be a problem for some projects, for others, it will be tempting to just throw money at the issue of a small or unengaged community, when really what's needed are more engaging activation campaigns…which take a lot more leg work behind the scenes.
Below you’ll find that break down, making it easier to see the amount of work and payout.
Building a Campaign
When it comes to building your campaign, there are several questions you can run through to make sure that you are getting to the heart of your needs…and your community's.
But, it's also good to note that the platform you're using will impact your campaigns. Specifically, in-bound communities, like Discord, Slack, and Telegram, are very different from your open communities, like Twitter.
And, even Discord, Slack, and Telegram are quite different, both in terms of what they let you do (Telegram is a bit limited) and the type of engagement they tend to receive. This is largely due to the types of communities they attract and the tools that exist, which can be very different between the business focused Slack and gaming focused Discord.
The Golden Rule
Generally the most important thing you can keep in mind is providing value to your community. The more value you can provide, the more time people tend to hang around and pitch in to give some value back.
That also take us back to the very beginning — the incentives that every community campaign needs.
This is also just a base level of community campaigns. Community managers are an innovative bunch, and will keep coming up with more exciting — and ideally better suited — campaigns for their audiences, keeping them excited and engaged.
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