Top 10 mistakes leaders make with their community app
We know from experience that whilst many communities thrive when they add a community app to assist with community management in a retirement village or over 50s community, some struggle to get going or don’t turn out the way the community leaders intended. If you want to run a successful community using a communications app, then you need to avoid these common mistakes.
1) Limited or irrelevant content
Irregular and infrequent posting of content says to the community members that the community is not active. Aim to post at least once a day. Really active communities are posting 3 to 5 times a day with community focused content. You also need to think through the type of content you are sharing. If you are posting news that your members don’t care about then they won’t see a reason to engage or read it. Think about your target audience and what they value. Consider using these conversation starters to engage your community. Pull in news and events focused on topics of interest for your community based on what is going on in your suburb or town. Use the web import tool to speed the process up. Take the time to do a birthday greeting to residents who have a birthday on that day. This one piece of content makes it easy for residents to engage with the person having the birthday and makes the person having the birthday feel special.
2) Content is repetitive
Your content has hit a bit of a rut, because you don’t know what to post, don’t have the time and so you take the path of least resistance and keep posting the same type of information every day. For example, you might only be displaying today’s menu, but over time residents figure out that the menu doesn’t change much so they don’t need to read it. Use a monthly editorial calendar to plan out story topics and ideas. Set up a member group that helps with news and event creation. Adjust their user permissions so that they can create content. Ask us to install a duplicate of news and have a specific news channel focused on resident or member driven news. We could even add another news channel that can be set up as a buy swap and sell feed for members to post items they want to sell or give away. Get in touch with the team to set these up in your community.
3) Unsure of purpose
You like the idea of having your own branded app and your community using it but you don’t have a clear sense of why your community members would be using it. Without a clear purpose, it’s likely that your resident experience app won’t be successful. We have put together a number of practical goals that might give you some ideas. You can check them out here.
Increase the sense of community amongst residents
Save money and time by removing paper based communications and centralising communications through the community app
Reduce the time taken to notify residents of urgent updates
Remove the need for a monthly newsletter by communicating daily through the community app
Make it easy for residents to book in and pay for events by using the community app events and payments system
Remove hard copy resident manuals and guides and put them inside the app
Make it easier for residents to access local services by using the services feature
Encourage residents to contribute content by adding photos, news and events and commenting on posts
Make it easy for residents to communicate maintenance requests and simplify communications for staff to respond and manage the requests.
4) No success measures
Sitting alongside mistakes regarding a lack of purpose, is not knowing what success for your community looks like. If you don’t know what to measure and don’t measure the level of community engagement then you won’t know whether your community is progressing or going backwards. We have put together some success measures for you to consider . We have built analytics into almost all of the features. This allows you to review the level of engagement with your content and gives you an overall sense of community engagement.
Increase Net Promoter Score amongst the community
Increase the level of consultation with residents by 20%
Decrease the number of hours staff need to invest in communications by 40% per month
Generate additional revenues for the community
5) Lacking 2 to 3 core features with utility value
Connected to being clear about your purpose for your community is being clear about the 2 or 3 key features that have practical value for your community members beyond communications. If there is no utility value then your community app can fit into the nice to have category or, couldn’t really be bothered category. If there is information or functionality in your app that can’t be accessed anywhere else, then users have to come back to the app. For example, in a residential community being able to access the resident handbook or key contacts for staff are essential. So too are things like using the maintenance request system or the opening hours of the gym or pool. You can have all of these things inside your community app if your community is residential.
6) Trying to do it all themselves
Thriving communities value the chance to participate and contribute. Communities that struggle, have a very small number of contributors. Think about how you can involve more people in creating content and contributing to community organising and management. This will really boost the level of engagement, ownership and will take the pressure off you as a leader.
7) Keep using old communication methods to stay in touch with their community
Now this one is very important. If you go to all the effort of building your community app, onboarding your members, make a big splash in promoting it but keep sending your members text messages, emails or pushing them to a slack channel or separate event system then you are really making life difficult for yourself and reducing the likelihood of of your community app being useful. If you are using multiple communication channels to get your message out then you are continuing to confuse your members on where to find things and how to communicate.
8) Onboard community too slowly
If you take weeks or months to add all of your members then you run the risk of members feeling like there is no-one using the app. Users can have this experience where it feels like no-one else is there because there is never a critical mass of users all jumping in for the first time.
9) No community guidelines
You actively encourage your members to comment on posts, but you notice members or residents are being quite rude with their comments. The risk is that your community members become fearful of others saying negative things about them so they disengage from your community. There are two things going wrong here. One is you don’t have a set of guidelines about participation in your community. We have put together some tips on how to write good guidelines here . The other mistake is that those guidelines or rules are not being followed or enforced. As a community manager you can delete comments and your members can also flag comments for review or block people from commenting.
10) No community champions
This one is a biggie. Maybe it should be at the top of the list. If you don’t have people in your community advocating for the use of your community app and encouraging people to participate then you are missing out on your biggest community activation weapon. If you have a residential community, think about setting up a community app committee that takes responsibility for driving uptake or refining how your app is set up and managed. Encourage the social committee to really drive events and groups in the app. Empower them to contribute to events. Use the residents committee to publish their notices, minutes and important information in the app. Last of all, make sure you are encouraging members at events to take photos and get your staff and volunteers writing quick news posts about residents and members in action.
If you would like some hands-on support from the Pluss Communities team to kick start your community off on the right foot, or help to analyse why your community is struggling then get in touch. We would love to help. Please email the team.
