How to Build a Community Content Strategy  ## Metadata - Author: [[commsor.com]] - Full Title: How to Build a Community Content Strategy - Category: #articles - Document Note: ## 📝 Summarize: The article discusses the importance of creating a community content strategy to engage and foster a sense of belonging among community members. It likens community content to a snack table at a party, where people gather to break the ice, start conversations, and bond over shared experiences. Valuable community content, including various types of posts, events, job postings, AMAs, and expert advice, plays a crucial role in making members comfortable enough to participate actively. The process of building a community content strategy involves setting clear goals, determining content cadence, creating a content calendar, repurposing existing content, and measuring the impact of the strategy. High-frequency, medium-frequency, low-frequency, and lowest-frequency content types are discussed, each serving different purposes in engaging community members. The article emphasizes the significance of planning ahead with a content calendar and tracking engagement to assess the success of the strategy. ## 🗒️ Bullet Points: ### What is Community Content? - Community content refers to content created for community members to provide value and encourage long-term participation. - It includes various formats like text, videos, polls, audio, discussion threads, and Q&As. ### Benefits of Creating Community Content: 1. Providing value for community members and organizations. 2. Boosting engagement and growth. 3. Cultivating habits for members to adopt. ### Steps to Build a Community Content Strategy: 1. **Set Goals:** - Define the purpose of the content for the community and business. - Specify the type and frequency of content to create. - Identify responsible individuals for content creation and engagement. - Choose appropriate channels to distribute content. 2. **Decide on Content Cadence:** - High-frequency: Low-effort engagement prompts posted frequently. - Medium-frequency: Rituals, Q&As, or AMAs with experts. - Low-frequency: Medium to high-effort events providing tangible value. - Lowest-frequency: Show-stopper events or resources requiring extensive planning. 3. **Create Your Content Calendar:** - Plan 3-5 content types based on goals and value offered. - Label and organize content types on the calendar according to frequency. - Share the calendar with the team for collaboration. 4. **Repurpose Content:** - Collaborate with the content team to reuse existing content like blogs or courses. - Bring more value to the community without extra work. 5. **Measure Impact:** - Track engagement on each piece of content, both internally and externally. - Evaluate which content types received the most and least engagement. - Regularly assess the strategy's effectiveness and make improvements. ## 📝 Paraphrased Paragraphs: 1. *Party Snacks and Community Content:* Just as party snacks serve as a gathering point for people to break the ice and bond, valuable community content plays a similar role in bringing members together and fostering a sense of belonging. Content such as conversation starters, events, and expert advice provides community members with something to engage with, just like hovering by the pretzel bowl encourages social interaction at a party. By keeping the "snack table" well-stocked with diverse content, your community can become an engaging and welcoming space where members feel comfortable participating. 2. *Content Cadence for Community Engagement:* A content cadence in a thriving community follows a pattern of posting different types of content at various frequencies. High-frequency content, like daily engagement prompts, is relatively low-effort and fosters regular interactions. Medium-frequency content includes rituals and events like Q&As with experts, while low-frequency content involves more substantial efforts such as workshops or challenges. The show-stoppers are the lowest-frequency events or pieces, like annual summits or in-depth reports. By strategically planning and organizing content types on a calendar, community managers can ensure that their members stay engaged with a variety of content that meets their diverse needs. ## ✨ Conclusion: The article emphasizes the significance of community content as a means to engage members and create a sense of belonging. By providing value through different content types and maintaining a well-thought-out content cadence, communities can foster regular interactions and encourage participation. The key steps for building a community content strategy involve setting clear goals, creating a content calendar, repurposing existing content, and measuring the impact of the strategy. Regular evaluation and improvement ensure that the content strategy effectively supports the community's growth and meets its goals. ## ❓ Questions: 1. How can community managers strike a balance between different content frequencies to ensure engagement without overwhelming members? 2. What are some creative ways to repurpose existing content to make it more valuable and relevant for community members? 3. How can community managers effectively track and analyze the impact of their content strategy to make data-driven decisions? 4. What challenges might arise when planning annual or high-effort content pieces, and how can these challenges be addressed? 5. How can community managers encourage collaboration among team members and stakeholders to create and implement a successful content strategy? ## 🏷️ Auto-tagging: Community Content, Engagement, Content Cadence, Content Types, Community Building, Community Strategy, Repurposing Content, Goal Setting, Content Calendar, Measuring Impact, Collaboration. ## 📚 References: The Community Club, Building A Community Content Calendar course. ## 🔍 Future Research: 1. Investigate the correlation between content cadence and member retention to determine the ideal frequency for different community types. 2. Explore the impact of gamification elements in community content to enhance engagement and foster a sense of achievement. 3. Conduct a comparative study on the effectiveness of various content types in promoting meaningful discussions and knowledge sharing within communities. 4. Investigate the role of personalized content in community engagement and how tailored content offerings can cater to diverse member interests. 5. Analyze the long-term effects of community content in driving business growth and brand loyalty, both within the community and beyond. ## 📋 Hypotheses: 1. A higher frequency of engaging community content will lead to increased member participation and a stronger sense of community. 2. Repurposing existing content for the community will save time and effort for the community team while providing valuable resources for members. 3. Community content that aligns with members' interests and needs will lead to higher engagement levels and member satisfaction. 4. Introducing interactive elements like polls and quizzes within community content will enhance member engagement and foster a more dynamic community experience. ## 📑 Methodology: 1. Data for tracking engagement can be collected through community platforms or social media analytics. 2. Conduct surveys and focus groups to gather feedback on the perceived value of community content and areas for improvement. 3. Implement A/B testing to compare the effectiveness of different content types and posting frequencies. 4. Analyze user behavior and interactions within the community to identify patterns related to content consumption and engagement. ## 💡 Implications: The proposed future research on community content can significantly advance the knowledge of community management and engagement strategies. Understanding the impact of different content types and frequencies can help community managers tailor their approaches to meet the unique needs of their communities. Implementing personalized and engaging content can lead to increased member retention and a thriving community ecosystem. Furthermore, incorporating gamification elements and interactive content can create a more dynamic and rewarding experience for communi - Document Tags: [[community management]] [[strategy]] - Summary: Valuable content within a community brings people together, sparks discussions, and fosters a sense of belonging. - URL: https://www.commsor.com/post/community-content?utm_campaign=DevRel%2BWeekly&utm_medium=email&utm_source=DevRel_Weekly_215 Coming up with a community content strategy can be a daunting task — which is why we like to inject a little fun into the mix. Over at [The Community Club](https://www.community.club/), our community for Community Managers, we think of content created for your community as a snack table. Because, as Community Consultant and prolific snacker [Noele Flowers](https://twitter.com/NoeleFlowers?ref_src=twsrc%5Egoogle%7Ctwcamp%5Eserp%7Ctwgr%5Eauthor) once said, just like a great party, **every community needs snacks**. Where do folks hang out at a party if they don't know anyone and aren't quite ready to start any conversations? They hover by the pretzel bowl. Snacking gives you something to do, a reason to hang out — just like great content within a community does. The snack table at a party serves as a gathering point for people to break the ice, start conversations, and bond over a shared experience. Similarly, valuable content within a community brings people together, sparks discussions, and fosters a sense of belonging. Don't let your community be that awkward gathering where the only chatter is stilted small talk — make it a place where members want to stay a little longer by keeping the snack table (a.k.a. community content) well-stocked. #### What is community content? **Community content is any content created with and/or for community members to provide value for the, and encourage members to stay and participate long-term.** Sure, connecting community members through introductions and tags is great, but that's not what gets people involved. Instead, it's the ‘snack table’ of community resources, events, job postings, conversation starters, AMAs, and expert advice that makes people comfortable enough to start chatting. ‘Content’ isn't just long-form [written content](https://www.commsor.com/post/written-content-for-your-community) — although it is necessary and valuable. Short posts, discussion threads, polls, and Q&As can all be content that fuels your community engagement. **The three main benefits of creating community content include:** * Providing value for community members and organizations * Engagement and growth * Building habits for your members to adopt #### How to build a community content strategy Every plan begins with setting some goals. Let's take a look at five steps you can take to build out your community content strategy. ##### 1. Set goals What do you want to achieve through your community content, who is it for, and what do you want your community members and your business to get out of it? Setting out some KPIs is also a great way to measure your success (more on this later). **Your community content plan should answer the following questions:** **Why**: Why do you want to create for your community (is it to increase engagement or get more members involved?) **What:** What kind of content do you want to create (text, videos, polls, audio, or all of the above)? **When:** How often do you want to post content in your community? (We’ll dig into this more in step 2.) **Who:** Who will be responsible for content creation, publication, and engagement with members when they respond? **Where:** Where will this content live? Which channels will you post it too? ##### 2. Decide on content cadence Let’s dig a little deeper into that ‘when’. Simply put, a content cadence is the pattern of your posting. Most thriving communities will have several content cadences stacked on top of each other to cater to the needs of different personas within the community — this could be because they're posting different types of content to various channels. > **A rule of thumb:** as the cadence gets broader, the level of effort for the team increases. For more frequent cadences, your content will be more spontaneous or developed dynamically based on what's going on within the community. ##### High-frequency High-frequency content is a thriving community's bread and butter. This content is relatively low-effort and the most frequently posted in your community. We call this segment ‘daily’ for ease of understanding, but this could also happen every other day, or three times a week. More often than not, these are engagement prompts such as: * Asking questions related to a topic * Running a short poll * Conversation starters ##### Medium-frequency This could take the shape of anything from little [rituals](https://www.commsor.com/post/how-to-build-a-community-ritual) (a Monday morning goal-setting thread, for example) to lower-effort events like Q&As or [AMAs](https://www.commsor.com/post/driving-community-engagement-with-amas) with experts within your community. These events don't necessarily need to be live or in a workshop-style video chat. AMAs, in particular, lend themselves to asynchronous conversations. ##### Low-frequency These can be medium to high-effort events like partner workshops, product feedback groups, or even challenges. They should provide tangible value to your members and offer an incentive for them to jump in and take part. 👉 [Want to host engaging events your community members will love? Check out our 9-step guide to hosting spectacular community events.](https://www.commsor.com/post/how-to-host-a-virtual-event) ##### Lowest-frequency These are your show-stoppers. They can be annual events or content pieces that take serious planning and prep work — things that will likely be months in the making. Some communities run annual summits, conferences, and in-person meet-ups or publish guides, reports, or eBooks. The Community Club recently published [The Community Engagement Playbook](https://www.commsor.com/engagement-playbook) mentioned above with tried-and-tested engagement initiatives by our community members. This Community-Led piece of content was months in the making and became a high-value resource within the community and beyond. ##### 3. Create your content calendar While it may be tempting to wing it once you have your cadence figured out, it's always great to plan ahead. A content calendar will help you stay on track and accountable — this will ultimately benefit your community, and members will start mirroring the habits you want them to follow when it comes to their involvement in the community. You can use various project management tools to build this, such as Asana, or use a template. [**👉 Looking for more tips on building content calendars? Try our self-paced course on Building A Community Content Calendar**](https://learn.community.club/course/building-a-community-content-calendar) ##### Here's a simple process to follow when creating your calendar ##### Choose 3-5 content types These include conversation starters, eBooks, events, AMAs, etc. Define the ones relevant to your community based on your goals and the value you want to provide. These should be a mixture of low, medium, and high-effort content. For example, daily conversation starters, weekly AMAs, Monthly events, and an annual eBook are a great mix of content that will keep your community engaged and, with any luck, hungry for more. ##### Plug your content types into your calendar Make sure you label or color code your content types so they're easy to spot on your calendar. Start plugging in your annual content types as they take longer to put together. Follow up with your monthly events, then your weekly rituals, and finally, your daily conversation starters. **Actionable tip:** Share your calendar with the rest of your team to encourage collaboration with the rest of the company. ##### 4. Repurpose content Work smarter, not harder! If your company already has content like blogs, courses, or eBooks, you can work with your content team to repurpose this content for your community. Again, this will bring more value to your community members without the community team having to do double the work. ##### 5. Measure impact So you've built out your community content, and you think it's great. It probably is (well done you!), but don’t take our word for it. How do you measure if your efforts are actually working? One of the surest ways to measure success of your community content is to track the engagement on each piece, both internally and externally (if you shared something publicly in the hope of drawing in more members). A simple strategy: at the end of your first month, look back at your calendar and see which daily and weekly content types you published. Then, check on the engagement on each one and mark the ones that had the most or least engagement. This will give you a clearer picture of what's working and what needs improvement. [👉 Check out our course on Building Content Calendars to learn more about how to measure your content’s impact](https://learn.community.club/course/building-a-community-content-calendar) Checking in every month, quarter, or annually will give you an even better picture of how your community content is growing your community and if your content strategy is working or needs to be revised to better cater to the needs of your community and business. ‍, How to Build a Community Content Strategy, commsor.com, 01gt4z997vxdc3vt67s3znjsht.