Growing a healthy community is about asking the right questions.
Because knowing what your audience needs is what will lead to new growth.
As you reflect on the various ways you are attempting to engage your audience, online and in-person, remember that both are important.
Asking for their advice, and listening to their response, is also important.
You don’t need a continual influx of suggestions for how you could be doing things differently. That can make you feel overwhelmed. However, you do want to regularly check in with your audience to see how things are going. You want to know how you could better serve them. What they are looking for.
Maybe your social media posts haven’t been engaging people as much as you’d like. Or you haven’t had as many people showing up to events.
That’s why it’s important to spend the time to make sure what you’re doing to engage others is working effectively. If it isn’t, that could be a missed opportunity. Or a bunch of missed opportunities.
Engaging with your audience and asking for their advice isn’t just about knowing what you should do – it’s about letting them know you care. Then, when you take their response and do something with it, it shows you are truly listening.
Having that on-going conversation with your audience where you regularly reach out and seek input helps to develop a relationship based on mutual respect.
If you’re consistent with it, your audience can learn to trust in the on-going dialogue. New additions to your community will also pick up on that – which can help to further grow an engaged community.
To ensure you’re asking the right questions, know your audience and who you are appealing to. But, mostly listen to what they share.
Even if you only make slight changes in response to their comments, that can still have a significant impact.
When you ask questions that follow up with past responses, you help to further the conversation, showing your audience that you’re open to their input.
Community is always a team game, so make sure to invite your growing audience in and make them part of the process. That’s what asking the right questions is for – to grow community, together.