The Business of Belonging

Chapter 4Mapping the Community Participation Journey

Now that you have the first stage in the Social Identity Cycle under your belt, we're ready to move into the second stage, participation.

The participation stage is all about understanding the journey that a member goes through in your community over time, and facilitating spaces and experiences that move them along that journey. Early in the journey, it's likely that members will participate in smaller and more passive ways. Over time, as they move through the cycle, they'll become more committed and participate in greater ways, taking on larger roles in the community. In this chapter, you'll learn how to design your community member journey and give your members a range of opportunities to contribute.

We'll talk about how to attract and onboard new members, how to create a “power user” status, and what you need to do to activate community leaders who will contribute to facilitating engagement in your community.

The Commitment Curve

When we think about community participation, we tend to just think about the big actions we want community members to take, like posting in a forum, attending an event, organizing events, and becoming power users or leaders.

In truth, there are going to be a whole lot of actions, small and large, that someone can take along their journey of becoming an engaged member of your community. Participation can be as simple as reading a blog post or subscribing to a newsletter to start. Then as someone ...