Creating and maintaining your own community or group on enterprise social platforms can be a daunting task.  

SWOOP Analytics recently brought together a group of collaboration champions who run their own communities and groups on Yammer and Workplace from Facebook. We're talking about communities ranging from fast-paced technical support groups, project-focused communities and light and fluffy social groups. We asked collaboration champions across organisations, 'What makes a successful community on enterprise social networks (ESNs)?'   

At SWOOP, we know what it takes to run thriving communities (and we have the data to back this up!). The interesting part is seeing how this comes to life in the real-world and how super users of ESNs maintain levels of engagement in their respective groups.  

We interviewed Katelyn Nguyen (Microsoft Teams at ANZ Change Lead) and Richy Cartmell (Yammer Community Manager) from ANZ bank to discuss their secrets to success. Katelyn currently runs a Microsoft Teams – Help and How-To community hosted on Yammer which has seen impressive results since its creation 18 months ago. Richy supports admins like Katelyn in his role as a community manager to advise and measure the impact of employee engagement initiatives. Richy also provided additional tips for driving meaningful engagement on ESNs.  

Here is what we uncovered in our conversation: 

1. Have a clear purpose 

It may sound simple, but it’s a step that is often overlooked. Not only should you establish the purpose of the community, but also communicate it clearly with members. What do you expect your members to use the community for?

2. Set your community up for success (literally!)

We strongly believe in people power when it comes to running successful ESNs. In saying that, don’t forget to leverage your platform features to keep your members informed. Make it easy for them! This includes ticking off the following group admin basics: 

• Add a cover photo that clearly visualises the type of content to expect in the community. 

• Upload a group profile picture - Something to draw attention and that lines up with the group purpose. 

• Multiple admins - You need to invest time to nurture your community, sometimes an extra set of hands may be required. Onboard additional admins as your membership grows so you can continue to keep up with general community maintenance.  

• Fill in details about the community including its purpose in the info/about section 

• Upload any resources that are relevant to the community for easy reference. Pinning files or adding in shared documents can help position your community as the go-to collaborative space for your area of interest/project.

  3. Use of simple, succinct hashtags

Create a set of simple, yet distinctive, hashtags that are exclusive to your community to make it easy for members to find information. This will also make life easier when analysing your community hot topics. Are your top-performing hashtags an indication of content and campaigns that are resonating more than other initiatives? SWOOP Analytics can help surface the popularity of hashtags. Just head to your Community or Group dashboard and check your 'Hot Topics' report.    

4. Run community-based campaigns

Running campaigns in your community will help drive responses rates and encourage more depth of discussion. The checklist below covers the basics of running successful community-based campaigns.  

• Pin your campaign to the top of a community feed while it is running and relevant. 

• GIFs are a simple yet effective way of catching a reader's eye. Choose relevant imagery that communicates a theme in your campaign post. Anything trending on external socials is a great place to start. 

• Encourage your members to share content from your campaign in their own communities, helping to drive further awareness and potentially draw additional users to voluntarily follow your content. 

• Have the basics of community management covered by ensuring questions are answered promptly. This ties back to having multiple group admins to share the responsibility. 

• The power of @mentioning is not one to be underestimated! Tag your community's key influencers, staff relevant to your campaign objectives and other stakeholders who have previously expressed interest in the topic. 

5. Share content outside of the community

For community content that is broadly relevant to other business functions, or even the entire company, consider breaking down the walls of your community to reach other interested colleagues. Share content across other public communities that will add value. 

 If that’s not enough, here are some final pointers:  

• The announcement feature can be alluring for regular updates but we highly recommend only using this feature with important, time-sensitive posts. 

• Ask thought-provoking questions to your community members. Asking questions leads to 150% more responses!  

• Follow the 1, 2, 3 rule (for every post, also make 2 replies and 3 likes). Following this formula is a great starting point and for new community admins. Also a great tip to share directly in your communities.   

The underlying theme throughout our session was that it’s certainly not all about driving membership, but more so about vibrant conversations that connect employees or deliver added value to your organisation.   

Interested in sharing your community/group story or learning from other community managers and admins? Reach out to Emily.obrien@swoopanalytics.com to be added to our next Community Connect session.