Do you know who your super members are?
Your super members are the foundation for building a strong and thriving community. They make significant contributions and encourage other members to participate. If you don’t have any that you can identify in your community, there are several strategies that you can use to find and cultivate them.
Super members come in many forms, but they will typically have one or more of these traits:
Refer new members to the organisation regularly.
Are highly active in online forums.
They provide peer support when members ask questions.
Hold a leadership role in the organisation.
Attend all of your events.
They offer positive feedback after events and will offer constructive ideas for future activities.
They are long-term members and renew early each year.
These members can be catalysts for positive change and influence how your community interacts with each other. Once you have identified these members in your community, we recommend checking in with them regularly, and offering a leadership role (if they don’t already hold one), which could be as simple as welcoming new members. You may also wish to incentivise them to refer new members by sending a thank-you gift when they do. Some organisations offer discounted memberships, but we don’t recommend this approach.
There are many strategies that you can utilise to help involve less active members in your network.
Pair new or inactive members with highly engaged ones to help them engage with the community. This ensures new members feel welcomed and supported from the very start, and helps those who aren’t engaging re-connect before they decide not to renew.
Support the creation of subgroups or special interest groups within the community. Engaged members can take the lead in these groups, bringing others together around shared interests. If you offer full administrative support for the group and explain that it won’t be a great deal of work these members are usually happy to help.
Involve engaged members in content creation, such as writing blog posts, creating tutorials, or starting discussions. This can inspire others to participate and contribute.
There are many tools that you can use to activate these members that are unique to your community. By asking the right questions when onboarding a member you can always get a sense of whether you have a super member in your midst. It is great to motivate them from the start! We love sending out a new member profile with an invitation to meet for a virtual coffee (especially if your members come from various locations) this will allow your super members to reach out and start working their membership magic.
At Mesher, we love helping organisations identify their super members and setting up systems to help keep them engaged throughout their membership lifecycle. If you would like to work with us reach out to hello@mesher.com.au.