Your community is one of your association’s strongest marketing tools. After all, most professionals interested in joining an association want one with an active membership base that attends events, networks, and shares opportunities with the greater community.  

For busy professionals, digital communities offer a convenient way to connect with their fellow members. Plus, members can get in touch year-round, not just once or twice a year at association events. But to build an online community, your association must have online engagement opportunities ready, powered by your association management technology. 

This guide offers tips to help your association manage members online and build a community.

1. Make Registration Easy 

The easier it is to join your online community, the more participation you’ll see. Plus, the registration process will likely form most new members’ first impression of your association. As eCardWidget’s guide to communicating with new members highlights, making them feel welcome as soon as possible helps integrate them into your existing community and boosts retention. 

Ensure your registration process meets new members’ expectations by keeping your forms short and to the point. Only ask for essential information, and send them a follow-up email with directions for fully completing their member profile during onboarding. This way, you can still collect data about members while respecting their time during initial registration. 

After members complete registration, follow up quickly with a personalized thank-you message confirming their new membership and welcoming them to your association. From there, guide them toward your online community by suggesting a variety of next steps they can take to get the most out of their membership.

2. Consider Membership Tiers

Certain membership models are more conducive to generating online engagement than others. For example, while associations with a paid membership-only model can earn more through dues revenue, you can attract more members and build a larger community with a tiered, “open-door” membership model. 

The open-door model offers accessible lower-tier membership options that let curious potential members engage with parts of your community before becoming a full member. For your association, consider the following membership tiers: 

• No membership. Some associations allow individuals without memberships to explore their content and purchase access to specific online courses, events, and other activities. While you cannot track and connect with these individuals as effectively as official members, not requiring a login will make your content more accessible to a broader online audience. 
• Free membership. Free memberships, like no membership options, provide access to limited content. However, this content might also include message boards and member profiles, allowing them to engage with the rest of your community. Encourage them to upgrade by promoting paid membership activities that would make their membership more valuable.
• Paid membership tiers. Paid memberships can be divided into as many tiers as your association desires. Ensure each paid tier has appropriate corresponding membership benefits that make the price worth it, while also enticing them with additional value at higher tiers. 

Membership models with free and no membership tiers will have a significant portion of online users who do not convert to paid members. However, these users still provide value to the rest of your online community by interacting with other members, commenting on your content, and attending virtual events. A large, engaged community will boost your credibility, motivating other professionals to join.

3. Develop Online Spaces for Members

Some associations leverage social media to build online spaces for members to interact. However, third-party platforms limit your ability to design and customize online experiences. Custom online spaces make your association feel professional and polished, strengthening members’ trust.

Engage your members and establish yourself online by developing the following spaces:

• Member portals. Through a membership portal, members can view their information and adjust details about their engagement with your association. Give members self-service tools needed to change their personal information, saving your team time. However, you may require members to contact you for specific actions, such as changing membership tiers. 
• Member directories. Let your members see who else has joined your association by browsing other members’ profiles. Enable members to adjust their privacy settings and decide how much information their profile displays, who can message them, and who can view their profile. 
• Message boards. Create a dedicated space where members can post questions and respond to one another. Message boards help members facilitate connections, answer each other’s questions, and express the community’s wants and needs to your team. 

Make sure these online spaces are accessible to all of your members. Follow digital accessibility best practices like optimizing your site for screen readers and other accessibility tools, ensuring there is enough contrast between text and background colors, using image alt text and video captions, and more. 

Additionally, you can boost accessibility and convenience by making these experiences mobile-friendly. For example, you might offer an event mobile app that allows members to connect with each other on the go from their mobile devices during your annual conference.

4. Encourage User-Generated Content

User-generated content is anything your members produce on their own or with resources from your association. This can include everything from comments on your association’s latest article to independently managed member groups that organize get-togethers. 

Help your members create their own content by:

• Providing resources. While user-generated content relies on your members' own ideas, you can jumpstart their creativity with resources. This might be as simple as regularly creating new articles members can comment on, hosting engaging ongoing discussions, or providing access to courses, tools, and online spaces. 
• Highlighting users’ accomplishments and opportunities. When your members create innovative, helpful content that represents your association well, celebrate it by sharing it with your wider community. This might include internal spotlights, such as shouting out user-generated content in your member newsletter. Or, you might post about it online as part of your social media strategy to attract new members.
• Encouraging member collaboration. Your members can create more content when they get together. Help facilitate collaboration between members by building online spaces where they can reach out to one another. You can help them form these connections by creating mentorship programs, forming membership groups based on interests, and recommending certain groups to members directly. 

User-generated content can also indicate what types of activities and engagement opportunities members want from your association. Stay tuned into online conversations and check in on your most active member groups to keep your association’s offerings aligned with their interests. 

5. Stay Active Online

While your community members can generate content themselves, your association should lead the charge by posting content online regularly. Plus, providing members with content to engage with both off and online will make their memberships feel more valuable. 

Update your website with the latest details about your events and opportunities, whether virtually or in person. Ensure your website, CRM, and AMS are integrated so updates made in one system are automatically reflected in the other. This can be useful for accurately showing event ticket availability in real-time for your members, preventing data silos and duplicate information, and providing up-to-date and accurate insights.

Additionally, ensure your member support services are quick and responsive to maintain a positive digital reputation. Fíonta recommends using an AI-powered tool like Agentforce, a Salesforce solution that offers autonomous AI agents. Think of these tools as the next iteration of automated chatbots. They can converse with members to answer questions, troubleshoot problems, and even complete requests (e.g., giving them instructions for joining your online community or recommending a continuing education course). 

Online engagement keeps your members active between events, building a stronger community and helping you attract new members. Provide your community with the resources and online spaces they need to engage with each other. Adjust as your community expands and adapt your membership model until you find the sweet spot between earning conversions and attracting additional members.