By Shannon Abram, Relationship Manager at The Community Roundtable.
Note: This post is based on a TheCR Network expert-led Roundtable Call titled “Exploring Engagement: The Dance Floor Theory.” The full Roundtable report for this call, and over 200 other community-focused Roundtable reports, is available exclusively to members of TheCR Network.
Since last week’s #ESNchat was focused on driving engagement in enterprise social networks I thought it would be fun to share some excerpts from a popular Roundtable call inside TheCR Network. We were lucky enough to host Kevin Prentiss, the CEO of Red Rover, as he gave an overview of his Dance Floor Theory and how it related to community management.
Pretend You’re Back in 8th Grade
Kevin asked everyone to visualize themselves hovering above a dance floor. What they would likely observe is the development of an engagement pattern. Let’s say that the most engaged people are a “five” and the least engaged people are “neutrals”. Those people who are the most engaged will aggregate towards the center. They will move closer together and will radiate the most energy. Conversely, those people on the edge will stand apart from each other with their arms likely crossed; they will not participate at the same level, nor will they emit the same level of energy. This will form a curve of participation. This same pattern of engagement and this same curve can also be seen in community engagement.
How To Increase Engagement
In order to increase engagement, the idea is to move the neutrals up to the ones, the ones up to the twos, the twos to the threes, etc. There are cautions to this, however. Do not try to drag a neutral out into the middle of the dance floor with a bunch of fives. What will happen is that the fives unwittingly, but literally, attack the neutrals. The fives and the neutrals literally repel each other. This is an important insight for community management. The community manager must get to know who their fives are, as well as the rest of the people dynamics, in order to help effectively spur engagement.
The Good Kind of (Community) Contagious
Feelings are contagious through peer behavior. When people get in that conductive dance floor place, it is the actual movement of other people that triggers the mirror self. People feel enthusiasm and it spurs action in others. The key concept here is peer. People are far more influenced by those that they consider to be their peers.
After Kevin shared a (much more!) in-depth look at the theory, members shared their best engagement tips, including:
- Pick five members of their community at random and send them each a personalized post card as a means of reaching out to touch base.
- Run community-based programs that coincide with real-life events (i.e. the World Series or the Oscars) and pit the your members against each other – in a fun way!
- Incorporate video into the forums to increase engagement.
How do you drive engagement in your community? We’d love to hear your best ideas!
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