Are you proactively reaching out to your community members on a regular basis?

One of the keys to a successful community is how deeply you are embedded within your members' minds and habits. 

While most of your members will be subscribed to the content that interests them, there's a simple way to stay top-of-mind. Send a weekly or monthly email. (Just make sure it's useful information, don't be tempted to self-promote or you'll be relegated to the spam folder.)

Ideas for what you can include in a community email:

• Statistics on popular or trending content
• Start a new conversation
• Introduce new members
• Talk about industry news that affects the community
• Ask a question/send a survey
• Solicit photos or videos
• If you have a creative/artistic member, ask them to do a cartoon
• Share any social media or news mentions of your community
• Help members promote their own projects or news
• Celebrate birthdays, anniversaries or family news

Depending on how transparent you want to be, you could share progress toward a specific goal. For example, if you're trying to build up community membership, share the number of new members. If you are hoping to encourage peer-to-peer support, share the number of resolved questions in the past week. You could even share metrics that may not be obvious to members, like number of page views (check your Google Analytics).

If you are a Hoop.la Pro customer using the Advanced Reporting option, you can grab any of your charts or graphs and include them in your newsletter too.

To send an email to members, you must be an Admin on the site. Simply go to Manage Members, choose all (or a subset), and either compose directly in the WYSIWYG box or export the list to the email client of your choice.

Bonus points if you give your recurring email a snappy name, like the "Weekly Bugle" or "Community Buzz." You could even ask your community members to name it!

How do you stay top-of-mind with your community members?

Photo Credit: Maddie Joyce via Compfight cc