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Driving Engagement with Group Hubs

Khoros Alumni (Retired)

Group hubs are a pretty flexible feature.  We have ample content in this community where you can read about exactly what they are and how they can be used here and here. What I thought I would highlight today is how they are ACTUALLY being used - which is kinda different from what we originally thought.  Which is pretty cool. 

What are Group Hubs being used for?

First, the numbers - dozens of communities have already created over 1250 Group Hubs, and many of them are growing rapidly.  What’s even more astonishing than this rapid adoption is the variety of use cases that are popping up. Some groups are closed memberships and focused on things like online course instructors – others are open and tied more to public social than the brand community. I tried to categorize them into 3 buckets to better understand what is happening.

JacobBo_0-1582828091600.png

A very high level map of broader customer engagement

We made this illustration above to illustrate one of the ways our customers is thinking about their community in the bigger picture of engagement.  Specifically, USAA thinks of Group Hubs as a bridge between public social (Facebook Groups) and the brand community. In the above picture, that means a Group Hub lies right on the word "Join."

Visitor Engagement

USAA talked a lot about driving more authentic, peer-peer engagement in their recent webinar with us. Their first Group Hub was designed to complement their existing investment and passion for the Army vs Navy annual football game as well as their Salute to Service partnership with the NFL.  As you can imagine, these are both large, highly visible investments for their brand, and they wanted to connect these initiatives more closely to their online community. A Group Hub was the perfect way to do this, and it was also something they could decide and execute within 2 weeks! This kind of flexibility is not usually associated with large, financial service companies, but USAA doesn’t let something like that slow down their drive to achieve their mission.  

JacobBo_1-1582828091564.png

 

You can watch the short webinar here for more insight into how this USAA used Group Hubs. 

 

Member Engagement

 

Our second type of Group Hub is depicted perfectly by a community in France. Cultura - a store that combines hobbies, arts, crafts, and books with the mission to “make culture and leisure accessible to as many people as possible” (disclosure - that is Google Translate’s version) is definitely being innovative with their Hubs. Cultura has created a cool interactive map of their Group Hubs to help people find local book clubs where they can share online and meet up in real life.  This cool example highlights how Group Hubs are a way to add value to existing customer activities by hosting a nice space and encouraging engagement through promotion. This is similar to hosting book clubs in stores, but in a way that is more accessible for everyone. I really like how they used the interactive map to help people find the best club for them by region!

JacobBo_2-1582828091577.png

 

 

Super/Special User Engagement

 

This is actually something we have been doing here at Khoros for Early Access or Beta product features. We actually created a Group Hub for Group Hubs (meta), and a Group Hub for Syndication.  Now, these early tests were NOT resounding successes. I think we raised awareness for a few users, but we did not actually get a ton of participation. We learned a lot about how to make Group Hubs better, and now I want to pass that along!

 

Conclusions and Takeaways

 

All in all, group hubs have been pretty positive so far, but we did have a few lessons we learned.

 

  1. Always have a plan. Groups don’t magically turn into activity just because people have a shared interest.  You have to provide a prompt and some triggers. One example is that a Group should never be an “empty room” when you start inviting people. There should at the very least be a welcome post and an interesting image/avatar.
  2. Start small. Walking into a room where 40 people are sitting quietly can be intimidating. Nobody wants to break the silence. A room with a dozen or so people who are having open conversations is a lot easier to walk into. 
  3. Be intentional and authentic. Groups are about getting people to talk to each other, not just listen to you. Start by sharing something with a bit of vulnerability. Like a blog about how you tried something and it didn’t work and now you need help from the group. Ahem. 

How are you using groups? Do you have any advice to add? Leave a comment.

Tags (1)
14 Comments
Leader

My team is very excited about hubs.  One of the ways we are looking to use group hubs is for our new customers in implementation.  We want to put them into 'classes' to help them connect with peers in the same stage of their journey. 

That said, we want to start a new hub each month of the year.  Because of this approach, I have a question around the administration of hubs.

If we want to seed the same content in each hub, can we copy a hub and have the seeded content copy over?

Boss

What a fantastic idea, @mhock!

Khoros Alumni (Retired)

Great idea! @mhock  

Some things to consider if your groups are public:

Copying content would be a manual effort and may hinder your SEO, consider linking to the content either in a related content widget, or create a new post that encourages conversation about the content from another hub, this can encourage more seasoned members to help newer members. 

More hubs may reduce interaction between customers, new content drives SEO and conversation, consider creating new posts or new forums within a learning hub to encourage seasoned members to provide help for newer members.

If you have new member areas on your website or Social sites, consider linking to the group hubs to invite members in for discussion.

Another consideration is to add a message to your IVR or email to encourage these conversations in the Community.

Hope some of these help!  Love the idea!!

Leader

Thanks everyone!  @A11ey we are actually a completely private Community so SEO is not a concern.  These will also be private since you have to have purchased a certain product in a certain month.  

I will keep the ideas in mind  if we start to make these public in the private Community.  🙂

I am guessing from your answer however that I can't seed content and then copy and have everything copy over. Right?

 

Khoros Alumni (Retired)

@mhock  Correct, copy paste would be manual, but you could use the related content widget, or create a post and link to the original each month you could use the same original post, but generate conversation specific to the month/hub.

Leader

@A11ey 

I like the related content widget idea.  We will need to explore that option.

Thanks!

Boss

@mhock Note that you can’t control the content that appears in the related content widget (I don’t think?!). You may just want to use a hard-coded custom content widget as well as links in intro posts that link to the relevant content. Cheers!

Mentor

Hi there, 

Wondering what KPI's you are tracking in order to determine sucess of the group. 

Thanks in advance!

-Betty Jo 

Khoros Alumni (Retired)

Very detailed info. thanks!

Helper

Hi there! I just came across this post and was checking out the USAA page. Looks like they have "Discuss" and different topics (Car, Career, Family life... etc.), are those their "groups"? If so, are they completely customized? It looks like they only offer forums posts vs idea exchange, suggestions, etc. 

 

Khoros Staff

@kdannels - Currently USAA uses the Group Hub just for the Army-Navy Game, and it isn't up right now. They are rolling out a new set of Group Hubs in the next few months, restructuring their community and expanding their use of Group Hubs to engage their customers.

Helper

Hi @RobertD - thanks for the background! Is it possible to set up Group Hub that looks similar to how USSA has its "Discuss" section? We are looking into making a hidden group and I like how USSA has a header at the top explaining the forum and then the feed below. 

Khoros Staff

@kdannels - Discuss is a Category that has 8 forums underneath it. A Group Hub can have only one forum (along with a blog and a tkb). 

If you are talking about the styling of the header on their category page:
https://communities.usaa.com/t5/Discuss/ct-p/discuss

 

we could definitely style the Group Hub page to look something like that. Using custom content blocks you could provide guidance on the use of the Group Hub and any other helpful information.

 

 

 

 

 

Helper

(updated comment) @RobertD  Gotcha, thanks for the background. That is what I mean, I am looking to style the header similar to how USSA does for our Group Hub pages. Thanks!