Engaging people in innovation is at the heart of what we do at IdeaScale. No innovation program succeeds if they’re not constantly working to increase the number of new ideas in their community, the amount of conversation and collaboration that can happen in the comments, refinement and beyond, or generating new interest so that new members are joining all the time.
We asked some of our top crowd innovators for their advice on how to increase engagement in IdeaScale communities and this is what they said:
“Keep People at the Center. Even though you wish to encourage the use of a digital channel, remember it’s all about the people. Acknowledge contributions from community members, respond to their posts, encourage further conversation, and be curious with questions. Valuing the individual and time that they have put aside to participate creates increased engagement.
Increase Your Reach. Remember to optimise other channels to drive further engagement. As an example, we found a direct increase in new community membership when we completed face to face sessions or just dropped in to visit specific sites. When you go “where your community is” you build rapport and personalise the experience.”
-Charmaine Meiklejohn, Queensland Police Department
“We include an introduction to IdeaScale and its purpose as part of our employee onboarding program. We also send out a bi-monthly update to all employees with community stats to generate continued interest.”
-Sarah Carruthers, Sheetz
“Create content and messages that appeal to particular interest groups. We do this by connecting like-minded employees who have similar interests or knowledge about particular topics. For example, we created a Data Analytics topic of focus and were surprised to find employees passionate about the subject who came from various departments in order to participate in the discussion.”
-Sean Chen, PSA International
“We have made innovation part of the performance evaluation process — it is part of everyone’s annual objectives.”
-Rich Smith, Teradata
“Try highlighting one of the top ideas in your email campaign. We did that and an interesting, trending idea that had 50 votes, skyrocketed to more than 300 votes after that email. It’s a great way to get people into the community to participate.”
-Mike McCaw, NYU
“Always share the “whys” behind the ideation campaign — make the benefits clear to all participants. And make it fun — our team members love to use a variety of metrics, such as pairwise, funding and assessment.”
-Susan Holzmacher, TriHealth
This post was originally published on the IdeaScale blog here.
