Hi Mafe,
very interesting challenge which you are having there! :)
Getting users to speak about certain subjects is not easy, even if it is something that they are very passionate about.
I had a closer look at your subforum. I really like the ideas you are having to get you users engaged, very creative! Nevertheless, there are a number of things that I would do different. Please take my criticism as a friendly advice in order to achieve your goal. 😉 I'll start with the more general stuff:
Consider re-naming the subforum:
Usually I would not recommend to do this, especially if the title is this clear. However, your title could have a negative effect on the activation: If a user browses through your community, he will probably think that "what are you listening to?" is the
only topic that this subforum is about, and not expect to find so much more to discover. A new name should include everything what you want them to speak about. "All about music" is a good name for the category already... Maybe "let's talk about music" (or something alike) would sum it up nicely?
Reduce the amount of sticky topics:
I saw that you have quite an amount of sticky topics in this subforum. I'd recommend that you reduce it to 6 topics (absolute maximum). Otherwise users will constantly have to scroll a lot to find the most recent discussions, which they will not appreciate. Result is that they are less likely to visit this subforum in the future. You could e.g. think about featuring one of these on the sidebar of your subforum instead (Modtag: featured_subforum)...
Don't start too many topics:
I know that it is tempting to start new topics which offer users the opportunity to share something interesting, and I really like the topics you have chosen. But try not to "overload" your users with too many of these topics: Let's say that 100 users are visiting this subforum every day, with 10-20 users who will post something. If you have 10 different topics which are asking them to share various things, they might feel overwhelmed by the options and don't know where to start... And even when they engage, they will "spread" too wide across these topics. You want to concentrate the activity.
Analyze which subjects are working, and which are not:
The Content Dashboard should help you with that. 😉 From what I see, your users seem to have the interest to share their own playlists, songs, etc. A topic which I would start would be something like "Who is your most underrated artist?". I can imagine that people who are big fans of small artists really want to share them with others. So here I see a potential to get people engaged.
I see that you are already on a good path! Given that your community is still at an early stage, I actually would not expect much more activity in a subforum like this.
In the end, true activation comes from the culture which is developing on your community: Once you have a larger group of returning users, who also start to recognize each other more and more, they will start themselves to speak about those subjects which they are interested in. We as Community Managers and Moderators can facilitate and support this process, however we cannot speed up things so much that they engage a lot right away. 🙂 Give it some time and watch it grow, I am confident that this subforum will become more active the bigger your community gets!
Please let me know if you are having more questions or worries, that's what this community is there for after all. ;)
Cheers and keep up the good work,
Julian
Hi Julian!
Thank you for your message and for your advices!
I started by decreasing the numbers of sticky topics and we are discussing the name of the sub-forum, I agree it should be more attractive to users and not only one question.
Today, we have a KPI for number of posts created in the music sub-forum, that is why I have been creating content on a weekly basis, but, I will discuss it with my team to create less and more engaging content, we need to concentrate the activity of our users with few topics.
Also, I created a dashboard to keep track of likes, views and comments, it will help me analyse the engagement and inspire for content creation.
Have you tried to ask the community directly what they want to see in your community?
Thanks!
Maybe it's an idea to make a special category for Deezer Hifi users. These are people that are really into high quality streaming music and mostly have an interesting audio setup that they want to share. Freaks will be active. We experience the same with Toon at Eneco.
You can also extend the 'about' section, so people can brag about their audio setup. And a separate field for their Deezer profile page.
By the way, I'm a music lover and was just checking out the possibilities of Deezer Hifi in combination with my Bluesound Node 2. ;-)
As a music lover I would also be interested in new releases that are really worth listening in hifi quality.
