#128 How To Create More Meaningful Community Engagement
Listen to a deeper dive on this topic on the podcast:
A lot of community builders ask me how to increase engagement. They want more posts, comments, and interactions happening in their community forum. And I really get that!
But the real question isn’t how do I get more engagement? It's what kind of engagement do I really want to see here? What does meaningful engagement look like?
Because engagement isn’t just about posts, likes, or comments. Those are vanity metrics. What really matters is how people are engaging, and whether those behaviors drive the results your community promises.
Meaningful engagement can look like:
Joining a small mastermind and showing up consistently
Members sharing their projects for feedback
Connecting with another member and collaborating on something outside the group
Sharing job or collaboration opportunities with other members
Whatever it is, you have to define it before you can design for it.
Once you know what meaningful engagement looks like, you can create the environment and programming that make that behavior natural, not forced.
In Jay Clouse’s community, The Lab, members are encouraged to share experiments they’re running in their creator businesses — what they tried, how it went, and what they learned.
It's the entire premise of the membership – "where professional creators grow together."
I facilitate one of the mastermind groups inside the Lab, and I'm having our group define membership growth goals + experiments for the fall.
Why? If the goal is for members to share more of their experiments and results, then this programming (a Q4 experiment planning session) drives the behavior we want to see.
I call this an engagement flywheel.
Let's break down how this would work for the whole community:
Meaningful engagement = creators sharing their experiments with a goals / experiment / results format.
So how do we create an environment that makes it easy for them to do that?
Host an event for setting goals + experiments
Create a post for everyone to share their goals and experiment plans
30-45 days later, send an automated DM to attendees encouraging them to share their results in the “Experiments” community space (+ follow up on those post comments)
Use those DMs to start conversations, gather feedback, and iterate on the process
The event creates the experiment. The experiment creates the results. The results create content and connection that fuel the next cycle.
When you design programming that naturally leads to the behavior you want, engagement becomes self-sustaining.
Your Next Steps
If you want to build your own engagement flywheel:
Define what meaningful engagement looks like. Identify 2–3 behaviors that signal progress in your community — not just activity.
Design flywheels to support those behaviors. Map one or two loops where your programming, prompts, or automations lead people to take those actions easily and repeatedly.
When you define what meaningful engagement looks like, and design for it, you stop chasing noise and start building momentum that compounds.
Want to work with my team to help you design engagement flywheels for your community? Book a discovery call with Affinity here.
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