The part of the community change process that gets dropped most often is all that comes after the work is done. We host an event and then don’t do the debrief. We coordinate a year-long community of practice but don’t capture the way the meetings have impacted people. We convene neighbours for a community gathering and work day but don’t share how we did it and why people came.
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My background is in the world of marketing and specifically in the field of marketing automation where the focus is on having meaningful interactions with customers online based on the digital cues they provide. This is called reading their ‘digital body language’.
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Community engagement processes have evolved significantly in the past 15 years with the creation of online engagement methods to complement traditional in-person community engagement. Now, it is common for online community engagement – through online surveys, polling, forums, social media, discussion groups, etc. – to make up a significant portion of engagement activities. The benefits of online engagement are real: the increased breadth of participation, being able to reach people on their own schedule, and reduced costs of printing and distribution, to name just a few.
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In 2015, Vidyard, a video marketing and analytics company based in Kitchener, Ontario, launched an initiative called PlugIn aimed at helping to mitigate some of the negative effects of gentrification in downtown Kitchener by giving back to their community.
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Have you ever considered that maybe your ask is too small?
When I work with communities, the thing I hear myself saying over and over is to make sure you are always offering people ways to get involved. Often, the organizers will go through all the effort to get people out to an event, or to participate in a consultation, and then they don’t capitalize on the momentum. It could be as simple as inviting the community to stay informed with a newsletter or it could be a bigger commitment of time, money or effort.
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Community Engagement so often relies on citizens feeling an affinity and commitment towards their local area or an issue, but what is unique about engaging community in a rural area? What methodologies can be used to increase participation? How can we ensure that all voices are heard? In rural areas it is often harder to focus on one shared issue and to unite a community when individuals are geographically dispersed and each encounters their own nuanced lifestyle and related issues.
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