Communities Overview

Communities are a powerful tool in Wisr for members of your site to connect in a group format based on shared experiences, common interests, peer-mentor/student ambassador pods, and more. Administrators create communities and, depending on your site settings, members may have the ability to request new communities. Communities allow members to make connections, exchange content and resources, schedule and share upcoming events and deadlines, and participate in group discussions. In this article we’ll provide a high-level overview of communities, our perspective, and a lightning round FAQ. 

What is a community?

A community is a place where group conversations happen. Communities are most impactful when used to support a specific program or topic. As we see it, communities should be used to bring your members together for a clear and intentional purpose. Examples may include a community designed to connect entrepreneurship students with alumni advisers, communities loaded with specific content for admitted students, or a community used to facilitate a regional alumni chapter. Communities that are too broad or do not serve a specific purpose tend to see less activity and may dissuade users from engaging within them.

When thinking about creating a new community it’s important to consider who will use this space, what conversations will take place, and is this a group resource or better suited for individual chats. Asking questions such as: “What kind of conversations between alumni and student would happen here?” or “Who will drive activity in this community?” or “Will this content help my admitted students?” can be a helpful exercise. If your community idea is just a way to categorize people into a group (people who got X degree or went to Y campus location), and not a place where relevant discussions could flourish, then it's probably not the best use case for a community.

This article dives into how to create a new community. 

Understanding the lay of the land: Engagement features within communities

There are four main components of a community. Each offers a unique way to engage with your members and boost activity within your community.

• Members: The members tab is a complete list of the community members. Here users can see and search for active members and who have joined. This tab is also where your members will be able to see who serves as community leader or site administrator.
• Discussions: Conversations occur within the discussion tab. Within discussions members and admins can post questions, respond to each other, link to articles, share advice, embed webinars/panels/videos and several other forms of engagement. The bulk of your community activity will probably take place in the discussions tab.
• Events: You may already be familiar with the site wide events tab. Community events are similar but tend to be closely related/important to members within your communities. Community events can also be used to share upcoming deadlines with your members. Community events will appear in the site-wide events tab and can be filtered out depending on personal preference. Users will also receive an automatic weekly events digest email.
• Files: Resources that are helpful for the entire community and may be broader than a single discussion thread can housed within the Files tab. Your site administrators and community leaders can upload videos, presentations, program documents, and additional resources. These files can be linked in event descriptions and discussion threads.

This article will provide detailed instructions on how to operate these tools (Events, Discussion Board, and Files).

Community Leaders

When you create a new community it is important to prioritize continued engagement in your community strategy. Each community should have a specific staff member or community member to act as community leader to drive activity and grow the community membership. When you create a community, make sure to involve the people that will ultimately be responsible for helping to grow and nurture it.

Frequently Asked Questions

• What is a community leader? Community Leaders have all administrative access to the community they are a part of. They can suspend or approve members, edit the details of the community, and invite members. Community leaders are signified by the check mark next to their name in the member side of communities.
• How many communities should I have? When it comes to Wisr communities, we always believe less is more. Focus on having strong, well-led, and engaged communities. The number of communities we recommend depends on the way you are using Wisr. For example, most Career & Alumni customers have between 5-10 communities, while Orientation customers may have close to 100. If you are wondering how many communities you think would fit your site best, contact adminsupport@wisr.io and someone from our Partner Success Team would love to chat more with you about it.
• How do I invite someone to communities? To learn more about community invitations, check out this article that details the different ways to invite your members to join a community.
• How do I get community notifications? You will get a wrap-up email of all the different things happening in your communities. These will come anywhere from once a day to once a week, dependent on how much activity is going on in your community. To learn more about notifications, head here.