Managing Discussions, Events, and Files in Communities

The main areas where your members will engage in a community are Discussions, Events, and Files. When creating your communities, your team should give additional thought to your content strategy, who will drive engagement, and what resources will be most valuable to your members. In this article we will cover how to post and manage your discussions, events, and files.

Posting Discussions

Discussions are one of the most important way to engage members in your community in an authentic way.

Note: If you are an admin user, you can schedule discussion topics to post at a later date and time. This is an effective way to maintain a consistent network presence and keep your members engaged. By scheduling your discussion topics in advance, you can ensure that your content is being shared at optimal times throughout your cycle. 

There are two ways to post discussion topics:

1) From directly within Communities:

• Create a new discussion Topic by clicking the + button in the top, right corner of your discussions tab. 

2) From within the Admin view:

• Create a new discussion Topic by navigating to Discussions > Topics view and clicking the "Create Topic" button in the top, right corner. See how here.

There are also many ways to modify your discussion posts to make them more visual and interactive. You can embed videos, pictures, files, gifs, etc. 

1. Update the title of your topic keeping in mind that the discussions tab is searchable. You’ll also need to update the Description section. Here you should include any contextual information, intro/outro text, and embedded videos, files, gifs, etc. When you’re done with your post, click the “Create Topic” button.

2. To embed a video in your discussion topic place your cursor wherever you want your video to appear and click the hyperlink button. Paste the video link into the URL bar. You will see a button appear that says, “Looks like you are trying to add a video?” select “Yes, Add Video.” 

3. To successfully link a video, the file must uploaded to a video hosting platform such as YouTube or Wistia and the link should be copied from that platform into the URL bar on your site. 

Your post will go live once you select “Create Topic” and members will be able to view it, comment on it, and flag the discussion or comments for admin review. 

When commenting on a post, your members will be able to change the text attributes, upload documents, and share hyperlinks. 

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   Note: Members can get other community members involved in a conversation by using the @Mention feature in discussions and posts.

Pinning Discussions

Community leaders can pin discussion topics to the top of the page for added visibility. These pins can be easily added or removed, and multiple topics can be pinned at once. In order to pin a discussion topic, click on the pin icon located on the righthand side of the discussion topic. To unpin a topic, simply click on the same pin icon, and it will remove the topic from the top of the page.

Discussions Tab

The Discussions tab enhances the user experience by compiling conversations taking place throughout the site into one feed. Topics and replies can be searched by keyword, and the feed can be filtered to show topics and replies across communities or within the communities that members have joined.

Creating a Community Event

Community Events act as a way to cross-post your in-person events and market to an interested and engaged group of members. We also like to use communities to share important upcoming deadlines that are relevant to your community members. To post a new event follow these steps:

1. Click into the Events tab of your community. Here you will see any Upcoming and Past events. 

   

2. Click the + button and add a new event. This will open a form where you can enter the details of your event. Give your event a Name and add the location, time and any extra information here. Update the title of your topic keeping in mind that the discussions tab is searchable. You’ll also need to update the Description section. Here you should include any contextual information, intro/outro text, and embedded videos, files, gifs, etc. When you’re done with your post, click the “Create Topic” button.

   1. If you are using another tool to track registrations, include a link to this site. The Description box is a rich-text editor so you can include flyers, videos or any other promotional marketing content you might want to include about the event. 
   2. When you finish updating the information for the even, click Save. The event will then show up in the Upcoming tab as well as the site wide Events tab. 
3. Event Visibility by Member Type: 
   1. Events now have visibility options based on Member Type. Navigate to your event and locate the “Visibility.” Toggle between member types and control which members on your site can view specific events. This feature will help net the intended audience to make the event management and promotion easier.

Uploading Files

If you want to share files with a group of members on your site, your Communities are a great place to do that. Files are linkable throughout events and discussions, too. To upload files to your community, follow these steps:

1. Click the Files tab inside your community and select the + button in the top right-hand corner. Select the file you’d like to upload.
2. Once you've successfully uploaded a file into the files section of a community, it will show up in the Files tab and will be downloadable by all members of that community. You have the ability to rename files, replace documents with updated versions, and delete files from your community. The file size limit is 50 MB.