How to Drive Community Engagement and Prove the Value of Your Program

Getting people to show up in a community is one thing. Getting them to participate is another. And then, once you’ve got engagement, how do you prove it matters to the business?

In this AMA, Nicole Saunders, Senior Director of CX Strategy at Higher Logic, answered questions about sparking user-generated content, making events valuable, using gamification the right way, and connecting engagement back to business outcomes.

Note: this content has been lightly edited for clarity and concision.

Q: How do I get people to post more in my community?

Nicole Saunders: Honestly, most members have always joined communities primarily for product knowledge and support. The question is: how do you get them contributing content, not just consuming it?

One of my favorite approaches is to start with the people already answering questions. If someone shares a great response, reach out and say, “That was a fantastic answer. Would you be willing to turn it into a short tutorial we can publish?” People are often flattered that you noticed their contribution, validated it, and want to spotlight it. Especially if you tell them you’d like to feature it in a learning path or customer guide, they’ll usually be excited to do it.

Another strategy is to tie community to customer advocacy programs. Advocacy programs already have systems to identify, recognize, and reward customers doing great things. When you connect that with your community, you can create more structure and consistency around surfacing and encouraging valuable content.

Promotion matters, too. Communities are like ongoing open houses; you’re always welcome, but without a clear reason to “show up,” people often don’t. Events, campaigns, or special calls to action create urgency. For example:

Run a campaign that features a member tutorial, then invite others to contribute their own.
Use email or social campaigns to spotlight community content and remind people that they, too, can be featured.

Events are another effective spark. A digital event creates a point-in-time reason to participate. If you tie that back to the community—posting recordings, following up with resources, highlighting members who contributed—you generate fresh user content and engagement.

The through-line is clear invitations, recognition, and spotlighting. If you ask directly, validate contributions, and create structured opportunities, members are far more likely to share their knowledge.

Q: How do I sell the ROI of establishing digital events as part of your community offering to executives and stakeholders?

Nicole Saunders: It comes back to the idea of creating clear calls to action. Digital events give you a reason to invite people to engage at a specific time and place: “We’re doing this session at this time in this digital location. You should be there.” That urgency is something an always-on community doesn’t provide by itself.

You can also make the live experience special. For example, if members attend live, they get to ask questions in chat and hear them answered in real time. That creates exclusivity and a sense of “I need to show up,” rather than just waiting for a recording.

The real power is when you tie events back to your community:

Post the recording in the community.
Encourage follow-up questions and discussions there.
Spin off additional conversations or resources from the event.

At a previous role, this became our primary engagement engine. Every event connected back to community, and the community fueled future events.

Another best practice is to spotlight your customers. Feature them as panelists, have them share stories, or highlight their expertise. That peer-to-peer sharing not only makes events more engaging but also strengthens community culture.

Executives also respond well when they see events as part of a broader engagement mix. Communities shouldn’t just be about asynchronous discussions. Groups, advocacy programs, and events all serve different learning and communication styles. Together, they create a comprehensive offering that drives deeper and more sustained engagement.

So the ROI story is that events create urgency, strengthen community participation, spotlight customers, and—when tied to community—generate ongoing engagement well beyond the event itself.

Q: Do community members actually care about gamification and badges?

Nicole Saunders: We hear this question a lot. Many companies want to know what gamification options a platform has, e.g., badges, points, leaderboards. I think some of this comes from places like Reddit or social media, where those systems are prominent.

Here’s my take: most members don’t wake up in the morning thinking, “I’m two posts away from earning my Awesome Wizard badge. Better log in!” That’s not what motivates them.

Where gamification does add value is in two key ways:

Guiding behavior.
Small recognition moments, like earning a badge after answering a question, provide that dopamine hit that encourages people to keep contributing. It’s similar to how Duolingo rewards you for completing a lesson. These micro-motivations can nudge members toward positive participation.
Providing context.
This is the bigger one. One of the biggest challenges in community is evaluating whether someone’s answer is credible. If badges are designed to signal expertise—for example, “Product A Certified Expert” or “Top Answer Contributor”—they help other members quickly judge the reliability of what they’re reading.

That context can come from signals like:

Having multiple “best answers” marked.
Receiving consistent upvotes.
Completing certain certifications or training.

What doesn’t work as well is badges with no meaning, like random cute icons that don’t convey expertise. Those might be fun, but they don’t build trust.

So my advice is design gamification systems that give members useful context about each other. When done that way, badges become powerful. They help members identify experts, trust answers more quickly, and feel rewarded for meaningful contributions.

Q: How do I keep community conversations lively without creating brand risk?

Nicole Saunders: A lot of organizations worry about brand risk—sometimes too much—but it’s a real concern we have to manage as community professionals.

The foundation is a strong community code of conduct. Make sure it’s clear not only about what members shouldn’t do, but also about the behaviors you want to encourage. Then, enforce it consistently. Keep it balanced and firm enough to guide behavior, but not overly punitive.

You’ll also want clear moderation processes. If someone is getting heated, how do you respond? Maybe you reach out privately and ask them to dial it back. Maybe you bring in their account manager. In extreme cases, you might mute them or remove them. But often, a simple reminder like “Hey, let’s keep this respectful. Real people are on the other side of the screen” is enough.

The reality is whether you host the conversations or not, your customers are talking about you somewhere—on Reddit, Discord, or whatever we’re calling Twitter these days. It’s better to host those discussions yourself, where you can see, respond, and moderate, rather than leave them unmanaged in the wild.

On the engagement side, avoid letting your community feel like a sales channel. Nobody joins a community to be marketed to. Even when you need to share marketing messages, do it in a tone that feels authentic to the community.

Transparency is also critical. For example, in ideation forums, sometimes the answer is “no.” Customers usually appreciate honesty: “That’s a great idea, but here’s why we’re not building it right now. We need to prioritize this other initiative first.” They may be disappointed, but they’ll value being heard and knowing the rationale.

And when things go off the rails, a personal response goes a long way. Reaching out directly to an upset member can often turn a critic into an advocate. Their passion for your product is what drove the strong reaction in the first place. If you can redirect that energy, they can become one of your most valuable champions.

So yes, there’s always risk in letting people talk openly. But the bigger risk is not hosting the conversation yourself. With the right guardrails and moderation in place, community becomes a space where you can manage risk while deepening trust and connection.

Q: How do I show that community drives revenue without turning it into a sales channel?

Nicole Saunders: Some of this comes down to educating executives. If leadership expects the community to act as a direct revenue pipeline, what they’re really asking for is a marketing channel, and that’s not what a healthy community is. People won’t show up if they feel like they’re being sold to.

That said, community absolutely supports revenue growth; it just does it differently. By helping customers see value faster, connecting them with peers, and engaging them in programs like betas or early access, community strengthens adoption, retention, and expansion.

I’ll give you an example. At one organization, we launched user groups within the community. We weren’t sure how to prove their value to leadership. Then a sales rep came back from kickoff and said, “Everyone was talking about user groups.”

It turned out that in these groups, customers were helping each other:

One realized they couldn’t do something because they weren’t on the right plan, so they reached out to upgrade.
Others were cross-selling and upselling ideas to each other.

Sales was thrilled. Customers were essentially driving expansion themselves. That story did more to prove value than any metric we could have shown.

That said, you can measure impact more directly. Compare renewal rates, lifetime value, and expansion activity between customers who participate in community programs and those who don’t. Chances are, community participants have higher numbers across the board.

Here’s how I frame it: community isn’t a short-tail, “campaign-in, revenue-out” channel. It’s a long-tail driver of value that builds over time. It makes customers stickier, more engaged, and more likely to grow with you, which ultimately drives revenue, even if it doesn’t look like a traditional pipeline.

Building Communities That Last

Engagement is not driven by quick wins. You have to build systems that encourage contributions, connect people in meaningful ways, and tie those outcomes back to business goals. When you can do both—spark participation and prove impact—you create a community that delivers for members and the business alike.

Explore the rest of this AMA series:

And don’t miss the full AMA webinar with Nicole Saunders.

Who does your community serve?