A Big List of Community Advocacy Program Incentives

On August 30, we had an in-depth discussion about Community Advocacy Programs featuring myself, Jeni Asaba of Jamf, and Klara Losert of Talkbase. We talked about the definition of an advocacy program, how to get started with it, how to manage it, and much much more. 

Catch the replay of the discussion!

A highlight of the discussion was about incentives. Thanks to questions from two of our attendees, we spent a good deal of time focused on the many ways we can reward program members for their time and effort. These incentives are critical as they represent many of the benefits of becoming a member of such a program, and for some of your community members, they could be the deciding factor on whether or not they even want to join your program. Check out the list of ideas below:

Ideas for Your Online Community

You’ll want to check with your partner platform to see if they offer these. This list is meant to be general to any platform, but there’s no guarantee that all of them will have these features or functionality. Better yet…search for or start a discussion in their community about this very topic!

• Program badge
• Program rank name (static)
• Giving a special color or bolded text to rank name or username 
• Rank or visual icon next to username
• Private forum or group
• Special avatar collection
• Special permissions not granted to regular users
• Special signature at the end of posts

Ideas for Offline/Off-Platform/Outside of Your Online Community  

The ideas here range from budget-friendly to big-budget items. 

• Formal recognition at company conferences, meetups, or digital events.
• Formal recognition in a community announcement.
• Formal recognition on brand’s social and email channels (linking to community announcement).
• Swag
• Special nametags at in-person events.
• Early access signup for events.
• Early access entrance for events (in-person), and/or reserved VIP seating.
• Discounted or free products or services.
• Discounts on events.
• Opportunity to be invited into exclusive beta groups. 
• Special meetups at in-person events, such as conferences.
• Opportunity to speak at in-person or digital events.
• All-expenses paid visit to headquarters for annual program meeting.
• Program certificate image, something that can easily be shared to social channels.
• Exclusive gatherings to give community feedback or suggestions, or featuring the Community team giving sneak peeks of what’s to come.

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What would YOU add to this list? Let’s chat about it in the Talkbase Friends Community!

Jenny Weigle is the Chief Community Officer and Strategic Consultant of Jenny.Community, specializing in building customer communities for enterprise brands. Jenny is an Advisor for Talkbase, and she lives in Los Angeles.