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• Online Community Engagement: Small Tweaks to Increase Participation

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  Do you ever find yourself at the bottom of a rabbit hole of TikToks or YouTube videos? Do you ever go to Amazon looking for one book, and realise you have two books, a stapler, an air fryer, and a set of dog toys in your cart?

  This is by design. Tech companies invest huge sums of money into making their platforms addictive. Online businesses spend extravagantly on tools that make more people buy their products. These huge companies increase engagement in a few costly ways. They hire the best web and graphic designers to make their platforms beautiful. They pay people to play around with their apps and discuss them in focus groups. They do rigorous user testing, seeing if a larger font or different design will make 1% more people buy their product or scroll 1% longer.

  In local government, you are competing against these exact platforms when trying to get more residents to engage with you. This puts you at a disadvantage because you don’t have the same resources to splurge when you launch your online community engagement project. The good news? It’s possible to learn the same universal principles the tech behemoths use and apply them to whatever platform you use for community engagement – at no cost.

  Here, I will share one basic principle, one technique, one tweak, that, if applied to your community engagement work, can boost participation overnight.

  One principle: Don’t make me think

  If you structure your information in a confusing way, your residents will leave. Not because they’re dumb, but because they would rather spend their time somewhere else. The book “Don’t Make Me Think” expands on this idea, with a pretty self-explanatory book title.

  
  

  

  
  

  The picture above shows two variations of the same menu. Same information, same level of detail, same prices.

  If you walked up to a restaurant with the menu on the right displayed, would you eat there?

  No? Why not?

  You know how to read. None of those words are too difficult. What’s the big deal?

  The menu on the right doesn’t sync up with how the human brain processes information. We constantly seek out patterns in the world around us, cluster them, and organise them. If you’re looking for shareables, your brain knows to look for bolded text with some words like “Appetizers/Shareables/Starters” and then review the options in that box. That takes so much less energy than reading the entire menu.

  Heuristics are mental shortcuts that we take to solve problems more efficiently. By employing basic rules of thumb, we can make decisions without having to stop and analyse everything. Everyone from web designers (the three horizontal lines is the menu button) to grocery stores (the fresh food is on the perimeter of the store) to Amazon (if it has a 4.5-star rating or above it must be good quality) takes advantage of our brain’s need to find shortcuts.

  Applied to community engagement:

  • If you are engaging populations with low tech proficiency, don’t rely on virtual meetings. They have the highest learning curve of all online engagement methods. Your residents will choose something easier.
  • Structure and arrange your information in a visually coherent way.
  • Ask yourself: Will this make sense to someone in seven seconds or less?

  One technique: Present one logical next step at a time.

  The best user experience in the entire internet comes from your least favorite activity: filing your taxes. TurboTax has invested tons of money into making your tax filing process easy and understandable.

  When you file your taxes on TurboTax, you are presented with one step at a time. Press one button, or type in the answer to one field, then hit continue.

  
  

  

  Here’s the fascinating part: Unless your tax situation is complicated, the dozens of screens you click through on TurboTax might add up to more clicks and keystrokes than filling out the original IRS form online! But because TurboTax asks you one question at a time, often with user-friendly inputs like emoji buttons, you feel like you’re in the drivers’ seat, making measurable progress toward a goal. This is much less mentally taxing than filling out a smaller, but more confusing, form.

  For community engagement, the application is easy: Whatever your call-to-action is, make it clear. Don’t bury it at the bottom of your email or the last paragraph of your press release. When someone lands on your community engagement project, your email, or your social media post, they should know what to do. When they finish contributing, have a system or process already in place that can close the loop and follow up with residents afterward.

  One tweak: Simplify your language.

  Most people have heard advice like this before, but don’t know the stakes.

  I recently ran a quick experiment on readability. I found blocks of text from two of our clients’ sites: one high-performing, one low-performing. I copied and pasted them into Readable.com – a tool that scans your writing for readability. Here are the results, side by side.

  
  

  

  Can you tell which is which?

  I won’t tell you who the underperforming client is. I can tell you that their content broke Readable. A grade level of 16.9 means you need a college diploma to understand their project information. A reach of 33% means that it is unreadable for 67% of residents.

  I can also tell you that they galloped into community engagement with three of the Four Horsemen of the Planning Jargonpocalypse:

  

  
  

  I’m not the first person to advise you not to use jargon. It’s honestly kind of a cliche these days. But the most common mistake I see is when subject matter experts (planners, engineers, analysts) hear “don’t use jargon” and interpret that as “use jargon and then use up a whole paragraph to define and explain it in an attempt to clarify the jargon.”

  Good writing, in the lens of community engagement, is less about spelling or grammar. It’s all about readability. The underperforming client’s site checked all of the traditional boxes. Perfect grammar. Zero spelling errors. Explained all of the acronyms. Regurgitated the scope of work of the project in excruciatingly accurate detail. Check, check, check, and check.

  You need to remember that you’re talking with humans. The golden rule applies here: write for others the way you would like to read. You probably don’t enjoy reading through long, technical, and formal writing. Neither do your residents.

  Don’t think this is possible? This article is about how to leverage the fundamentals of user experience design for online community engagement processes in local government (phew!) and here are my stats:

  

  Notice you got all the way to the bottom of this article. Coincidence?

  Small tweaks to apply to your community engagement project to increase your reach:

  • Shorten your sentences.
  • Humanise your language. Write like you talk.
  • Cut, cut, cut. Pretend each word costs you money.
  • Shoot for an eighth-grade reading level. Use Readable.com to check your work.

  Putting it all together

  Did you like this article? I hosted a webinar that pulls the curtain back even further.

  Learn the principles of psychology, persuasion, and user experience design to engage more residents. See the tactics the most advanced tech companies use to increase participation on their own platforms. Then, learn how to apply these to your community engagement project for a fraction of the cost.

  
  

  Jeremy Shackett

  EngagementHQ

  
  

  
  

• The seven ingredients of blended public consultation

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  There are no two ways about it—COVID-19 and our lived experience of lockdown created a rapid switch to online public consultation. Some people, perhaps a source of pent-up demand, were ready for this and jumped in with two feet. Other people were more reluctant and ended up doing public consultation in ways more within their comfort zones, pining for the familiar face-to-face methods of engagement.

  So where have we ended up? Well, at this point, it's impossible to go back to where we were before: when online community engagement was an afterthought with a mere brochure website and a tokenistic survey. However, a resurgence of face-to-face conversations and deliberation is already starting to happen as pandemic precautions become less strict. Some human beings simply like to be together. It seems the phrase to capture this new phenomenon is blended public consultation or blended engagement.

  What might blended public consultation look like in practice? Here are seven elements I’d expect to see, as a way to help to kick-start this important conversation.

  The integral parts of blended public consultation

  1. Mixed dialogue methods

  The ingredients of a blended consultation will include both the traditional e.g. public meetings and workshops and the now more familiar range of online dialogue methods e.g. online forums, mapping tools, ideas boards, and surveys. A public consultation that only relies on an online survey for its digital element will not constitute a blended approach.
  

  2. Continuous conversations

  By integrating more online engagement with face-to-face approaches, a blended approach will allow for more continuous conversations. When people attend a public meeting or participate in a focus group, they should be able to visit your online consultation platform and carry on the conversation. This might happen between events or after events. If people register before attending a public meeting, they may be able to learn up on the issues beforehand and ask questions of experts and other community members. Blended community engagement is more sticky, more continuous, and people are able to dip in and out.
  

  3. Online Public Meetings

  Love them or hate them, public meetings are here to stay. However, in a blended world of public consultation, many more will be online. So expect to see online meetings evolving and getting better as part of our new world. There will be an expectation that face-to-face meetings will be recorded and placed online for people to carry on the conversation (see no. 2).
  

  4. Synchronous + Asynchronous = Better Public Consultation

  In the offline world, people had to attend a consultation event at a certain time and place (synchronous engagement). However, when the conversation is taken online, this is not required. In asynchronous dialogue, people can dip in and out at their own pace, from the comfort of their home, cabin, or commute. A blended approach will make use of more asynchronous online methods to make consultation more accessible, convenient, and to better reflect how people live their lives today. But, there will be occasions when the community needs to be in the same place at the same time for an effective consultation. This is okay too.

  
  

  5. Digital Stakeholder Outreach

  Build it and they will come. No, they won’t! With more online participation, more effort will be needed to make people aware of the consultation, to let residents know how to participate, and to encourage them to keep coming back. Sophisticated email campaigns, participant databases, notifications, newsletters, and social media will play a much bigger part in increasing engagement rates as part of a blended public consultation (and more inclusive).

  6. Accessible Public Consultation

  For blended community engagement, more attention needs to be paid to digital inclusion and exclusion. It is important that the digital aspects adhere to website & mobile app accessibility regulations. However, it's also important to be mindful of digital poverty by providing different types of online experiences for people who may not frequent the internet as much as others. At the same time, blended engagement can also make public consultation more inclusive because it is asynchronous and fits around people’s busy lifestyles. It does not require people to attend face-to-face meetings on a cold February evening, etc.

  Remember, it is said that 75% of the population suffer from glossophobia, the fear of public speaking. For many, online engagement is a great option for participating in public debate. Indeed, a recent evaluation (Evaluation of Climate Assembly UK) found that the quality of deliberation in the online sessions of Climate Assembly UK was superior to the in-person sessions.

  7. Safe Place for Public Discourse

  Face-to-face conversations tend to be hosted in safe places for public debate, in a community centre a consultation bus, etc. There, people sign in and then they are assisted by facilitators to understand the rules of participation, and so on. In a blended approach, these same principles need to be applied to online environments and people ought to be signposted to a safe, moderated, publicly managed online platform for participating in the public consultation process. Note: this is so different from social media!
  

  And there’s more...but seven is enough for now and, hopefully, this will start an interesting conversation about the key elements of a blended approach to (digital and face to face) public consultation. Want to see an online public consultation platform in action? Watch a 4-min demo.

• 5 tips to jumpstart community engagement within your organisation

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  Lock into an ongoing participation habit through internal cultural change management and leveraging these talking points across departments — because more engagement does not equal more work.

  Achieve better outcomes for your community

  Engaging the community across channels and devices helps you lock into an ongoing participation habit and drive better critical outcomes: greater trust, met or exceeded budgetary goals, reduced risk of public dissatisfaction, and increased employee morale, to name a few.

  Yet, the idea that 'more engagement equals more work' continues to plague the public sector. Without a high-level sponsor to help bridge department silos, it can sometimes feel like pushing water uphill.

  Turn engagement from a box-ticking exercise into a core strategic pillar with these five talking points and tactics:

  1. Cultivate a community-centric culture

  When a community member uses a service, participates in a consultation, or simply interacts with your organisation, ask the question, "How did we do?" with an EngagementHQ poll or survey.

  It's one step you can take towards developing an engagement ecosystem and provides a "pulse-check" that will help teams become deliberate in focusing finite resources. People are resistant to change for multiple reasons, but excess uncertainty and the perception of more work are two big ones.

  The beauty of ongoing "pulse-check" engagement is that it enables greater insights (or 'knowns') which means less time and money spent in vain and more shared, measurable outcomes.

  2. Personalise follow-ups

  If the community answers "How did we do?" and you find something lacking, ask for more information. One of the many benefits of having a dedicated Engagement platform is that you can leverage our sentiment analysis tool, automated replies, participant tagging, and newsletters to segment and personalise responses.

  A single negative experience has four to five times greater relative impact than a positive one, organisations should focus on reducing poor experiences, especially in those areas in which community members come into contact with the organisation most often.

  3. Embed feedback into the community journey

  The more "pulse-check" data becomes a part of the team lexicon, the clearer gaps in the community journey. Suddenly, it's easier to ask:

  • Did we use enough formats and channels to help participants feel informed?
  • Were there too many barriers to contribution?
  • Was our language accessible?

  With three or more channels used to interact regularly, you'll begin to see touchpoints and tools as missed opportunities rather than another siloed tool in the toolkit. You can leverage our MessageMedia partnership, Project Finder, or our brand new feature Engagement Embeds.

  4. Provide consistent experiences

  Helping community members understand what they can expect when interacting with you means that reliability and simplicity become synonymous with your organisation.

  Consistency is an important predictor of overall community experience and satisfaction, with 30% more likely to trust organisations that provided consistency.

  By implementing engagement across touchpoints and departments, you lock into an ongoing and natural participation habit externally while building a framework internally to optimise and structure community interactions.

  5. Benchmark recurring engagement

  Once an ecosystem is established, recurring planning becomes straightforward. You now have the insights to benchmark community satisfaction and sentiment, identify gaps and make the most of opportunities. Couple this with site reviews and trends, and you have everything you need to plan for progress.

  Adopting an online community engagement platform isn't just to add more tasks to your plate, it's to achieve better outcomes for your community more efficiently. Reach out to us to learn more.

• Top 6 agenda items for changemakers in 2022

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  Being an agent of change isn't easy at the best of times. Add a backlog of policy decisions, lost institutional knowledge and a climate emergency into the mix, and it's easy to feel burnt out before the new year begins. So here are the top 6 agenda items to help you focus time and energy on what matters in 2022.

  1. Consult early on policy decisions

  In the last few years, there's been an understandable reassignment of many key communication staff to booster public health campaigns, with few able to prioritise the essential task of updating (now painfully old) policy. But, whether it's supply-chain issues, energy policies or changes in transportation, many are scrambling to recover lost time on overdue consultations. Our tip: engage early to foster co-creation and trust with a public now acutely aware of their right to have their say.

  2. Run a community advocacy program

  For those of you preparing for local elections, now is the time to kick off your community advocacy program to ensure you access the necessary funds and meet the growing needs of your community.

  3. Deliver on 'climate emergency' rhetoric

  Local authorities, especially those who have proclaimed a 'climate emergency', are now under pressure to deliver radical solutions to a public that is far better informed and alarmed about the dangers of doing nothing. Maybe it's kicking off local traffic schemes that promote walking/cycling and reduce car dependency, an energy efficiency scheme, or a waste management initiative, but now is the time to 'make good'.

  4. Take a chance to innovate

  Traditionally, the people working to strengthen democracy have been caught flat-footed by the pace of new trends and innovations thanks to internal bureaucracy. One massive benefit of large scale operational and institutional change is the chance to innovate. Now is the time to advocate for the change you want to see. Maybe it's increased feedback points throughout the constitute journey, benchmarking community satisfaction or experimenting with your engagement toolkit. More on the trends changing community engagement here.

  5. Make use of available funding

  Whether it's technology adoption, community connectivity or innovation, funds are being made available globally to develop technological capability and systems of government. The PropTech Engagement Fund launched to support the widespread adoption of digital citizen engagement tools and services in the UK. The USA has passed a $1.2trillion infrastructure bill to ensure every American has access to the internet, here’s looking at you ‘smart cities’.

  While in Australia, the Community Investments Stream offers $5000 to $1million grants to support new or expanded local events, strategic regional plans or leadership and capability strengthening activities that provide economic and social benefits to regional and remote areas.

  6. Account for skills & experience shortages

  We've seen a considerable shake-out among those who work in public engagement, and reliance on consultancies won't substitute in-house know-how. So if you're one of the surefooted specialists who know the difference between open, mixed and controlled engagement environments, now is the time to upskill internal teams. Document engagement strategy, create blueprints and build templates to streamline consultation processes to reap more long-term benefits like meeting or exceeding budgetary goals, reducing risk and increased trust.

  With a tough economic backdrop and the inherent destabilising effect of the pandemic, it's easy to feel hesitant about moving forward with public engagement, but if the last two years have taught us anything, it's that we can no longer take the status quo for granted, change comes quickly and it's the relationships we hold with people (both internally & externally) that endure.

  Want to discuss these trends further with fellow community engagement practitioners? Reach out to us!