Here’s your monthly roundup on everything at Six Circles, from what’s happening behind the scenes to what’s new on our ever-evolving community engagement platform… 

Top tips of the month 

Did you know that your community can do more than just promote user engagement? With the right features in place, you can actually monetise your community – making it an even more valuable business growth tool.

If you want to know more, here are 6 ways you can effectively monetise your online community to build better user engagement while growing an additional revenue stream:

1. Paid memberships and subscriptions: free membership is the cornerstone of growing your community – but by introducing extra benefits, such as providing access to premium content, event discounts and more, you can effectively utilise paid memberships and subscriptions
2. Offer product or service promotions: many business members use community platforms to build their own brand awareness, so offer these members the opportunity to purchase a one-off advert to promote their services or products to an engaged audience 
3. Create a promotion area: this dedicated promotion area allows community owners to push forward their own offerings and services to members without impacting the purpose or functionality of the main community areas
4. Create sponsored post opportunities: within news and polls areas, offer members the chance to gain additional exposure with a paid-for post that acts like sponsored news or a user poll
5. Host events: from charging members for tickets to selling exclusive merchandise or event sponsorship, there are numerous ways events can help you generate revenue for your community
6. Cross-selling: just like in ecommerce, you can use your community behaviour data to create cross-selling opportunities, such as content suggestions or community picks. To access these, members can upgrade their subscription or pay a one-off fee

Future Roadmap

Throughout August, the team at Six Circles have been working hard to maintain your favourite features and developments – as well as continuing to work on a suite of new features and updates that will go live in the coming months. These include: 

• Events updates: community owners will have the ability to set different prices for an event, depending on a member’s role or membership plan
• Events updates: community admins will be able to set ‘early bird’ discount prices
• Events updates: community admins will be able to upload downloadable files to an event
• Content posts: community members will be able to use emojis within their content
• Categorisation: admins will be able to categorise news, events and polls
• Private groups: users will be able to create private groups within the forum area and resources
• Events update: users will have a calendar view
• Subscriptions: community owners will have the ability to add a free trial option
• Subscriptions: users will also have the ability to offer discount codes to subscription members

Of course, we always welcome any suggestions around what you’d like to see on the Six Circles platform. Send any ideas to support@sixcircles.co.uk – we can’t wait to hear them.

If you’d like to see a short demonstration on how to make most of your platform, contact support@sixcircles.co.uk and your dedicated account manager will be in touch.

Here’s your monthly roundup on everything at Six Circles, from what’s happening behind the scenes to what’s new on our ever-evolving community engagement platform… 

Top tips of the month 

Are you looking for new ways to spark community engagement and create deeper connections with your members? We have just the solution: user polls. 

Here are 6 community engagement benefits that come with introducing user polls into your community content strategy: 

1. Quick and decisive insights: with the right questions on relevant topics, user polls provide a quick, fuss-free platform to get almost instant insights from your members
2. Deeper understanding of your audience: from their needs and wants to audience profiling, user polls can allow you to gain a better understanding of users in a non-intrusive way
3. Honest feedback: online polls provide anonymity, encouraging users to be more honest with their feedback, which can result in valuable qualitative data for brands
4. Increased sense of community: with a shared desire to make their voices heard, user polls can help to strengthen community spirit and camaraderie
5. Promote upcoming releases: from new product releases to events, polls can help you to gauge the reception of planned activity and build excitement around it
6. Improve brand loyalty: by asking for user opinions, polls can help to build brand loyalty by demonstrating to members that their opinions truly matter

Future roadmap

Since July, the Six Circles team have been working hard to get the following features and developments live: 

• Commenting and liking on news, resources and polls within the feed and individual pages
• Notifications to members when a new post has been approved and has gone live
• New event reminder emails sent to attendees 24 hours before an event is due to start
• New event notifications for administrators, notifying them when a member books onto an event
• Updated layout with platform banners now showing directly under the header links rather than behind them

This month, the Six Circles team will also begin working on introducing a host of additional features:

• Events update allowing users to set different prices for events depending on the role or plan members are on
• Events update allowing users to set an ‘early bird’ discount price
• Events update allowing users to upload downloadable files to an event
• Content update allowing users to use emojis within their content
• Categorisation allowing users to categorise news, events and polls

Of course, we always welcome any suggestions around what you’d like to see on the Six Circles platform. Send any ideas to support@sixcircles.co.uk – we can’t wait to hear them.

If you’d like to see a short demonstration on how to make most of your platform, contact support@sixcircles.co.uk and your dedicated account manager will be in touch.

Here’s your monthly roundup on everything at Six Circles, from what’s happening behind the scenes to what’s new on our ever-evolving community engagement platform… 

Top tips of the month 

Are you wondering how you can boost user engagement on your forum? Look no further.

Here are 6 top tips on how to successfully spark forum community engagement, keeping users active and coming back for more:

1. Be part of your community: spending time on your own forum and responding to messages is a key part of kick-starting and cultivating community engagement
2. Start discussions: from handy tips to leading questions, make your forum the place to be when it comes to discussing hot, industry-centric topics
3. Hold ‘ask me anything’ sessions: opening up the floor to questions is a highly effective way to gain community participation while also boosting brand trust
4. Host forum events and contests: forum-hosted events and contests can incentivise online engagement, giving your community members something to look forward to
5. Give member shout-outs: highlighting members who consistently contribute, or who are particularly knowledgeable within your community, will encourage them and others to continue embedding themselves in your community and participating in the conversation
6. Promote your space: maintain community growth by cross-promoting your forum on your socials, email marketing and website at a minimum

Future roadmap 

The Six Circles team have been hard at work getting the following features and developments live:

• Email digest preview functions
• Further customisation of the email digest 
• Admin edit access for buttons and calls-to-action
• Improved feature tile layouts

Throughout July and August, new work will also be commencing on the introduction of a suite of additional features:

• Commenting, liking and tagging within the feeds
• Ability to create private groups
• Categorisation
• A forum report button
• Ability to filter explicit content on forums
• Event feature updates

Of course, we always welcome any suggestions around what you’d like to see on the Six Circles platform. Send any ideas to support@sixcircles.co.uk – we can’t wait to hear them.

If you’d like to see a short demonstration on how to make most of your platform, contact support@sixcircles.co.uk and your dedicated account manager will be in touch.

Here’s your monthly roundup on everything at Six Circles, from what’s happening behind the scenes to what’s new on our ever-evolving community engagement platform… 

Top tips of the month 

Wondering how to incentivise your audience to keep coming back to your community engagement platform? We’ve got you covered. 

Here are 6 ways you can keep community members engaged and hungry for more. 

1. Create customer-first content: value is the most effective incentive to keep users coming back to your platform – provide this value in the form of content that meets the needs, wants and expectations of your audience
2. Be responsive: delivering great customer service is a tried and tested way to build an engaged community based on trust 
3. Offer exclusive perks: from exclusive previews to special promotions, make your community engagement platform the place to be with a range of unmissable benefits
4. Promote your platform: how do you expect users to flock to your platform if they don’t know it exists? Promote your community space at every opportunity
5. Shout on socials: you’ll likely have an existing following on social media, presenting an opportunity to promote your platform to potential community members already invested in your brand 
6. Stay consistent: consistent engagement is the most organic way of keeping your community coming back for more. If your members know you’re posting, they won’t be able to resist checking in regularly

Future roadmap 

Keep an eye out for the following updates going live on the Six Circles platform very soon:

• Email digest preview functions
• Further customisation of the email digest 
• Admin edit access for buttons and calls-to-action

The Six Circles team is also hard at work finishing the following updates:

• Private grouping (this will become available in the Forum and Resource areas
• Categorisation of events, news, polls and packages (similar to what’s currently available in Resources and Member Promotions)

New work will also commence this month focusing on improvements to our Events feature:

• Event reminder email notifications
• Multiple pricing options for tickets
• Early bird and discount options
• Pricing alternatives based on membership and role type
• Ability to add custom attributes to capture additional data from attendees 
• Ability to add files or additional content for visitors and attendees to view
• Event page calendar view
• Recurring events

Of course, we always welcome any suggestions around what you’d like to see on the Six Circles platform. Send any ideas to support@sixcircles.co.uk – we can’t wait to hear them.

If you’d like to see a short demonstration on how to make most of your platform, contact support@sixcircles.co.uk and your dedicated account manager will be in touch.

Here’s your monthly roundup on everything at Six Circles, from what’s happening behind the scenes to what’s new on our ever-evolving community engagement platform…

Meet the team

We’re always on the hunt for super-skilled, like-minded team members to join us on our mission to improve the Six Circles platform and expand the Six Circles community.

This month, we were excited to welcome a new member to our team – meet Phil.

Getting to know you 

Phil – or Philip denBroeder-Shrimplin to his Granny – is our latest Business Development Executive.

Having lived in Morocco, Germany, France and Dubai, Phil joined the team fresh-faced just a few days ago, but has quickly settled in by embracing the Six Circles ethos and culture.

Equipped with a strong coffee or builder’s tea (although Phil would prefer a steak flambe if the office budget allowed it), he’s sure to help us arm even more businesses with the tools they need to help their communities flourish online.

To quote Phil’s favourite motto: the best is yet to be.

Future roadmap

We’re always following our roadmap here at Six Circles HQ – it’s what keeps us on the right track in evolving our platform to make community engagement easier and more effective than ever before.

Here are some of the exciting features we’re working hard to bring you on the Six Circles platform over the next 3 months:

May

·         Commenting, liking and tagging within the feed, news, polls and resources

·         Private forum groups

·         Private resource groups

·         Ability to edit buttons across the platform

June

·         Email digest improvements

·         News, events, polls, and packages categorisation (this already exists in resources and   member promotions)

·         Forum report button

·         Forum explicit content filter

July

·         Event area developments:

o    Multi ticketing

o    Early bird/discount codes

o    Automated recurring events

o    Ability to add custom attributes to capture additional info at signup

o    Ability to add files or additional content that visitors can view (such as floor plans or promotion materials)

o    Event page calendar view 

Of course, we always welcome any suggestions around what you’d like to see on the Six Circles platform. Send any ideas to support@sixcircles.co.uk – we can’t wait to hear them.

If you’d like to see a short demonstration on how to make most of your platform, contact support@sixcircles.co.uk and your dedicated account manager will be in touch.

Here’s your monthly roundup on everything at Six Circles, from what’s happening behind the scenes to what’s new on our ever-evolving community engagement platform…

Meet the team

The Six Circles family is always expanding as we continue to find super-skilled, like-minded team members on a mission to help the Six Circles platform and community grow.

This month, we were excited to welcome a new member to the Six Circles team – meet James Lister.

Getting to know you

James is our new Business Development Executive, often found armed with a black coffee (just don’t forget the 2 sugars).

He’s settled in quickly here at Six Circles, enjoying our supportive team, exciting product and positive atmosphere (his words, not ours – promise!).

Despite playing the drums at the London Olympics’ opening ceremony, we’re sure joining the Six Circles team already tops James’ list of career highlights, even if he hasn’t said that in so many words himself…

Future roadmap

It’s been a month since we launched the new version of the Six Circles community engagement platform and the feedback has been great!

We’re now excited to move into the feature enrichment stage of our roadmap. Here are some of the updates you’ll see us working on over the next 3 months:

• Liking, tagging and commenting within the new feed area
• Liking, tagging and commenting to be added to news articles, individual resources and polls
• Closed groups within the forum area and resources area
• Improved ways of linking specific content from the platform into forum posts
• Emoji integration
• Progressive web app (PWA) tweaks
• Event feature improvements, including:
  • Multi ticketing
  • Multi price points (including early bird/discount offers)
  • Ability to set recurring events
  • Ability to add custom attributes to an event (allowing you to capture more information from your attendees at the point of signup)
  • Ability to add files to an event for attendees to access, e.g. floorplans or event brochures
  • Event reminders
  • Event calendar tool
• Email digest tweaks
• Report button for forum area
• Explicit content filter for forum area

We always welcome any suggestions around what you’d like to see on the Six Circles platform. Send any ideas to support@sixcircles.co.uk – we can’t wait to hear them.

Here’s your monthly roundup on everything at Six Circles, from what’s happening behind the scenes to what’s to come on our ever-evolving community engagement platform…

Meet the team

The Six Circles family is always expanding as we continue to find super-skilled, like-minded team members on a mission to help the Six Circles platform and community grow.

Over the past few weeks, we’ve been excited to welcome two new members to the Six Circles team.

Kelly Gorman is our brand new Sales Team Leader – despite only being here a week, she’s already got stuck straight into the action!

Fuelled by whatever brews are on offer (just make sure there’s milk and two sugars), Kelly loves Yorkshire puddings, and selling products and services she believes in.

Luckily, we’re here to help with that last part (although we like the sound of a Sunday roast right now, too….

Earlier in the month, we also welcomed our new Web Developer, Adam Soulsby.

Adam’s childhood dreams of becoming an astronaut or palaeontologist were crushed by a D in GCSE Science and

a diminishing interest in dinosaurs after turning 10.

Luckily for us, his passions were reinvested into web development – and this one stuck! A keen traveller and guitar hero, Adam’s sure to help Six Circles rock brand communities around the world.

Future Roadmap

As you know, we’ve been busy working away on the new layout and design of the Six Circles community engagement platform.

Here’s a quick preview of what’s to come in the new year:

Of course, we always welcome any suggestions around what you’d like to see on the Six Circles platform and blog. Send any ideas to support@sixcircles.co.uk – we can’t wait to hear them.

If you’d like to see a short demonstration on how to make most of your platform, contact support@sixcircles.co.uk and your dedicated account manager will be in touch.

Here’s your monthly roundup on everything at Six Circles, from what’s happening behind the scenes to what’s to come on our ever-evolving community engagement platform…  

Company News & Updates 

Each month, we’ve been updating the Six Circles blog with tips, tricks and inspiration to help your brand engage and grow its online community.

From business tips you can begin actioning today to community building advice sure to bolster your following, the Six Circles blog is quickly becoming the only community building resource you need – see it for yourself here.

Of course, we always welcome any suggestions around what you’d like to see on the Six Circles platform and the Six Circles blog. Send any ideas to support@sixcircles.co.uk – we can’t wait to hear them.

Feature Spotlight 

Each month, we’re shining the spotlight on a different feature of the Six Circles platform to guarantee you’re always getting the most out of what we have to offer. This month, we’re focusing on featured content. 

Did you know?

On the Six Circles platform, you can shine a spotlight on certain members or specific content. 

How to use this feature

Within your admin panel (under site settings > homepage), you currently have the ability to shine a spotlight on:

• Featured Members – this allows you to highlight a member of your community for everyone to see and reach out to. Whether it’s celebrating the success of a member or raising awareness of a commercial partner, this tool helps you promote your individual members and inspire new connections
• Featured News – this gives you the opportunity to pin an article that you want all of your community to read. This can be one of your own articles, a quarterly report, the industry latest or even a success story from one of your members
• Featured Promotion – just like the above, this enables you to highlight a promotion/member offer to increase engagement. This could be a job post, an advert or an offer that has been promoted on the platform by one of your members

Featured members, news and promotions will be highlighted in the right-hand column of your main homepage and generic content pages, maximising visibility and driving more engagement.

We’re not stopping there, though. As you’ll have read over the past six months, we’re working tirelessly on improving and redesigning the Six Circles platform. One of the new features set to be released is an adaptation of this featured content tool, renamed the featured tiles section. This’ll become a key part of everyone’s homepage, allowing you to highlight more featured content within your area than ever before!

If you’d like to see a short demonstration on how to make most of these features, contact support@sixcircles.co.uk and your dedicated account manager will be in touch

Here’s your monthly roundup on everything Six Circles, from what’s happening behind the scenes to what’s to come on our ever-evolving community engagement platform… 

The year so far 

The constant evolution of the Six Circles platform enables your business to stay at the forefront of community engagement. 

With Q4 of 2021 on the horizon, we thought we’d take a look back at all the exciting developments we’ve seen on our platform so far this year: 

Email notification centre / email digest updates

Our newly structured email notification centre went live earlier this year, along with some further improvements to our email digest. 

Giving you greater control over your community engagement than ever before, admins now have the ability to choose the frequency of your email digest (choose from weekly, fortnightly or monthly). 

But that’s not all – further updates were added, allowing even greater notification integration. This included alerts for: 

• New forum discussions
• New direct message
• Connect request accepted
• New event created
• New event approved 
• New news story created
• New news story approved
• New promotion created 
• New promotion approved

New notifications were also introduced to alert members of a new poll, resource or package post, as well as admin alerts for new subscriptions and member signups. 

Forum updates

Elsewhere, the private group integration within the forum area was pushed live, allowing users to create closed areas for specific members. 

Category updates

We also introduced a series of category features updates, like the ability to reorder and reorganise, granting you greater flexibility when customising your platform.

Settings update 

Our new custom updates allowed you to update your browser icon to match your website. 

Permissions updates 

New permissions were added, giving you the ability to grant members permissions (depending on their roles or subscription) to see certain feature pages.

Future roadmap

Work continues on the platform redesign we’ve been conducting over the past few months, with some exciting new developments coming soon!

Of course, we always welcome any suggestions around what you would like to see on the Six Circles platform. Send any ideas to support@sixcircles.co.uk – we can’t wait to hear them.

Feature Spotlight

Each month, we’re shining the spotlight on a different feature of the Six Circles platform to guarantee you’re always getting the most out of what we have to offer. This month, we’re focusing on the private discussions feature.

Did you know?

Within the platform, there are a couple of areas where your community can engage in private discussions with either yourself or fellow members.

How to use this feature

Private discussions can now be facilitated in the following areas:

• Connect area / My Messages tab: providing you have connected with a member (and they have accepted), you can engage in direct messaging that’s only visible to you and the recipient (not even admins)
• Event ‘Let’s meet’ area: once you’re booked onto an event you can introduce yourself and start a private discussion with a fellow attendee
• Forum area / Private Threads – a relatively new addition to the forum (and one that’s proving very popular) is the ability to create group private threads – more on this next month!

If you’d like to see a short demonstration on how to make most of these features, contact support@sixcircles.co.uk and your dedicated account manager will be in touch