How a 'March Madness' Challenge Got My Members Engaging

There’s nothing like a little good-natured rivalry to get folks fired up — and engaging.

It’s a strategy that Evan Hamilton, currently Director of Community at HubSpot, employed to great effect in a previous role.

“I was working at UserVoice, running a community for customer service professionals,” he says.

“I knew that every year, a list of the companies with the worst customer service in America was released. So I decided to make a challenge out of it by hosting a bracket, a la March Madness.”

Each week, people would bet — reputation, not actual money — on which would be the worst companies. The winner was eventually awarded a T-shirt or a gift card.

“The community was pretty fledgling at the time, but this got people out in force — a huge percentage of the community participated,” Evan says. There are several factors that he thinks contributed to the success.

“Firstly, it invited storytelling and discussion,” he says. “Everyone has had a bad customer service experience, and every one of these customer service professionals had opinions about how it should be done.”

In addition, the initiative was a familiar format folks understood, and that format allowed for some competition without significant negativity. It also created a ritual of sorts. “We’d move on to the next stage at the same time each week,” Evan adds. “Plus, there was a clear, exciting end date.”

Interested in running a similar play? “Don’t just go do a bracket,” Evan says. “That might not be right for your community.” Instead, he recommends you:

Think about what topic related to your community will generate a lot of personal opinions and stories. “Avoid ‘yes/no’ questions, as they kill conversation,” Evan says.
Think about what familiar, fun formats you can apply to this (could a game show or bingo work better than a bracket?).
Think about how you can structure it so people will regularly come back to engage.