Why an LMS Should Cultivate a CE Healthcare Community

In virtually every aspect of our professional and social lives, community interaction is essential, and CME is no exception. Learners are more engaged with their educational experiences and have better outcomes when they are a part of a community. A CE healthcare community can also help you attract new members and intensify your existing learners’ connection to your organization. That said, you don’t have to worry about starting from scratch. In this post, we’ll examine how your LMS can support the development of a CE healthcare community.

Create a CE Healthcare Community to Promote “Organic” Learner Engagement

Developing a powerful brand around your CE programming means having an LMS that cultivates shared educational experiences and peer-to-peer interactions. When you see your brand as a community like a neighborhood, you will quickly realize that the only “news” that matters is “local” news.

What are your members thinking about your educational offerings at the moment, and how can you enter that moment and give them an even better experience?

The right LMS will support member polling and feedback, allowing you to incorporate fresh insights into community-building efforts.

Using member polling and learner feedback to build a cohesive, sustainable online community might seem like a daunting task, but the right tools make it simple to start.

With EthosCE, learners can easily share CE program news and content on their favorite social media channels while connecting with other members. With our simple social media integrations, your organization can reach a larger audience on social media than you might otherwise find through traditional advertising.

Also, with your members as brand ambassadors, you will have the added advantage of being introduced to new social circles by trusted members of your new audience’s network.

Community-Building Tip: Offer shareable content to your existing members to give them an opening to share what they love about their CME experience. Use online social media forums and groups to showcase the valuable content that registered members receive.

Think downloadable e-books or exclusive short-format videos designed to tease curious viewers back to your LMS homepage.

Community building is also social marketing: target new audiences by connecting new and prospective learners around powerful content.

Purpose-built social communities themed around healthcare CE strengthen your brand and promote learner engagement.

Cultivate a Social Community to Enhance Data-Driven Insights

Easy access to learner and member data is essential to finding the right social conversations to encourage and the right communities to form. Your LMS should power the kind of advanced data exploration that allows you to have a clear picture of the audience you’re seeking and what their educational interests are.

Your data will also help you find out where those audiences are most likely to be found on social media and other online destinations. If you don’t have an enterprise-grade LMS that puts advanced analytics at your fingertips, learn more here.

Social media is a goldmine of insights, and monitoring your member’s social media sharing activities from your LMS is a great way to check the “temperature” of your potential audience and add value to your existing datasets with new context.

Here are some things to look for:

• Active posters who match your targeted profile and have negative comments about content quality, range, or presentation.Negative comments can hold some of your most valuable insights. “Trolls” aside, if members of your targeted audience are consistently raising concerns about teaser content or excerpts that have been shared from your courses, look for confirmation in helpdesk tickets, support requests, and learner feedback.If there is a quality or presentation issue confirmed, deal with it right away and be open with your community of learners about the changes underway. This is can be a powerful brand statement about your organization’s commitment to excellence and can help bolster the community’s sense that their engagement is meaningful.

• Positive commenters who leave detailed feedback on specific aspects of your content.“Likes” are wonderful but the most important elements of positive feedback are in the details of fan comments. One of the easiest ways to help build your community and gain meaningful contextual data is to reach out to individual fans who have offered feedback that gets at the heart of your program’s value proposition.If a fan enjoyed the way a challenging concept was broken down into manageable segments, invite them to review a video or new content ideas. While there’s no need to publish their evaluation, this insight will place your current learner satisfaction data within a larger context, allowing you to see how your potential audience differs from existing learners.

A powerful LMS will help you target marketing outreach strategy to specific demographic groups who are ripe for invitations to your healthcare CE community.

New grads? Veteran professionals tackling a new technology? Repeat learners who have struggled with courses in the past but are giving it another go? Armed with the right data, community-building is easy because you can create a sub-group within your community that resonates with your audience’s unique needs. Because you understand what new grads are looking for when they arrive on your site, you can offer them specific content that reassures them that they’ve come to the right place.

Build a Community to Support Offline and Online Synchronized Event Promotions.

With an enterprise-grade platform like EthosCE, live webinars, offline events, and social media can easily connect and help bring offline and online communities together. With mobile attendance check-ins, live-streaming, and webinar access from within the LMS, online and offline students can access the same powerful learning experiences through a single platform.

Here’s what we’ve seen so far:

• Online and offline experience integrations serve to connect learners and promote your brand while encouraging continued engagement and good course completion rates.
  • Social posts and marketing campaigns can work hand-in-hand to create thriving online communities that promote brand awareness 24/7.
    • The ability to analyze program and user data allows you to craft a thoroughly evidence-driven outreach strategy.

• Your LMS should be the engine of your community-building efforts, offering enterprise-grade features that enable you to scale your community from any size.

EthosCE offers partnership-level support for associations seeking to build passionate communities around healthcare CE goals. We give you complete control over your program data through our analytics suite, empowering you to create communities that are interest-driven and engaging.

Ready to build a powerful community that improves your brand perception? Schedule a demo.