You’ll need around 1–3 hours a day during the challenge to review data, read ideas and comments, ask questions, and reach out to and welcome participants.
1 hr: for experienced moderators at the start of a challenge, when there’s not yet much activity
2 hrs: newbies will probably need this extra hour to familiarise themselves with the platform and processes
3 hrs: this is often needed when there’s a lot of activity, or very near the challenge closing date
If possible, make sure at least one person in the team has experience of crowdsourcing. If the moderator is inexperienced, the more experienced team member should schedule about 20 minutes a day to help out. Alternatively, you could hire a facilitator to moderate your challenge for a short time; see here for some recommendations. You’ll find more detailed role guidance in our Community Management section.
As a quick guide, aim to help participants gather 10-plus comments for every idea, including moderator input. To engage participants further, you should aim to offer (in order of importance):
Encouragement: one of the most important things a moderator can offer is encouragement and appreciation. It’s important for people to know that somebody is reading their ideas and that their efforts have been acknowledged. This is as simple as subscribing to an idea and a participant.
Process reminders: one the most effective things a moderator can do is to keep reminding participants of the next steps, especially upcoming deadlines (we can't understate how often people forget these). So send emails to existing idea-submitters and tell them what they can do next to increase their chance of being successful. Most platforms will let you set up user groups to segment your emails. It’s fine to send idea-submitters up to two emails a week about this – just be ready to enter into individual dialogues with them!
Constructive advice: offer feedback to idea-submitters. While there’s no harm in being encouraging, make sure it’s genuine and not merely a thumbs-up; similarly, avoid unhelpful criticism. Adding questions soon after a participant submits an idea can be very helpful, particularly if they’re constructive. This sudden feedback from the moderator to the idea-submitter will mobilise them to react.
Connections: suggest that a participant connects with an idea-submitter (tag them) or ask a participant to offer advice (message/tag them).
Resource links: offer a useful link for an idea-submitter or share a blog piece with participants who are interested in the topic (you’ll need to ask for this information in the profile section to help you segment your community).
Technical support/reminders: participants will lose interest if their tech challenges aren’t remedied quickly, so it’s important to take these seriously. What seems obvious to you may not be to a new user, so be patient. It can help to send out regular reminders about platform features: for example, how to vote, how to tag participants into a comment and how to search for someone in the community section. You could also put all this information in the automated welcome email participants receive.
