This is an except I wrote from an upcoming NCSL NOW! magazine article about online community engagement…

"When talking about online engagement my favorite place to start is offline on the dance floor. We've all been to good dances and bad dances. Good dances are proportional to the number of relationships built up on the dance floor. It's a simple idea, people are more likely to dance, have fun, and hang longer if they have relationships with the people around them to talk with or teach them new dance moves. So if you host a dance party, your job is to connect as many people together around shared interests to increase the number of relationships on your dance floor. It's not about you, it's about them connecting, learning, and growing from each other and the more relevant the introductions, the more likely the relationships are to solidify. You are the facilitator of engagement, not the gate keeper. After you've built up the relationships, you should be able to walk away from the dance and it will continue on without you."