One of the biggest questions we hear all the time: “How can we better engage our customers?”

Here are two points to think about first and 5 ideas to considering implementing.

First, treat customers they way you want them to act. We commonly call customers, “Fans”. We want customers to not just purchase or be passive. We want them to be evangelists and engage with the brand. The way you treat people is the way they act so make them feel special!

Second, it is not about doing everything. It is about doing a few things really well and growing programs from feedback given by your fans. We see so many companies and online communities try to offer everything from the beginning and it is not only too much but they don’t have the capacity to manage the programs.

Here are five ideas I believe are the most effective at engaging your community and driving participation.

1.    Community Management

The most important thing in any relationship is communication. As a brand or online community grows, hiring someone to communicate with new users will pay dividends in a big way. Over time you cannot communicate with every user, but the early adopters often are the ones that promote your brand the most. Later you can keep the interaction going with short surveys when one on one communication isn’t reasonable.

Key questions to ask through emails or surveys:

• What do you love about our brand?
• Why did you join our community? (…or Fan Page)
• What features do you like about our community?
• What features do you want to see?

Chris Brogan wrote a good post on what a Community Manager means to him. Many of the quantifiable reasons can also been seen in this blog Virtuous Circle of Online Community.

2.    Contests

Contests are one of the best ways to engage a fan base during a peak period or for an on-going basis. They are effective at increasing traffic, creating user-generated content, and building email marketing lists as people opt-in more frequently.

Here are a few ideas:

• Design Contests: Have fans design a new product, t-shirt for an event, or packaging for a new product. Here is an example of a t-shirt design contest we ran for Iglu and Hartly this summer.

• Facebook Contests: Campaigns on your fan page give people a reason to come back after they have clicked “become a fan.” STA Travel has done a great job partnering with Threadless.com. We also recommend Wildfire Apps for Facebook campaigns.

• Photo Contests: Best sports photo, cutest pet, or coolest travel photos are a few broad concepts but the ideas are limitless. Photo contests also drive the highest participation because of the ease of entry. Our photo contest for Eteamz.com averages 1,000,000 impressions a month and an average voting time over 8:00 minutes.

• Video Contests: Create a commercial for a brand or make a video using a brand’s product have done well with the right companies. The Olympics are running a  fun sports challenge campaign right now as an example.

3.   Fostering Forums and Discussion Threads

Monitoring forums and community threads is a simpler version of community management. Sometimes just posting thoughts and getting feedback from users is the foundation a brand needs to create evangelists and an online community.

Forums are an old method, but done right are very effective. Mini Cooper does an excellent job with their North American Motoring Community.

Social Media Explorer also referenced a good book on starting and managing a forum among other tips.

4.    Polls

Polls and min-surveys are another simple community management tool that can provide great feedback as long as it’s not intrusive to the user experience.

My recommendations:

• Don’t use pop-ups!
• Simple is better
• Use multiple buttons

Beverage companies can ask consumers to vote on their favorite drink, news websites can ask users about the stories they are interested in, and brands can even have people vote on their favorite commercials.

5.    Sweepstakes

Sweepstakes and simple email entry forms are basic, but with the right advertiser or offers they can be a big hit. Conde Naste’s online magazine sites run them all the time and average upwards of 10,000 to 15,000 entries per campaign. Their advertisers love this and this is a very efficient way of building subscriber lists.

Please leave good examples you have seen in the comments.