What Makes a Successful Viva Engage Community (and What Creates a Ghost Town)

Key takeaways

• Thriving communities have a clear purpose, visible sponsorship and someone actively tending them; ghost towns usually lack at least one of those three.
• Size and scope matter: communities that are too broad or too narrow struggle to reach the critical mass needed for natural conversation.
• Early seeding, timely responses and relevant, fresh content are the main ingredients for building momentum.
• Communities stay alive when they’re linked to real work, leadership priorities and ongoing campaigns, not just created “because we can”.

Most organisations can point to at least one Viva Engage community that’s buzzing with questions, tips and stories – and another that feels like walking into an empty room. From our experience at Silicon Reef, this isn’t random. Thriving communities tend to share the same characteristics, and ghost towns usually fail in predictable ways.

This article unpacks those patterns and looks at how to create the conditions for more thriving hubs – and fewer abandoned groups – in a large Viva Engage network.

Jump to:

• Purpose & Scope
• Leadership & Facilitation
• Launch & Momentum
• Maintaining Health
• How We Help

Purpose & Scope

Define the purpose

Almost every healthy community has a strong answer to “what’s this space for?” and “who is it for?”. Vague, catch all groups struggle because people aren’t sure what belongs there.

Examples of clear purpose include:

• A community of practice, like intranet content owners (University of Leeds set this community up for staff to share publishing tips and ask each other for help – it was really successful!)
• A leadership Q&A forum where senior figures take questions on strategy, change or financial results.
• A targeted social group (“Women in Tech network”, “Runners’ club”) with an obvious shared interest.

By contrast, generic “General chat” or “All company questions” communities often drift. People either default to email and Teams or post off topic content that doesn’t hook a consistent audience.

When we help clients set up or reset Viva Engage, we usually start by mapping communities to real needs – roles, programmes, initiatives, identities – and closing or merging anything that doesn’t have a clear, distinct purpose.

Right-size the community

There’s a sweet spot between “too big” and “too small”. Communities that include everyone and cover everything are intimidating to post in; tiny groups of five colleagues could just be a Teams channel.

Ghost towns often fall at one of these extremes:

• Massive, unfocused “all staff” communities where only official announcements land and nobody feels ownership of conversation.
• Super niche groups that never grew beyond a handful of members and never reached the variety needed to keep discussions going.

Thriving communities usually:

• Have enough members to generate new questions and perspectives, but are narrow enough that people feel a sense of shared context.
• Sit at a level that makes sense e.g. “UK sales enablement” rather than mixing everyone from every function and region.

Sometimes the fix is consolidation. If there are three half empty groups for related topics (“Project Management Tips”, “Process Improvements”, “Lean Ideas”), combining them into a single “Continuous Improvement Community” can create a bigger, more sustainable hub.

Tie the community to real work

The strongest Viva Engage communities are plugged into how work actually gets done, rather than side projects. When a space shapes decisions, solves real problems or supports a visible programme, people understand why it matters.

We see this in communities that:

• Act as the main channel for a major change or campaign (for example, a brand champions programme where all activity runs through Viva Engage).
• Serve as the recognised place for resolving recurring issues – such as IT or HR Q&A communities where answers are trusted and re-used.
• Provide a forum where ideas are collected, discussed and sometimes implemented, with clear feedback on what happened next.

Communities that never plug into real work, or whose conversations never go anywhere, quickly feel optional.

Leadership & Facilitation

Secure sponsorship

Communities with visible leadership backing almost always perform better. That doesn’t mean leaders have to run everything, but their support puts the community on the organisational map.

Patterns we see in thriving spaces:

• A senior sponsor mentions the community in town halls (“We’re discussing this in the Ideas community on Viva Engage – please join in.”).
• Leadership teams use the community to test thinking, gather feedback or recognise contributions, not just to broadcast decisions.
• The community is tied to a real initiative or milestone – for example, part of Bauer Media Group’s push towards two way internal communication linked to its 150th anniversary and modern intranet rollout.

In contrast, many ghost communities were launched quietly with no visible backing and never referenced again. Out of sight quickly becomes out of mind.
If you want a community to thrive, someone in authority needs to care about it, talk about it and occasionally show up there.

Provide active facilitation

Communities aren’t self managing from day one. They reach that point over time if someone has been actively seeding, connecting and responding in the early months.

In strong communities, you’ll usually see:

• A named admin or champion who posts questions, shares updates and gently nudges discussions along.
• Regular prompts – a weekly “tip”, a monthly AMA with an expert, or recurring themes – that give people an easy reason to contribute.
• Champions tagging colleagues into relevant threads (“@Chris, you did something similar last quarter – any advice?”) to pull more voices in.

Where that facilitation is missing, even a well scoped community can stall. People visit, see nothing happening, and don’t come back. That’s how ghost towns are born.

We often recommend a simple content and engagement cadence for important communities (for example, 2–3 posts a week at launch, then tapering to a sustainable rhythm once members are posting on their own).

Launch & Momentum

Seed early and reach critical mass

The first few weeks of a community’s life are crucial. If people arrive and see nothing, they’ll assume it’s not for them. Thriving communities almost always had content and contributors ready from day one.

Common tactics that work:

• Inviting a core group of champions to post introductions, questions and examples before a wider launch.
• Lining up a small bank of posts to drip out over the first month – for example, a weekly best practice tip, a short case study, or a recurring “ask me anything” slot.
• Personally inviting likely contributors and making clear why their voice matters in that space.

Our work with one recent recruitment client showed this clearly. Of more than 200 groups, only a handful had recent activity – largely those where there were clear champions or a strong programme link. Many others never got past the “empty room” stage and quietly died.
Getting to critical mass doesn’t mean thousands of members; it means enough people are posting and replying that the community feels alive without constant prodding. That’s what early seeding is for.

Maintaining Health

Deliver valuable content

At heart, people return to communities where they get value – answers, ideas, recognition or just a sense of connection. They stop visiting when the content feels irrelevant, stale or one sided.

Thriving communities tend to offer:

• Helpful, specific answers to real questions, often from peers as well as subject matter experts.
• A mix of formats – text, images, short videos, polls, links – that catch the eye and invite interaction.
• Stories and examples from across the organisation, not just official news.

For example, a sales community that regularly surfaces concrete tips (“Here’s how we handled X objection this week”) will become a go to resource; one that only reposts marketing slides will not.

On the flip side, ghost communities often show a familiar pattern:

• An initial burst of launch content.
• A few unanswered questions.
• Then long stretches of silence or low effort posts nobody reacts to.

Ensuring that every early post gets at least a like or a brief comment is a simple but powerful way to avoid that “tumbleweed” effect.

Recognise and respond

People are far more likely to post again if their first attempt feels appreciated. In thriving communities, contributions rarely vanish without trace.
Healthy patterns include:

• Quick, human responses to questions (“Thanks for asking – here’s what’s worked for us.”).
• Shout outs when someone shares a useful resource or story, sometimes carried over into team meetings or newsletters.
• Leaders occasionally stepping in to acknowledge ideas or show how input from the community has shaped a decision.

At the University of Leeds, content owners described their Viva Engage space as genuinely helpful because questions got real answers and people thanked each other for sharing. That experience made them want the community to continue long term.

Ghost towns, by contrast, are full of posts with zero replies. After one or two of those, most people stop trying. Ensuring that no question goes unanswered – especially in young communities – is one of the simplest ways to tilt the odds towards thriving.

Measure and adjust with data

Communities don’t usually die overnight; they fade. Light touch analytics can help you catch that drift before it becomes irreversible.

Useful indicators include:

• Trends in posts and replies over time for key communities.
• The ratio of questions to answered threads.
• How many members are active posters versus passive readers.

If a previously vibrant space is going quiet, you can respond with a focused push – fresh prompts, a leadership Q&A, or a campaign that runs through that community. If, after a period of effort, it still doesn’t recover and there’s overlap with other groups, it may be better to close or merge it rather than leaving a visible ghost town in place.

Microsoft’s own guidance emphasises reviewing community health regularly and adapting structure and support accordingly, rather than setting everything in stone at launch.

How We Help

How Silicon Reef designs thriving Viva Engage communities

Our role is to make sure the Viva Engage environment gives communities the best possible chance to succeed. That’s mainly about design and configuration across Microsoft 365, not about running communities day to day.

Typically, that involves:

• Designing a community structure that maps to real needs – consolidating redundant groups, naming communities clearly and aligning them with your intranet and Teams landscape.
• Configuring Viva Engage and integrations so important communities are surfaced in the right places (for example, on SharePoint intranet pages or via Viva Connections dashboards) and are easy to find.
• Setting up sensible governance and roles so each strategic community has the right admins, permissions and safety nets without being over locked.
• Showing internal owners what’s technically possible – from pinning “best of” conversations to using analytics – so they can look after their communities effectively.

Where clients need deeper help with engagement strategy or content, we work alongside specialist internal comms partners. Our focus stays on the tools: shaping Viva Engage, SharePoint and Teams so that, when you invest energy into a community, the platform helps it grow rather than getting in the way.