What should I do to make my community more connected?
As I understand it, what you are asking is “how to make users know more other users and communicate with them, again, more. If this is correct, I would recommend the following.
First of all, if you have an active community than simply adding more reasons to talk (for example, regularly initiate off-topic conversations or set up a webcast) or new ways to communicate (for example, add on your site a chat system) will make your users to get to know more of others and communicate more frequently.
- Discussion channels are like roads between cities. The more and the faster they are, the better the accessibility between the cities. In our case, new ways to connect will open new opportunities for users to connect.
- The more topics to discuss users have, the more unique will be connections between users (i.e. more diverse users will connect with each other).
The second option is to run community initiatives. Usually, users of any community have a specific interest in the community and rarely go beyond the interest on their own. For example, some users like to help others with answers, other users like to organize the common space. Since all users have genuine interest in the community, if you design an interesting activity that they can participate in, they will react to your suggestions.
The third option to activate your users is to set a goal for the whole community and ask your users to help you and the community to achieve the goal.