Online engagement can be used to support recruitment for offline engagement and vice versa. The World Bank refers to three ways to recruit participants in engagement:
1. Broadcast – promoting open engagement to the population through online and offline advertising, communication and marketing methods.
2. Network – using stakeholder and network analysis to identify stakeholders and recruit participants through social networks online and offline. This may be done to increase representation or to target engagement to specific stakeholders because they are most likely to be affected by proposed changes.
3. Random selection – profiling the community and inviting a demographically representative sample to participate.
Your approach to recruitment should match your type of engagement.
Consider the different ways you might need to promote your engagement during different phases of the project. After the initial launch you will need to use varied methods to boost participation, including reminding people before it closes.