Community Feature: Member Following

Crystal Bruce

With Member Following, you can follow members whose contributions you value most and choose how you want to stay informed about their activity. 

When you follow someone, you can receive in-app notifications, email notifications, or both whenever they create new discussions or blogs, leave comments, or publish events. Member Following works alongside Category and Tag following, giving you a more personalized way to discover content based on who is sharing it, not just what they're posting about. 

Why Follow Other Members? 

Following members helps you keep up with the people who consistently add value to your community experience. Consider following: 

• Members who regularly provide helpful answers and insights and whose content you want to stay connected with 
• Blackbaud staff who share important updates 

Follow a Member in Seconds:

You can follow or unfollow members from either their profile page or their profile card. 

The quickest method is through the profile card: 

1. Select a member's name anywhere in the community. 
2. When their profile card appears, select Follow. 

That's it. The member is now added to your list of followed members. 

Note: Members who have chosen to keep their profiles private cannot be followed. 

Once you follow someone: 

• They're added to your Followed Content page 
• Their activity can appear in your notifications based on your preferences 
• You can modify or remove the follow relationship at any time 

Manage Your Followed Members: 

Your Followed Content page gives you a central place to manage everyone you're following. 

From here, you can: 

• View all followed members (Users) 
• Adjust notification settings for each person 
• Stop following members who are no longer relevant to you 

Customize Your Notifications: 

Following someone doesn't automatically mean receiving every notification possible. You decide what matters. 

For each followed member, you can choose whether to receive updates about: 

• Discussions/blogs they create 
• Comments they post 
• Events they publish 

You can also choose how you want to receive those notifications. 

Choose your preferred combination of: 

• In-app notifications 
• Email notifications 
• Both 

In-App Notifications 

Receive real-time alerts directly within the community and view them later in your notifications panel. 

Email Notifications: 

Receive email updates whenever the member you are following posts a new discussion, responds to an existing discussion, or publishes a blog post. Because each activity generates a separate email, this option is best reserved for people whose updates you don't want to miss. 

You can always adjust these settings later for specific members. 

Muting Members: 

Over time, there may be posts from members you follow that generate a high volume of engagement and notifications you’re not interested in.  

Rather than turning off member following notifications entirely, you can granularly mute individual posts, just as you can for Category and Tag-based notifications.  

This preserves other useful notifications while silencing discussions you're not interested in. 

Unfollowing Members: 

Every member-following email includes an Unsubscribe link. 

Selecting it immediately stops notifications from that specific member's activity while leaving your other follows—such as Categories and Tags—unchanged. 

You can also reverse the action if you unsubscribed accidentally.