- COMMUNITY COACH
- Posts
- AI Community Managers are taking over!
AI Community Managers are taking over!
Community growth hack, new social media platform, plus an innovative community builder
Carmen Taubman
April 26, 2024
Welcome to the Community Coach newsletter, a value packed read
for community builders who just want their members to be happy (and login to their community!).
📚 Community 101: Community growth hack
🤖 The AI community manager for Discord is here
🎱 Get a free invite to check out a new community focused social platform to help people escape the algorithm
🔥 Innovative community builder Poolsuite goes viral with everything they do
👋 This week’s observation: Know your audience before you pitch your community to them
Note: The content shared here is created from my personal interests and viewpoints. I am not compensated for any of the below 🙂.
Community 101: Community Growth Hack
I shared this recent community growth hack on Twitter and figured it was worth repeating:
1) Join a community that already exists that relates to the community you want to grow. Get to know all of the members, be as active as possible and provide value.
2) Reach out to the community team/ owner of the community and offer to help out more/mod
3) If community team/owner is not responsive or they care little about the community, you have now entered fair game territory. You have two options now: offer to buy the community or start a new one.
4) At this point you should know what are the "gaps" in the community that you can do better. Use this as opportunity to encourage members to consider joining your community. Make sure you deliver on your promises....
This may seem "unethical" but at the end of the day a community is an ultimate competitive advantage. It's difficult to replicate. If members are not having the best experience possible - and you have identified how to do things better - then it is yours for the taking!
Make sure you read my observation this week (at the end of this newsletter) for more learnings on growing your community.
This AI Community Manager saves you hours each day…
If you manage a community on Discord and you haven’t explored AI to help you out yet, then you’ll want to check out CommunityOne.
CommunityOne offers an AI bot that assists in 3 ways:
SparkAI Chat: reads your community information and answers members questions and can help to onboard new members
Analytics: tracks all the KPIs you need to manage your Discord community: user engagement, key members, team performance, interaction quality, sales forecast etc.
Community Guru: THIS is the CRAZIEST part: the bot gives smart recommendations on how to improve your servers, such as what events to host, what issues to address and what your members currently are talking about based on your server's chat activities.
Take a look at how it helps community members with their questions:
And even more mind blowing - check out how it recommends ways to improve your Discord server - these insights are high quality and provide practical ways to improve.
The Community One team has also worked on ensuring the setup of their bot on your server is as straightforward/simple as possible.
You can give the bot your own nickname, assign it the channel to reply to members (e.g. #support) and tell it to listen to specific channels and respond if there are no answers within 10 minutes (the dream!).
Uploading your community knowledge doc is simple and you can update it later too.
You can also provide instructions regarding the bot’s personality, language, tone etc to ensure it’s on point with the branding of your community.
Best of all - it’s free to download onto your server - it’s grown from 100k to 1 million users already!
Watch the full product demo here:
More details can be found on their website:
There is a new social media platform that seems to be gaining traction - and it’s all because of bringing community back in focus and removing the algorithms that people seem to dislike greatly.
Check out PI.FYI… You can share and ask for recommendations, organize it for later reading, follow your friends (and they can follow you), browse by category, be featured on the platform’s newsletter (with 66K+ readers), and most importantly, stumble upon something new - WITHOUT the usual algorithm.
It feels VERY early days with this platform, but it has a nostalgic air to it that will remind you of the early days of any major social media platform (like MySpace!).
It doesn’t have a way to “create a new community” but I think it’s a platform worth keeping an eye on - along with the trend that people want different experiences to what social media is offering them. I can see the platform evolving over time if it continues to become more popular - just like Twitter/X rolled out Spaces, Facebook rolled out Groups etc.
Want to join? I have 10 free invites, sharing the link below:
Innovative community builder
Poolsuite
Poolsuite started off as an online radio station in 2014 (formerly known as Poolside.FM) with an old-fashioned browser. It developed an impressive following thanks to Twitter.
“Poolside FM blew up just because it felt nostalgic and happy and infectious.”"
After launching an online radio station, here’s what the Poolsuite evolution has looked like over time:
Poolside.FM radio →
Rebranded to Poolsuite (due to trademark issues)
Launched a physical product: Vacation sunscreen →
Launched a community via Poolsuite Club Membership NFTs →
Launched Manor DAO for members to gain fractional ownership in a Manor →
Collaborated with Ralph Lauren launching “Leisure Club” NFTs
Before launching the physical sunscreen brand Vacation, the creators gave their former Poolside.fm users chances to get involved with the new brand.
They could buy products early or get digital business cards that said they had fun job titles like "head of hot tubs" or "shrimp cocktail designer."
Users could create their own fun business cards.
These activities helped Vacation make over $100k before it even started selling!
How they transformed from “users” and “customers” to building a community
The Poolsuite website and brand are inspired by the 1980s, but they transformed their base from users and customers to building a community.
Poolsuite sold its first membership NFT in late 2021 for 0.2 ETH that includes digital products and access to real-life events.
All 2500 available tokens sold out in just 40 minutes.
These Poolsuite NFTs act like a club membership for the brand's biggest fans, offering special benefits like early access to exclusive events along with preferred rates and benefits at exclusive hotels.
They offered 3 different membership tiers:
Tier 1: Patron tier (one of a kind card)
Holding the one-of-one Poolsuite Patron card signifies “elite internet status” and crowns the owner as the one true patron of the Poolsuite organisation.
They receive first access to future drops and benefits. I couldn’t find who currently owns this NFT but they clearly get first dibs at everything Poolsuite offers in future.
Tier 2: Executive Member “Your pass to the Internet Good Life”
Executive members gain access to exclusive events, along with other perks such as a “bespoke premium” version of Poolsuite’s website & app including a custom theme, extra features and an exclusive “Ritz Foyer” playlist.ratio, along with merchandise perks.
Tier 3: Pool Member “For Distinguished Guests”
This card was offered to “friends and partners” of the Poolsuite community. Perks include receiving early access to future Poolsuite products along with premium access to their Poolsuite app.
They continued to provide “value” to their members by launching new projects that were exciting and innovative.
Take Manor DAO for example:
“Inspired by the Chateau Marmont, Hotel Il Pellicano, Pikes Ibiza, and Hotel Costes, our mission is to usher in the next legendary guesthouse. Striking in both its architecture and revolving door of ECLECTIC GUESTS – the Manor will serve as a playground to countless creative and recreational escapades, sure to be divulged in many a tell-all memoir for decades to come.”
Very on brand with their previous offerings, yet continuing to push the boundaries to offer their members exciting new offerings.
In 2023 Poolsuite collaborated with Ralph Lauren to offer their members access to the “Grand Leisure Club”: where members can create their own customised avatars with Ralph Lauren fashion upgrades (that look insanely good) along with the ability to gain entry to a private party at a Miami estate.
What they could do next…
Poolsuite continue to innovate and given their track record of producing high quality projects that are always in line with their strong branding, I do not doubt they will continue to innovate.
I would like to see more of an “online poolsuite community” being built. Their community experience focuses heavily on events to connect their members. Their NFTs online still have some sales (although along with many NFTs, has slowed down substantially).
They have a Telegram channel but it’s just for announcements. I believe there is a LOT of opportunity for them to innovate and provide their community with the best online experience possible.
Key learnings to apply to your own community
There is no “one path” to building a community.
Provide people with incredible and unique experiences that push the boundaries - there is no other community like Poolsuite
Consider membership tiers that are in line with your community goals
Don’t be afraid to innovate and experiment with new technologies, platforms, tools and concepts.
This week’s observation
Know your audience before you pitch your community to them
In this week’s newsletter, I wanted to share with you an interesting observation.
As I was browsing Reddit, I noticed a community builder had posted in several different Reddit communities with a call to join their community.
They were clearly trying to raise awareness about their data community and have members join.
I definitely understand how hard it is for a community builder to "get the word out about your community” plus constraints with time and budget mean a lot of builders will cut corners at this stage.
But you run into danger of upsetting members in a current community if you don’t approach this stage right.
This community builder’s post was actually pretty decent. It included details about themselves, why they started the community (purpose) along with info on who should join and how members would benefit. Solid info and including a TLDR at the start was another smart move.
However I noticed that they had posted this same info in several different Reddit communities - the exact same messaging, just in different Reddit communities.
The reactions by members were VERY DIFFERENT in the Data Engineering Reddit community compared to other communities.
“Why not doing that in the open here instead of a gated community?
It seems this community is quite active and doesn't have notable moderation issues (as far as I know).”
By posting about a new community in this “solid” community - members did not appreciate the feeling of being “solicited” and would have preferred to keep things in their own community.
These were polar opposite reactions tp other communities where members had indicated interest in joining and were happy to have been informed.
My advice to community builders is: “Know your audience before you pitch your community”.
If the community is solid, then you want to make sure you tailor your approach differently.
You should get to know a few members in the community more first, and explain how your community could “collaborate” with them in future - or perhaps offer a “guest webinar” etc instead.
I would definitely advise community builders to avoid copy/pasting their callouts to different communities.
If you are time poor it’s a more effective approach to properly target fewer communities - understand who they are, what targeted approach would work best and then focus on those instead.
Do you agree? Tell me on Twitter. And if you have a community building question, feel free to reach out. Your question may be answered in a future newsletter (and I’ll reply to everyone who asks).
Until next time,
Carmen
Community Coach
P.S - Once I reach 100 subscribers I’ll be selecting 5 community builders at random to offer a free mentoring session with me. We will go through your community together and discuss any current challenges, what improvements can be made and advice I can offer.
To get there faster I’d appreciate if you could share this newsletter with your network or anyone you think would benefit from reading this content!
Reply