Smarter ways to engage your community

Welcome to the Community Coach newsletter, a value packed read
for community builders who just want community tools (and members) that talk to each other.

In this filled to the brim newsletter…

• 📚 Community 101: How to get engagement right from the start
  

• 🤖 This platform PAYS YOU to host your community events
  

• 🎱 Raise awareness about your community with this free directory
  

• 🔥 Inspiring community builder Elle organises the ultimate IRL “walk and talk” events and is already expanding to other US cities

• 👋 Answering your questions: “How can I avoid trolls?”

Community 101: Engagement right from the start

Knowing what your members actually want is key to higher engagement.

Have your members fill in an application form BEFORE they become a member.

I mentioned this in my previous newsletter on how to properly onboard new members.

Pay attention to the answers in their application form and make sure you deliver them whatever they are looking for as soon as possible after they join your community

Think outside the norm

It’s not just about writing posts, adding to the live chat and hosting events.

That’s great if that’s what people actually want in your community, but you can go beyond that.

Here’s some great examples of how to go beyond the norm to encourage engagement - shoutout to Nityesh who wrote this piece “9 low-effort program ideas to engage your community”.

This community platform PAYS YOU to host your community events

If you’re looking for more ways to monetize your community, this may be one for you.

Guild helps connect brands to sponsor hundreds of relevant communities globally. Communities get payouts through being sponsored by these brands.

Instead of waiting for a brand to DM you to offer to sponsor your community events, you can be more proactive and try using Guild instead.

You can host IRL events with a waitlist based on venue capacity, Online events without limits, or hybrid IRL & Online Events.

You can save presentations/recordings of events on their platform for your community to access later too.

It can also help to raise awareness about your community - Guild encourages collaboration across communities and the ability to cross promote.

It’s still early days for this platform. I tried to create a Guild to test this out and it was relatively straightforward but the UX could improve and you can tell this platform is a “work in progress”.

Currently you can connect your Stripe account to monetize, plus Slack (Guild will post event details in your Slack group) along with Meetup.

Word’s still out on whether this platform will really take off - but I have seen community builders already starting to get paid hosting their events, so that’s something to celebrate.

Raise awareness about your community with this online directory

One way to raise awareness is to have your community listed on relevant online directories.

I recently found the Hive Index and had to share it with you.

The Hive Index is one of the better community directories I’ve seen, with over 3800 communities listed and the ability to filter by topic/platform/community features.

If you have a community hosted on Discord, Reddit, Slack, Telegram or Facebook - consider adding it to Hive index.

You can list for free with the option to upgrade if you think it’s necessary.

The Hive Index also provides average traffic stats which are very useful.

I would highly recommend even starting with a free listing and having at least one community member review to increase your traffic stats.

There are some requirements to be hosted on the Hive index: you must have at least 10 active members, must not promote NSFW or violent content, must have features that consider you a community (forum/chat) and your community has to be related to some of the Hive directory topics already in their directory.

Inspiring community builder
Elle Beecher - The Boardwalks

You KNOW you are an amazing community builder when you see people show up to your IRL events RAIN or SHINE.

The concept: Bring curious people together to walk 5 miles and brainstorm with 2 hours of organic and unguided conversation - topics are provided to help aid conversations. These walks started off in Austin and have expanded to SF - with more cities to be added soon.

The builder: Elle Beecher who founded this community LOVES the walks and the people who turn up every week. Passion is key when building a community and it is very obvious - check out Elle’s tweet below:

Key learnings to apply to your own community

Establish “ground rules” right from the start

Here are The Boardwalk’s ground rules that apply to every walk:

#1: Get ready to brainstorm!
#2: Be curious, kind and open-minded.
#3: Find two-way flow.
#4: Float with purpose.
#5: Come with insights, not agendas.
#6: Romance is not in the air.

They are prominently displayed on their website with further details for each rule. Highly recommend you check out those ground rules - they are written with personality, tied in with their overall community goals and unique branding. I would award a gold medal for those community rules.

The ground rules are further mentioned at the beginning of each walk along with topics to be discussed - a great way to “kick offs” these events.

Be consistent and keep things simple

The events are hosted at the same time and day, once a week.

“Join members of The Board every Saturday at 8 AM.
Rain or shine. Since July 2022.”

Also - this is a simple concept. There aren’t any “fancy community platforms or tools” involved.

This is “old school” community building - using online methods to connect people offline, and it can work beautifully.

By keeping things simple you can focus more on delivering an amazing experience for your community.

Don’t be scared to keep things simple - especially at the start.

Ensure the community events are a safe space

“The Board Walks are a thoughtful environment for conversation to flow and fresh insights to bloom. Please contact your walk hosts if anyone is not following our Ground Rules. “

It is important to have ways for members to “report inappropriate behaviour” - this applies to online and offline communities.

Make people “work” to join the community

There is an application form to join the walk.

The form ensures everyone understands the ground rules before attending a walk along with finding out other important details such as how they found out about the community…

It also helps Elle determine where most of these members are finding out about the community - and can then double down on these platforms/tools later on.

Add as much value to community members as possible

Community resources are created that add more value to members beyond the walks - such as this guide to how to get the most out of life in Austin.

Ask for community “testimonials/reviews” and feedback

Elle does this via the “walk stories” form asking people to share their experiences from past events. These stories can be shared on the website later along with on social media.

Answering your questions

“How can I avoid trolls turning up to our online events?”

If you have ever had a troll turn up to your event (usually online) - then you know this is NOT a fun experience for a community manager.

I still remember my first experience dealing with trolls and the utter shock at first at having to deal with it on the fly whilst trying to ensure the community wasn’t impacted by the disturbance.

This memory came rushing back when I read this community builder’s question (who was new to the community building world) and was struggling with trolls turning up and ruining their online events. They were finding it disheartening after putting in a lot of effort prepping their events and trying to ensure their attendees had a great experience, only to be ruined by “uninvited guests”. They were currently posting their online events on meetup publicly including the zoom links to join.

Posting your event links online will definitely open you up to trolls.

I’ve spent years trying to reduce the number of trolls that turn up, and have found the following tip has helped to greatly reduce them overall.

TIP TO AVOID TROLLS: Know what information should be “open” and what should be “gated”

Open content: You want as many people to know about your community and who should join. This information can be public and “open”.

Examples would include creating Tiktok videos, posting on Instagram, Youtube videos, your website content, Tweets etc.

Open content should encourage the right people to turn up to your event in the first place.

Gated content: The gated content is things that you should be more guarded about. This includes event links, access to your private community, any community resources etc.

To gate your events and community, you should create an application form for new members: who are they, what days/times/timezones/their availability etc and why they want to be a part of your community, along with any other important questions.

Request their email address or a way to contact them about your events, along with determining that they are indeed a “real person”.

Then you can add this application form to any of your “open content” along with your event pages. Instead of making your event links “public” to start - you are gating this information to try and avoid trolls being able to easily enter the room.

In my experience the application form helps you remove 99% of the trolls as they won’t bother taking the time to do this step in the first place.

Got a question for me? DM me on Twitter and ask away. 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.

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