Creative engagement ideas for your community

Welcome to the Community Coach newsletter, a value packed read for community builders who must be innovative yet economical, optimistic yet realistic, practical yet creative.

This newsletter is all about focusing on the latter: how to be as creative as possible as a community builder.

In this newsletter…

📚 Community 101: Creatively engage your community

🤖 AI tool: Jazz up your stock images for free from talented AI artists

🎱 Where you have the most meaningful connections at IRL events

🔥 The rollercoaster ride of building the Ness Labs learning community

👋 Answering your questions: How to resolve conflict in a community

Community 101: Creatively engage your community

I love creative ways that help communities stand out. The goal is to delight and surprise your members. You don’t always need to spend money on expensive designers, artists and marketing execs. Some of these creative ideas don’t have to cost a thing (or at least won’t break your budget):

• Fine tune your community theme colours in line with your branding

• Include interactive games like community bingo in your events

• Get creative with your community swag (no more tote bags!)

Fine tune your community theme

If you can customise colours for your community- DO IT.

It’s a small detail but sets your community apart from others who keep the default settings.

If you run a Slack community, you can create custom codes that meet your branding colours. Here’s some Wes Anderson inspired slack themes for inspiration!

You can share your custom codes with your members (who then paste it into their Slack settings) and elevate their experience.

Community Bingo/ Interactive games during events

I’ve created community bingo cards in the past for an innovation community (members could play innovation buzzwords bingo at conferences and meetings - it worked well!).

This not only makes for entertaining content, but it can also help members attend more events you host if you gamify it.

Remember: people attend events (online and IRL) for various reasons - including to have fun. Experiment with adding a “fun” aspect to your future events and measure what happens to engagement.

Here’s more templates from an interactive experiences platform called Goosechase with ideas on how to include interactive experiences into your events/conferences.

Swag that’s on point

Recently in the Rosieland Slack community (by Rosie Sherry), Rosie shared an interesting concept of creating passports as Rosieland is a “land”. This image below was created using generative AI art tool Midjourney.

This got me thinking that passport holders with designs like this would make for pretty epic community swag. It’s not only a useful piece of swag (for those with passports anyway!) but it ties in well with the “Rosieland” concept.

Even if you don’t have a physical swag budget, you could create digital swag or even create your own animation video that can equally delight members.

I’m really obsessed with what @0xframer has been producing recently using AI to create these magical animations. You could do the same for your community members as a prize (with little to no cost) - the instructions on how to this are included in the tweets!

Lummi AI: WAY better stock images

As community builders we understand the power of a strong visual.

I’ve spent years trying to find decent stock images - I had usually deferred to pexels or Canva image stock to help with my graphics needs - until now!

I recently discovered Lummi - which as a new stock library of AI generated images (by really talented creators including Pablo Stanley!).

My usual test of tools like these is to try and see how “cringe” the photos look.

I typed in “fitness community” as a test to see what came back, and the first few results really surprised me (in a good way).

Firstly - wow! I was genuinely surprised to see a variety of people in the first few images with a completely different vibe to the usual stock image search.

In comparison, here are the first images shown for the same search using Pexels:

Don’t get me wrong, Pexels isn’t bad (there are worse stock image libraries out there!)- but Lummi feels like a breath of fresh air.

Besides the quality of the images themselves, what sets Lummi apart is the number of useful filters you can select. From categories to colours used, where you want the focal point to be, plus you can adjust the images for brightness, saturation, convert into duotones and flip the images in real time!

The images are not only free but they’re royalty free which is an added bonus.

Where do people have the MOST meaningful connections at events?

Ever wondered where your community members have the most meaningful connections with each other whilst attending one of your events?

According to the below video:

The WORST place for connections to happen is right when you walk through the door. People aren’t ready to connect yet.

The BEST place: Right after people get a drink/refreshment at the bar and turn around - ready to mingle.

This may seem obvious, yet there are so many IRL events that don’t “guide” people to have more meaningful connections with others.

It’s scary for many people to meet strangers and many genuinely don’t know how to do it.

Pro Tip: Once you register a guest for your event, instruct them to go to the bar to get a drink and then go to a designated place for them to go and mingle.

Have different designated places and direct people to meet others that they are attending the event in the first place to meet with!

Giving people a guiding nudge will help them make more meaningful connections

@renewedchapter

Who knew assessing your position at an event could be a game-changer? 🤯 Unlocking the Secrets to Success: 🚀 Dive into the insightful study... See more

Inspiring community builder
Anne-Laure Le Cunff, Ness Labs

Anne-Laure launched the Ness Labs learners community (focused on improving mental health and productivity) over 4 years ago and shares a very raw yet real account of the ups and downs when building and running a community.

I’m sure this will resonate with a lot of you and encourage you to read Anne-Laure’s tweet in full (shared below).

Some important points to note on what Anne-Laure has done well:

• Focused on things that don’t scale at the beginning: 3-4 online events per day, tons of conversations, countless DMs - all of these are way more effective using real people having real conversations (sorry AI, but bots and automated messages have not proven to be more effective… yet).

• Shares tons of value via a free blog: delivers gems to people without having to pay anything to give them a taste test of what Ness Labs is all about

• The CTA to join the community on the Ness Lab’s website is FIRE.
  The purpose for the community member is stated right up front - the “WHY” - (investing in your productivity and mental health).
  Then it’s the “WHAT” (“Join the Ness Labs learning community) and then the HOW (“online courses, workshops, 1:1 matching).
  Beautifully done.

Now on to the raw part: Anne-Laure was trying to build and run the community solo - whilst also balancing the realities of life, starting a PhD, writing a book etc.

The ball got dropped and this happens SO OFTEN as people underestimate what it takes to build and run a community.

As Anne-Laure mentions, a negative email from one of the community members turned out to be a blessing in disguise: a wake-up call to hire a community manager and strategize the best ways to add value to the community without burning out.

So many lessons here - highly recommend reading the tweet in full!

Answering your questions

“How do I manage conflict in my community?” 

I recently read a post by a fellow community manager who had responded to a member’s negative post on social media about their experiences attempting to join a community… and it blew up in their face.

This got me thinking: community managers are rarely taught how to resolve conflicts (especially online).

This is a topic where even the most experienced community managers can crack and struggle to deal with the ramifications of conflict in their community.

I’ve had my fair share of conflicts to diffuse - but because of this experience I must admit I not only understand the important of diffusing conflict but also the huge opportunity of building a stronger community if successfully diffused.

Here are some of my top tips to resolving conflict in an online community:

1. Don’t ignore it: it may be easy to think that that a post/ message/ comment will get buried under the noise of everyday life - however it sets the tone that you accept that kind of unresolved sentiment in your community (which you should not). Chances are even if one community member sees this has not been addressed they are going to think negatively about it. The first tip is to take note of the elephant in the room, no matter how uncomfortable you feel.

2. Take a moment to breathe and make sure you get the full context of the conflict/comment first: if the comment has made you feel emotionally charged, take a moment to step away and think through this from the other person’s point of view (even if you do not agree with it). It’s important that you have full context on the conflict before responding. If you do not - then make sure you get this first before publicly responding with your official response. Pro tip: to gain more time, respond publicly that you are aware of the conflict/comment etc, are taking it seriously and following up with individuals to properly understand the situation and will then follow up publicly later.

3. Figure out the best plan to ensure the conflict is resolved and how you will communicate this to the community: I find it helps to think of the broader picture, community house rules, how this conflict affects company values etc. This will help ensure you don’t respond to this on such a personal way yet ensure that everyone understands what is considered acceptable/unacceptable for your community. You’ll also want to plan how you will be resolving the conflict but make sure you take it SERIOUSLY and don’t underestimate even the smallest conflict. It will make a huge difference that you are taking people’s voices in your community seriously - that they are heard and that you want to ensure people feel safe.

4. IMPORTANT - Tone is EVERYTHING when responding: you want to make sure this response has high doses of empathy, does NOT sound like a robot (super important here that it doesn’t sound like an automated message as this angers people further) but also you must ensure a level of professionalism. I understand this may be harder said then done - use ChatGPT with some guidance on tone if you need help (and make sure to tweak the answer to sound as human as possible). If you’re unsure if your tone comes across the right way - make sure to send the messaging to a few colleagues first and have them read it. See how they feel afterwards. If they give you the go ahead then it’s ok to post your response. If your response if met with another negative response then I would be advising you to respond offering a 1:1 chat (even if it’s a second time!) to truly understand their situation and ensure there are no misunderstandings to get things resolved.

Hope these tips help. If you are dealing with a conflict and want some advice, feel free to reach out to me (you can just reply to this email).

Got another question for me? Reply to this email 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

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