Good AI vs. Scary AI for Community Builders

Welcome to the Community Coach newsletter, a value packed read
for community builders celebrating Beehiiv raising $1 million in hours via their “community round” (series B). Early users were given the chance to become angel investors.

In this newsletter…

• 📚 Community 101: Generate decent content for your community
  

• 🤖 Scary AI - the horror of fake engagement taking over
  

• 🎱 Good AI - Superhuman AI can help you respond to emails 2x faster
  

• 🔥 Inspiring community builder: These board game cafes are building community beyond serving food & drinks

• 👋 Answering your questions: “How do I deal with a disgruntled member spinning off their own community to compete with ours?”

• 👩🏻‍🏫 I’m offering 5 readers each a free mentoring session with me! Reply to this email and tell me what challenges you are facing with your community. I’ll be choosing the lucky 5 within the next few weeks.

Community 101: Content strategy

Let’s start with the basics. To understand what content would actually be helpful to your community, you need to go and talk to your members.

The insights from talking to your members is incredible intel that you can then use to draft out your content strategy.

You should also determine if content is the most important aspect to your community members.

There could be something else that is higher on the priority list to add value to your members, such as:

• Looking to connect with other members in the community

• Looking to collaborate on a project with other members

• Looking for advice from more experienced people in the community? (which you can do via content too, but perhaps you change the angle of WHO writes/distributes your content).

Try to avoid making assumptions and go ahead and talk to the people in your community, listen carefully and deliver what they're looking for.

Now let’s assume you have figured out the actual content your members are looking for.

When I create content for building communities, I like to think of content fitting into these buckets. Content that:

• Educates

• Entertains

• Encourages (connections)

Try a combination of the above when developing your content calendar. Note your content could actually fall under two to three of these buckets (but they don’t have to).

Educational content can be created by you, your team, company, ChatGPT (being real here, I see community managers using it more for content!), and bonus points if you can get community members to create the content and share.

Entertaining content can be found by browsing Tiktok, Twitter, anywhere that shares memes etc and look for trends that you can work with/ relate to your community

Encourages connections: Polls, questions, “unpopular opinions”, quests and games etc - this content helps your community members get to know each other better.

Magicreply.io is faking engagement 

There’s a new AI tool in town and it’s terrifying (especially for community managers).

A tool called Magic Reply creates comments to reply to posts on Twitter and LinkedIn - instantly.

Their tagline: “Generate human like replies using AI with a single click.”.

I definitely do NOT encourage using a tool like this, but it’s important we take a look at what’s going on.

How it works

The tool states that that the replies do not look AI generated as they have a custom AI model that ensures replies sound human.

You pay $10 USD / month and then install their Chrome extension. Every time you want to reply to a LinkedIn post or Tweet, a magic button appears underneath (to the left of the Reply button).

Once you click the magic button - it instantly generates a response for you to reply with.

Why this is a huge problem

I was once asked by a client who was launching their own B2B community whether they should “fake” engagement at the start with fake profiles to encourage conversations with real members.

I was deeply against the move and I’m happy to say they decided not to proceed with that strategy (for the better).

“Fake anything” in community building will only result in its downfall eventually. This is just playing up to vanity metrics and/or the ego of the community manager.

The whole “means to an end” rationale will blow up once members realise there are fake people in the community (and they will find out).

You may already note there are so many “fake comments” already in social media. This is true - but tools like this are only going to make matters worse, and there is a real risk to this.

People are going to feel more and more jaded with online interactions if they are not engaging with real people.

They will pay less attention to comments which could result in lower levels of real connections happening online.

This is hugely detrimental to achieving the true goals of launching an online community in the first place.

I am passionate about building online communities. If AI tools for fake engagement increases on community platforms then I see this as one of the biggest threats to the entire online community ecosystem.

I am also an advocate for using AI to help community managers. I understand there is a fine balance here - you could use ChatGPT to help craft a response to a post - and I would be ok with that… but I believe there is a difference between a human actually reading the post first (and then formulating a response using AI to assist) vs. this tool that seems to be more focused on improving your (fake) engagement stats.

Tech needs to do more to ensure that fake engagement doesn’t ruin online communities.

Superhuman AI - respond to emails 2x faster

Ever wished you had an assistant who could help summarise your emails so you don’t have to read through entire email chains to catch up?

There’s an AI tool that auto summarizes every email. You will see a 1-line summary above every conversation. As new emails arrive, it updates instantly.

And if you want to see more detail, just hit expand.

You’ll always read the 1-line summary first and you’ll often not even need to read the entire email.

It will also help draft responses instantly (that you can review before sending!). This tool just helps you get through your emails a LOT quicker.

Currently supports Gmail and Outlook emails.

Cost: For 1 user: $25/month if you pay yearly, otherwise $30 monthly.

Inspiring community builder
Six Boardgame Cafes (Dubai)

The Six Board Game cafes in Dubai draws inspiration from the thriving board game culture of Toronto, known as “The Six”. The name pays homage to the six sides of a dice, the idea that everyone leaves work at six, and the nickname for Toronto.

This concept is dedicated to providing a unique and enjoyable board game experience - bringing people together and enriching their community - one game at a time.

But here’s where they go BEYOND with building community.

They have their own local newsletter (magazine) and they share their vision and concept (i.e. communicates their “purpose”).

The add value to board game enthusiasts with content such as which popular games they should try - whether on a date, in a group or getting to know new people.

They have ambassadors and their staff help you pick out board games and teach you how to play them.

Their physical space and experience is designed to encourage connections. Co-working spaces should take note!

• Warm and inviting hues were carefully chosen to infuse their cafes with a cozy, homely ambiance

• Thoughtful seating arrangements were integrated ensuring each table provides plenty of room for gameplay

• Lighting was meticulously selected to cultivate a relaxed atmosphere, allowing guests to completely engross themselves in their gaming adventures

• The serve comfort food to keep their gamers going

They also bring value to the broader community.

Their purpose goes beyond people playing board games - they are helping seniors in the community to wave off Dementia and Alzheimers (a very real problem in today’s society).

Key learnings to apply to your own community

• Know your purpose and communicate it well with your community

• Create valuable content for your members (goes without saying)

• Think through every aspect of your community - from design of the online or offline spaces, to how your team operates - and how it all relates back to the purpose of your community

• Consider delivering value to the broader community - go beyond your typical members and expand your reach

Answering your questions

“We have discovered a member in our private community has created a new community and has poached our members to communicate outside of our official community. We’ve been informed that this community’s sentiment is not positive. How do you manage negative sentiment in a space where you don't have access or have the power to respond & moderate?” 

Try to find out who started this new group/ leads this offshoot and offer to have a one-to-one meeting (ideally in person but if you can't then virtually is fine too). Come at it from a place of curiosity and a good place - ask them whether the current community was lacking in ways and/or why the Whatsapp group was started in the first place.

Offer as much as you can to placate the situation. Managing a community full time (especially if it's busy) is time consuming - so you can always offer to help in any way (and in doing so, hopefully gain access to the group).

I've dealt with community offshoots before and have managed to completely turn the entire thing around where those people who were "disgrunted" (who were actually more disgruntled with the company rather than the existing community) have become loyal active members - all because I took the time to hear them out, show that I really cared about their experiences and that I was keen to make things better for everyone. Good luck! 

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 - I’m now at 100 subscribers…! Reply to this email to let me know why you would be interested in a free mentoring session with me. I will be selecting 5 people within the next few weeks. We will go through your community together and discuss any current challenges, what improvements can be made and all the advice I can offer.

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