Hiya! Happy weekend.
A lot is going on in and around us as individuals and as community professionals, donāt stop reaching. I love to tell my friends āwhen you feel tired, rest but donāt give upā. Rest, recharge, get back on your feet, and donāt get caught up in overthinking.
Iām rooting for you!
Today letās talk about Onboarding
Regards onboarding, I have just 3 words for the entire process - keep it simple.
Yes, you can make it fun and interactive depending on your brand archetype but in all let it be simple.
If your onboarding process is a hassle or takes forever, potential members might bail before they even join in.
The idea of onboarding is to;
1. Screen the people joining; and/or,
2. Get people around once they are in the community
1. Screening
Unlike some communities which can be open to anyone whoās interested, some communities gatekeep (control access to the community). The reason is to ensure that they have the right persons who actually care and want to be there.
To screen potential members, you can use a registration or signup form with relevant questions to really hit the mark and find your ideal members. Also, if your community platform has functionalities that enables questions like Facebook groups, then youāre in luck.
The very first community I built and managed in 2020 made use of this process with a Facebook group. The community was for a very specific audience so we included some questions for anyone requesting to join, along with some guidelines for approval. If someone couldnāt provide answers to the questions or if they didn't belong to our target audience, we turned them down ā. However, if they answered everything correctly and met the requirements, they were accepted into the community ā
In all, just remember to ask the basic and important questions to help you pick your ideal members.
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2. Now, for getting people around the community once they are in.
This differs for different platforms but still KEEP IT SIMPLE.
When someone joins they should be a seamless flow that doesnāt leave the person lost or frustrated. Don't overwhelm them with too much information- figure out the most important thing you want them to do after joining and highlight that. As they become more familiar with the community, you can gradually provide more details over time.
Most communities onboard their members with email series. It can be a 3 or 5-day email series, whatever works.
And finally, depending on the platform you host your community, ensure that is easy for new members to navigate and where you have to drop some industry jargons and use simple navigation slugs, do so.
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Other in-betweens of onboarding;
- A personalized or general but fun welcome message. This is where you can share how to get started, where to go, etc. Remember to keep it simple and straightforward.
Extra tip: If you can, try a 1:1 welcome video for each members or have a group call for all new members to connect with each other. Iāve heard a lot of CMs swear by these methods. It wonāt always be convenient but itās effective.
- Make sure your community guidelines are easily accessible and visible. You can link to them in your welcome message or have them in a prominent place in your community.
- Create an 'introduce yourself' channel, post or thread that encourages new members to introduce themselves with an icebreaker.
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Got any ideas to share? Comment below so others can learn from it
Got questions on this topic? Hit reply!
Things to check out!
A great advice and approach on how to job hunt community-related roles
Rosie Sherry reminded us to keep going this week with this diagram explaining the look of things in the community industry
An engagement hack you should try
Spotlight on a mobile game community hosted on Facebook
If you have any questions about anything or are stuck with something at work, Iāll be glad to help you in any little way. Answering questions and figuring things out with others is always a great idea generator for me and we all get to learn as well.
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