10 Simple Slack Community Tips ⭐️ The Slack CM Newsletter Issue #4
Content for this week
- I need your advice
- 10 simple Slack tips for your community
- More community content
- Goodbye 👋
I need your advice🧐
Btw, this is not a sales pitch. I genuinely need your advice.
I'm building a tool that lets your community members save their favorite threads forever.
It's a way to create an always updated, member-generated, community knowledge base.
But I want to speak to you to understand how you would want this tool to look and work.
If you have 10 minutes for a short call, I'd appreciate it a lot! I can also give you early access to the tool once it's ready❤️
You can book in any time that works for you here.
Thank you❤️ Now let's get to the real deal...
10 Simple tips for your Slack Community
Building communities is hard, but these tips are simple.
They're simple improvements that you can implement today.
Tip 1: Onboarding messages from more than 1 person
Imagine going to a party with 1000 people and only the host says hello to you (aka the community manager).
That's clearly not enough to make you feel like you belong, right?
What if you got a welcome message from the community manager AND another one from the CEO? It’s what Revops Co-op does and their onboarding is top-notch.
Here's how you do it:
Step 1: Create an automated onboarding flow with Zapier. Here's a template.
Step 2: Ask one of your teammates to create their own free Zapier account and use that same onboarding flow there.
Bonus: Add a delay to your colleague's workflow so their message goes out a day after yours.
Tip 2: Organise Channels with Numbers.
Having an organized list of channels makes your community feel much cleaner.
With the #announcement channel on top and the #jobs & #feedback channels at the very bottom.
Sounds good, right?
Sadly Slack doesn't give you the power to organize your channels the way you want to. Channels get ordered alphabetically.
But there's a small hack.
Here's how you do it:
Step 1: Add numbers in front of your channels like this:
#00_announcements
#01_introductions
#02_general
Tip 3: A #wins channel
I've seen some great communities introduce a #wins channel for members to post their accomplishments.
It's simple and it works. People want to share their accomplishments, but they don't want to brag.
A dedicated wins channel takes the bragging aspect out of it.
It also helps members celebrate each other and start building bonds.
Here's how you do it:
Step 1: Create a #wins channel.
Step 2: Add a channel description that makes it clear that big AND small wins are appreciated.
Bonus: Seeing too many accomplishments of others can hurt a member's mental health. Just think of LinkedIn and all the "I'm happy to announce..." posts. If you put an emphasis on tiny wins you can reduce the mental strain. Set the example by posting something like: "🎉 Woohoo I took a no-phone break"
Tip 4: Tag members to answer questions
Ah, the age-old struggle.
Should I answer this question or should I wait for another member to answer it?
You don't want the person who asked the question to wait for too long, but you also don't want to be the only one responding.
This tip is simple but you can make it highly sophisticated.
Here's how you do it:
Step 1: Tag multiple other members that can help and answer the question.
Step 2: Trust yourself. As a community manager, you probably know which members can answer which questions. Trust in your instincts. 9 times out of 10, it will work out well.
Extra step: If you want to take it to the next level, you can create a spreadsheet with your members and their interests. That way you will always know who to tag.
Tip 5: Setting reminders to reply
You just saw a conversation that you should probably reply to but don't have any time?
No problem. Slack lets you create reminders to check back on threads later.
Doing this can help you deal with an overwhelming amount of messages.
Here's how you do it [Desktop version]:
Step 1: Hover over a message and click on the three dots on the toolbar (top right).
Step 2: Click on 'Remind me about this' and set a reminder time.
Here's how you do it [Mobile version]:
Step 1: Press and hold a message until a little window appears at the bottom of your screen.
Step 2: Click on 'Remind me' and set a reminder time.
Tip 6: Weekly Wrap-Ups
Do you know why curated blogs or newsletters are great? Because the authors look at tons of content and pick out the few gems.
You can do the same for your community members.
Keep them up-to-date on what happened in your community by highlighting the best conversations.
Here's how you do it:
Step 1: During the week, keep an eye out for highly engaging conversations. They're usually the ones with tons of replies from multiple people.
Step 2: Hover over the first post that started a thread and click on the 3 dots on the toolbar (top right). Click on the dots and copy the link to the conversation. Save that link in your notes.
Step 3: At the end of the week, highlight 3 top conversations.
Here's an example of a wrap up:
Weekly Wrap-up🎉
Heya community👋
Here are this week's top conversations.
Jon and Lisa spoke about the best community tools here: [Add link]
Kourosh and David discussed onboarding methods here: [Add link]
Akash and Dani started a long thread with pictures of our furry friends: [Add link]
Tip 7: Create Rituals
Helping your members check your community often is difficult. Rituals can help with that.
A ritual is a repeated, weekly activity that gets your members back to your community.
Here are some examples:
Every Monday, post your goals for the week
Every Wednesday, get on a co-working Zoom call to keep each other focused.
Every Friday, post your favorite article or piece of content that you found this week
Every Friday, keep each other accountable for the goals you set on Monday
Once a month, do a meet-up.
Once a month, do a book club meet-up.
Once every month, post your monthly wins.
Tip 8: Cohort onboarding
Does your community have an application process?
If yes, it's in your best interest to onboard members in cohorts.
The benefits are pretty straight-forward:
Instead of checking new applications as soon as they come in, you can dedicate a specific day and time to them. This helps you reduce context-switching.
You can dedicate your full energy to making new members feel as welcome as possible.
You can constantly change and test new onboarding flows on new batches of members.
Here's how you do it:
Step 1: Decide on a specific day and time for checking applications and inviting new members to your community.
Mondays are usually too hectic, but Tuesdays and Thursdays work well.
Step 2: Make it clear to new applicants that they will be added to your community on your chosen day.
Tip 9: Ask for Member Feedback ASAP
I see this too often. I join a community and I'm either never asked for feedback, or I'm only asked once I've been active for months.
This is bad.
If you only ask your active members for feedback, you will not know what doesn't work in your community.
Here's my hot tip: Add a delayed feedback message to your onboarding flow. Send that feedback message within the first 3 weeks of a member joining the community.
If you can nail those first 3 weeks of joining a new community, you're good.
3 weeks is enough for a member to get to know your community.
3 weeks is also enough for an inactive member to still remember your name.
Here's how you do it:
Step 1: Remember the Zapier onboarding flow from tip 1? I've modified it to include a 3-week delay and an extra step for you to add your feedback message. Check it out here.
Step 2: Here's an example of a message asking for feedback:
Heya [NAME],
You've been in the [community name] community for 3 weeks now🎉
Thank you so much for making this a better community.
I really want to help you make the most of this space, but I'll need your help with that.
Are you free for a 10-minute chat next week to speak more about your goals and what I can do to make this a better community for you?
If yeah, here's my calendar link: [Add your calendar link]
Looking forward to it🙌🏻
Tip 10: Keep it simple
This is an extra tip and more of a reminder.
It's better to do 1 thing extremely well than to be okay at 20 things.
All your members want is a community where they feel comfortable asking their questions, meeting others, and learning more.
Do you really need 10 different kinds of events, 2 newsletters, and 8 engagement tools?
Keep it simple for yourself and your members. Trust me. Everyone will have a better time.
Here's how you do it:
Step 1: Look at ALL your community initiatives.
Step 2: Ask yourself if you can cut that initiative to focus more on your core community.
Step 3: Be brutal about what to cut.
More community content
Internal Community Management Q&A with Shraddha Girdhar
How to Track Community ROI (From a Marketer's Perspective)
The Guide to Community Gamification
Goodbye 👋
Get this. This week I (randomly) spoke to 4 community managers who are going into product manager positions 🤯
This means that more companies realize what value a community mind can bring to product development.
Your community mind is going to have so much more freedom and resources to create value for all your people. Just be a little patient. I promise you'll be rewarded.
We're on a rollercoaster ride and it looks like the next few years it's all up for us.
With that, I bid you adieu and see you next time❤️
- Kourosh, the Waves guy🌊