Community onboarding is more than a single event or series of communications—it’s a chance to reset, reaffirm, and re-energize your community with each new member.
Over the years, we’ve learned (sometimes the hard way) that how you onboard members sets the stage for the end-to-end community experience.
It impacts how members participate, how they interact with each other, and ultimately, whether your community is a place they’ll choose to spend their time.
Keep reading to learn:
- Why onboarding is key to creating a healthy community
- How to take community onboarding from “meh” to “heck yeah”
- Which onboarding pitfalls you should keep an eye out for
Better onboarding builds better communities
Everyone loves a warm welcome, and as the host of your community, it’s your job to make new members feel appreciated, informed, and connected.
But onboarding is about more than hugs and high fives.
It sets expectations, helps new members get comfortable, and models the behaviors you want to see in your community—all of which play an essential role in building and growing it.
Setting expectations
Every community has its own norms (and quirks!). Onboarding lets you lay out what’s expected of members and what they can expect from the community in return.
Besides driving home the purpose, values, and rules of your community (a code of conduct comes in very handy for that last one), onboarding allows you to walk new members through the best ways to connect with their peers.
When done right, community members know who to go to with questions (whether it’s you or other members who act as community liaisons), where to find information, and how to get involved.
Getting comfortable
Ever walked into a party where you don’t know anyone and stood awkwardly in the corner?
Onboarding allows you to familiarize members with your community. Members who feel comfortable are more likely to contribute—faster, more frequently, and with more vulnerability. They’re also more likely to respond to other members and share feedback (including difficult feedback) that will help you build a better community, product, or both.
It’s an opportunity to build trust with members and cultivate a feeling of ownership in them. It’s also the first step to finding champions who may go on to take a greater role in your community by doing things like organizing meetups, sharing helpful content, or mentoring other members.
Modeling behaviors
How you treat new members during the onboarding process says a lot about how they should treat others in the community.
This goes beyond your code of conduct, which establishes ground rules for participation. Onboarding offers a chance to set the tone for all community-based interactions.
If you want your community members to be friendly, inquisitive, and responsive, this is the perfect time to inspire them. Setting the example from the start makes it much easier for people to follow your lead.
Check out the video below to see how Common Room helps you welcome new community members automatically:
Saying hi is only step one
Community onboarding isn’t a one-and-done task to check off a to-do list. It’s a process that spans time.
We realize that sounds a little metaphysical. Let us explain.
Sometimes people confuse “onboarding” with “welcome message,” but greeting new community members is only one step of many.
Here’s what a more comprehensive onboarding process might look like:
Welcome
This is the first interaction. It’s your chance to say hello to new members, share must-have information and resources, and empower them to get involved. This message can be automated to be sent out immediately after a member joins your community.
Survey
After a day or two, once your new community members have had time to poke around and ask questions, you can reach out and take the conversation a level deeper. This is the ideal time to ask members about why they joined the community and what they’re hoping to get out of it (automated surveys make this a breeze). That way you can better personalize the remainder of the onboarding experience and make sure you’re delivering value to them.
Check out the video below to see how Common Room helps you survey new community members at scale:
Educate and enable
Now that you know your community member a bit better, you can reach out to them with helpful content that’s tailored to their interests. We usually recommend doing this 1-2 weeks after a member has joined. The goal here is knowledge-sharing—this is your opportunity to help members learn something new about your community, product, or industry, as well as give them an idea of the types of content people share in the community.
Check in
We’re big fans of sending check-in messages around 3-4 weeks after a member joins. These don’t have to have a specific objective—they’re more of a no-pressure reminder that your door is always open in case members have any questions or feedback. It’s a great way to let members know you’re invested in them and available to chat.
Re-engage
This one is optional and dependent on whether a new community member has gone quiet. If someone joins your community and quickly goes inactive for a month or more, it’s worth reaching out to see if there’s a reason why and, if appropriate, encourage them to come back. This is another instance where automated surveys can be very helpful, even if just to learn how you can improve the community experience for others.
Check out the video below to see how Common Room helps you automate community member re-engagement:
We all want to grow our communities, but it’s important to remember that a small and lively community is more valuable (for both members and your organization) than a large and quiet one.
That’s why we recommend paying special attention to metrics related to engagement and responsiveness. When you have a bird’s eye view of how people are engaging and helping each other, you can more easily spot opportunities to improve and make this a part of your onboarding process.
Stumbling blocks to sidestep
Community onboarding has a lot of moving parts and community professionals only have so much time in the day. That makes it easy to overlook certain issues or let things fall through the cracks.
Here are some of the most common onboarding errors we’ve seen (and maybe been guilty of ourselves from time to time):
Getting the timing wrong
There’s a thin line between engaging new community members and overwhelming them. You probably have a lot of information you’re excited to share, but it pays to space out your onboarding process so your outreach isn’t coming too fast and furious (you can use our timing sequence above as inspiration).
Failing to prepare
How you want the onboarding experience to go and how it actually goes are two different things—and sometimes they don’t line up. It's inevitable that new members will have questions or face challenges, and community teams often have limited headcount. Make sure you have the tools you need to get visibility into questions, complaints, or other issues—and a plan for how to respond.
Putting your needs first
Communities are mutually beneficial—they help you create value for your members and capture value for your organization. But it’s important to put your members’ needs first. If you ask for something, offer something in return. This “something” could be a useful piece of content or an introduction to a community member who works in the same industry and is navigating similar challenges.
Thinking one size fits all
It can be tempting to set and forget certain parts of the onboarding process, but it’s important to remember that every community member is different. They join for different reasons, they’re interested in different topics, and they’re looking for answers to different questions. While creating an ultra-customized onboarding experience for every new member might not be feasible, you can save time via automations and use it to personalize certain parts of the onboarding process (a multi-question survey goes a long way toward shedding light on how members arrived in your community and what they’re looking for).
Asking too much too soon
As new members join and settle into your community, be mindful of what you’re asking of them. While some community members are eager to hit the ground running and get involved, every interaction should be a value exchange. Coming on too strong too early can scare members off before they get a chance to contribute in their own way.
We don’t want to make community onboarding feel more complicated than it needs to be. But as people who’ve onboarded many community members over the years (and struggled with it at times), we think it’s worth pointing out why onboarding is so important to long-term community health and sharing the strategies that worked for us.
Saying hello to a new community member and pointing them in the direction of some educational resources is easy. Making sure your members have the knowledge, encouragement, and guidance they need to help your community thrive? That’s a taller order.
Whether you’re starting from scratch or revamping an existing onboarding program, we hope this is helpful to you.
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