Providing a good experience to your community members should always be top priority. Scenes has put a lot of effort into building technical infrastructure that makes content tagging and searching easier. This makes it convenient for new members to find exactly what they’re looking for. It also adds to their overall experience. It’s important to remember that you will need to set up a few teams for your community. This will ensure that you community members are provided with quality content. If you’re just starting out, then a moderation, editorial and community team should be enough.
An important component of a community member’s experience is their onboarding. When we started using Discord, the platform was still branded as a streaming, chat service for gamers. The interface was difficult to navigate and we needed to have a guide to using it.
Since Discord didn't have a space for a Get Started Guide on the platform itself, we directed them to a separate landing page.
Btw, Scenes allows you to do this natively through static pages.
The secret to an evergreen community: The AHA Moment!
You want to spoon-feed your members till they get their AHA! moment. Once they find that, they'll come back for more. You want to direct them to places they would most likely find their AHA! moment. And get them there quickly.
The secret to building a happy community is customer experience. Always try to offer your community members a “seven-star experience”.
Imagine a situation where you’ve posted a question on a community group. You wait for hours, to no avail. Not a single person has responded to you. Such an experience can be quite embarrassing. This is why you need to make sure that someone from your team is constantly scouring the internet for answers to questions that are asked in the group. This is just one instance of how you can create a -star experience.
In today’s age, 5-star is the minimum standard for customer expectations. This is why it is your job to go above and beyond to impress them. Try to look for opportunities that will help you exceed the expectations of your community members. This will help you create a loyal and engaged community.
The concept of a 7-star experience was first introduced by Brian Chesky (founder of Airbnb). He has repeatedly mentioned the idea in his interviews. According to him, this is the key to you community-building effort.
Now, you might fall into the trap of relying on your members for feedback to create the 7-star experience. This can be a serious mistake because community members generally expect the bare minimum. They won’t be very good at telling you what a 7-star experience feels like. This entire initiative for improved experience needs to be driven by a founder or community team.
3 Hacks to provide this experience to your members:
Now that you have understood that your community members want to be treated like kings and queens, here are your next steps.
1) Provide exclusive community-only benefits
Humans are driven by incentives. If you provide your members with exclusive incentives, they are more likely to stick with you and recommend you.
What are these incentives?
For starters, let's say you provide your members with special discounts and promos or access to beta features in your product. You can also give them resources that can help with their growth.
2) Bring in experts to host live events
Experts can help you build authority in your community. People will now be flocking to your community just to get that opportunity to talk to people they look up to.
For example, if your community is focused on cooking, bring in the top chefs and host a kickass event.
3) Value the opinion of your community members
Ultimately, the community is run by your members. If they demand something which you can fulfill, don’t let this opportunity go.
If members think that you care and value their opinion, their experience in your community will improve a lot. This will also lead to a lot of referrals. If you want to know more about referrals, read this article.
No matter what happens, we need everyone who joins to feel welcome. Feel free to talk to us, if you want to know the secrets behind providing a great experience for each one of your community members.
