Check these three easy community management to-dos off your list and set yourself up for community success.
May the fourth be with you… This month, we’re channeling our inner Jedi to get three community tasks checked off our list. If you’re not familiar with Star Wars, Jedi are trained to maintain peace and justice in their universe, just like Community Managers in their communities! Among their many expectations and responsibilities, Jedi are required to render aid and provide support. Outside of Star Wars, JEDI is becoming a common acronym for Justice, Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion. Here are three quick ways to use Jedi ideals and better your community in May.
1. Render Aid: Get Member Questions Answered
Our Community Manager Mary Emma Gary does an excellent job of assisting members of The Network when they need help. Of course, depending on the nature of your community, you may want to let others help before jumping in, which is great! It’s good practice to make sure every question is answered, so ahead and query through your community. Have comments or questions been left without a response? Fill in those gaps to make sure every member feels heard and helped.
Mary Emma’s pro tip: “understand member goals when they ask for help, and to be willing to outsource answers since being a CM doesn’t automatically make you a subject matter expert.”
See more tips for putting your members’ needs first here.
2. Provide Support: Establish a Solid Onboarding Process
We’ve preached the importance of onboarding time and time again, but it really does continue to benefit members long after their initial entrance into the community. A great onboarding process will provide resources to refer back to, introduce members to like-minded peers, and establish a supportive relationship between the member and the Community Manager.
Kelly Schott explains in detail five best practices for onboarding new members in this webinar: Identify a member journey, personalize the experience, nurture growth, celebrate and feature, and involve the large member base. If you don’t have a solid onboarding process, make this month’s task to engage with the webinar and brainstorm what you can implement. If you are looking to improve your onboarding process, take Kelly’s advice and integrate one or two practices in May.
3. Improve Your Community’s JEDI Efforts
You’ve heard of DEIB but have you heard of JEDI? A fun acronym for justice, equity, diversity, and inclusion, but highly important to implement in your community.
Ashleigh Brookshaw, M.A. gave us great insight in her episode of Lessons from The NEW Community Manager Handbook. She outlined 3 tips for creating safe and inclusive community spaces:
- Take a look around. When you start to think about building space and inclusive community spaces, think about your organizational tone and culture? Use these conversations and reflections about DEIB as an opportunity to define it for your community through programming and governance or align the community tone and culture to the organization.
- Ask (better) questions. The best way to get the cultural pulse of your community? Ask them. “If you’re not doing regular surveys or check-ins with users, take the time to do so. Ask questions about culture, targeting the elements of Diversity, Equity, Inclusion, and Belonging to see if users find programming relevant. How can we be delivering better content? How do you feel about our community?”
- Build a Support Coalition. Any role at any organization that incorporates a focus on Diversity, Equity, Inclusion, and Belonging is a very energy-intensive job. You can’t build safe and inclusive spaces if you don’t already feel like you belong and are valued. Make sure you have a supportive environment of peers and executives.
You can read more here and get started on these community tasks!
