Guides
Warmly welcome new members by connecting them with your team
Time to complete: 5 minutes
You’ve probably been part of an online community where you were welcomed like this: As soon as you joined, you got an automated message the introduced the community and encouraged you to start participating.
Automated messages are great way to kick things off, but how do you actually get a community member to feel connected? One of the best ways to do this is by setting up an introduction between the new member and someone from your company
In this playbook, you’ll learn how to:
1) Find notable members who joined your community for the first time
2) Connect them to your team or other employees at your company
What does a good connection look like and why do they matter?
This could look like a DM chat with a community manager, a coffee chat with an engineer, or an invite to a discussion led by the product team. The connection itself looks different amongst different communities, but at its core, it’s a personal invitation for a member to connect more deeply with your company
By connecting new members to people at your company, you can expect to see the following outcomes:
- More empathy and connection between members and others at your company
- Less pressure on the community manager/team because there is less risk that they’re the only ones connected to an important member
- Higher likelihood that members will stick around and retain
Directions
Step 1) Create a list of notable new members that need connecting
- Go to the Lists tab in your workspace. Click Create new list. Add a name and a description. In this case, we’ll use the following:
Name: New Members to Connect with [Company Name]
Description: Connect our company employees with new members that joined our community for the first time.
Step 2) Auto-add members to your list
We will use a workflow to automatically add members who are new and notable to your list. To set it up,
- Go to the Workflows Tab. Select Add Member to List
- Set up filters for your workflow. We’ll use the following filters:
- For workflow step 2, choose your list from the dropdown. Then click Run Workflow. All currently matching members will be added to your list. Moving forward, only members that have not matched before will be added to your list each day.
Step 3) Send a message to connect a new member to a company employee
- Scan your list of new notable members and figure out which ones you want to connect with members in your community.
- If you’d like to connect the member, update their status to In Progress. Look at their Linked Profiles column to determine where you want to send your check-in message. Click on the icon you want. This will either take you to that site or copy their username so you can send your message.
- Our message will say something like this:
- After you send your message, update the member’s status in your list to Complete.
Hey! I’m Tony, the community manager at Orbit. I’m so glad you’re here and are taking this thing for a spin. I'd love to introduce you to the rest of the team because they’d love to meet you — to chat about the product, exchange strategy ideas, and just say hi! Would you be interested in a 15 min intro chat from someone at Orbit? Here’s our Calendly link if you’d like to schedule something
Next Steps
There are many ways that you can tailor the connections process to your community’s needs. Check out the resources below for more ideas:
- Warmly welcome new members by connecting them with your team
- What does a good connection look like and why do they matter?
- Directions
- Step 1) Create a list of notable new members that need connecting
- Step 2) Auto-add members to your list
- Step 3) Send a message to connect a new member to a company employee
- Next Steps