Nurturing Your hello Community

Best practices for increasing engagement, growing membership, and building your community culture.

The first few days following the launch of a community are always exciting times. You’ve finally planted the community of your dreams — a place to share what you love — in the hopes that like-minded people will discover and join your adventure!

Like any young project, now is a great time to learn how you can maximize your community’s potential by learning simple practices that grow your membership, increase engagement, and foster your community culture. And believe us, it can make a world of difference!

Below are 6 simple, but often overlooked, tips for creating your successful community.

Revisit your community description.

While often overlooked, your community description is critical for telling new members about the purpose of the group and the types of jots to share. Take a second to revisit your description and see if there are ways you can better communicate your vision and expectation with members.

Foster a community culture.

Set the tone for how you would like members to interact by modeling good behavior. Play nicely, stay positive, and acknowledge members who contribute above and beyond; you can send them a gift, announce a “jot of the week” for your community, or even create your own “member highlight” interview with a dedicated jot.

By letting community members know that they are valued and appreciated, you’re bound to create a positive community culture that will keep members coming back, interacting, and sharing great content.

Be a conversation starter.

Engage your members, and other hello users, with thoughtful questions, feedback, or insight. Whether you’re commenting on jots or joining a message board discussion on a community, the more you have to say, the more connected you’ll become with your community and potential new members.

Research and get inspired.

Be the first to know and share. During your free time, dig for interesting things your community will enjoy by gathering inspiration from sources you commonly follow: magazines, blogs, newspapers, etc. The more unique information, stories, or topics you can share with your community, the more your community will stand out from the others. Just be sure to give credit if you share work that is not yours.

Post well and post often.

Set the standard for your community by sharing quality jots. You don’t need to be the world’s greatest photographer or poet, but spending a little extra time to make your jots better goes a long way. Plus, it’s great for grabbing the attention of people interested in joining your community.

Another thing to consider is that jots you share to your community should align with your community description and vision. If the jot doesn’t seem to make sense in your community, be sure to share it to the correct persona instead!

Don’t be afraid to moderate.

We’ve all been there… someone posts a jot in your community that makes little to no sense, but we’re too afraid or considerate to let them know something is wrong. The best approach is to leave a comment and let a member know that you appreciate them sharing, but that they should keep in mind the community is for sharing XYZ.

We also recommend removing the jot from your community by tapping the triple dots below the jot (removing a jot will not delete a jot and they will not receive a notification). Removing an irrelevant jot is important for keeping your community on-topic and interesting for potential new members. We’ll be covering more of this in our next Medium post, so don’t you worry!

Still have questions for us? Maybe some feedback or suggestions for the app? Shake your phone to get in touch with us, or email feedback@hello.com!

Next read: Moderating Your hello Community