Cornerstones of a Great Slack Community
I started joining public Slack communities when my company, Tettra, started providing wikis for these groups. It was a form of research. How do people find communities? What do they talk about? What type of shared knowledge do communities want to track?
Before long my light research turned into an intense interest. A community for support leaders? Sure! A community for community managers? Kinda meta, but of course! A community about Star Wars storm trooper costumes? Why not?!
I became a member of 10 different Slack groups. The ability to compare them side-by-side made the pros and cons of each glaringly obvious.
I recently spoke on a panel at a CMX event about Slack communities. It made me realize how much I had absorbed about these groups. I raved Slack as the ideal community platform, but also pointed out downsides and had takeaways about moderation. I decided to write up a post on what makes the best communities shine and how to leverage Slack’s strengths to foster a vibrant community of superfans.
Why Slack works for communities
Slack’s rise has been meteoric. I hindsight their success seems inevitable- they made worklives genuinely better by bringing the look and feel of a consumer app into the office. Slack found a way to take something critical to businesses, communication, and made it feel fun and fresh and easy, plus it was an inbox killer. “70% less email” is a phenomenal slogan, and the addictive experience made transitioning to a new system so seamless users forgot they were supposed to hate switching software.
Slack created rabid superfans from the businesses it served, which benefits communities instantly. Having so many users means many community members were already using Slack somewhere else, and those superfans brought enthusiasm to counter the doubt traditionally involved in a platform switch. Plus, users realizing Slack hosts communities have gotten to searching for communities to fit their interests, which helps communities founded on Slack to grow fro scratch.
The platform and the people combine to create a special experience when joining a new community. Inserting yourself into a group that already feels thriving and vibrant can be an interesting experience for new members. New members may anticipate a wasteland of dead conversations but instead are warmly welcomed by active users. All of this happens in real time, so those welcomes don’t have the delays of a forum’s email notifications. It’s real and tangible and completely in the moment.
Synchronous communication is Slack’s specialty. The plague of forums is in the delay. People have come to expect real-time notifications and instant feedback. The forum experience of posting, waiting, checking and waiting again don’t measure against the tolerance we’ve built up for the post and response loop.
What’s more important are the subtle changes in the experience of live chat. The difference in the experience lives in the grey areas. The amount of personality a person injects into a live stream of conversation builds a trust other platforms simply couldn’t. Instead of a prepared response, something calculated and rewritten, you get a stream of consciousness that shows off subtle hints about someone’s demeanor, tone, writing style, level of interest and much, much more.
That grey area becomes the difference maker for trust. I’ve met up with over a dozen people that I originally met in Slack communities. Asynchronous communication through forums and email don’t generate that trust that makes me rush to meet members in real life. The IRL experience is also that much better because I know what to expect and have already seen previews of the real life versions of those people. The conversational element of Slack will inevitably give you more material for small talk as well. Having that common ground smooths out in person meetings and lets you launch right into authentic conversations.
Something Slack does even better for communities than businesses is to create unique spaces for conversations. It’s structure allows communities to create new spaces so topical conversations can unfold naturally. A community in it’s early stages can have a few specific channels and slowly build things out as situations call for their own dedicated spaces.
It doesn’t have to be all business, either. Almost all professional communities I’ve joined have non-professional channels. Most have a #random channel, but I’ve even seen channels for hobbies, (#gardening), current events, (#topsportsplays), and even a channel to let support team members #vent about tough customer interactions.
Working for a member company of the Slack app ecosystem, I see tons of value in using apps from the app directory within community accounts. Apps can add organization, (Tettra, Mode), lighten the mood, (Giphy, Chuck Norris), or help people socialize, (Donut). Automation is a key component of many apps’ appeal. You can automatically stimulate conversation when things slow down or prompt new members to introduce themselves. The good news is there’s a thriving ecosystem to take advantage of, and Slack is investing in it to help build a wide variety of options.
What challenges Slack communities face
Admittedly there are elements of Slack that can make members miss the forum era. A common complaint is the always-on nature of things. I see international communities that literally never sleep. You just need to have a few active members in Singapore, Sydney, London, New York and San Francisco to suddenly have conversation around the clock. It can create a serious fear of missing out. It can also feel overwhelming to wake up to notifications about conversations that continued while you were away.
Conversations can also move so quickly that what’s relevant to you is washed away before you get a chance to speak up. It can be frustrating to miss weighing in on a topic of expertise, but it’s a worthwhile trade off for the upside of vigorous conversation.
The last serious challenge is managing growth. These communities tend to be made up of tech-savvy member with an interest in connecting. That means things can grow too quickly, especially if it’s rolled out to an existing group all at once. If you don’t have certain people take the lead and set the tone it can be the last time you hear from some of your members.
How the best moderators operate
Having seen many communities in action I can confidently say moderators are the single biggest differencemaker in the success of a community. Building a new community or moving it to Slack from another platform requires the moderator to act like a parent, a friend, a teacher, and a manager interchangeably. Moderators who understand the finer points of these skills can be the difference between a hosting a community people check in on occasionally versus a place they live throughout the day.
Letting the group members shine is an important duty. Users join these groups to discuss a common interest, not to marvel at the group founder’s knowledge. The best moderators hover in the background, starting conversations when things slow down, prodding a user with a good point to elaborate on or just to staying away to give others the space they need to have genuine interactions. They know when it’s more helpful to step in or step back.
A small amount of maintaining the peace can be necessary, though. It’s mostly a matter of redirecting conversations into specific channels or bringing conversations out of channels and into the light of the larger audience. It can, however, include restricting users or enforcing rules. Almost all community leaders seem to have a wiki with community guidelines, helpful resources and content contributed by community members. Good moderators get ahead of the potential problems by setting ground rules.
A thoughtful roll out is another important responsibility. I’ve realized that many communities have their own sets of ambassadors within the community. Wistia has certain employees assigned to monitor specific channels. Support Driven has a panel of it’s most involved members that serve as a sounding board for new channels and policies. The channel for those members is unrestricted, which allows new but enthusiastic members to get involved without having to be asked. Other communities have dedicated members that act like low level monitors and roam the system looking for places to contribute. All of these options can work as long as they’re done thoughtfully.
For communities doing a structured roll out leading with the ambassadors has proved most successful. After those ambassadors are live large communities moving to Slack will want to send invites in batches. Nobody wants to see 2,000 community members show up in one afternoon and ask the same question, “so what now?” Then again, I guess with Slack the chances someone comes in with that question are getting pretty slim. :)
Wrapping up
Great community moderators guarantee success by leveraging Slack’s benefits while using preparation and moderation to offset the challenges of an always-on platform. Community members just need to make sure to dive in without reservations, and to join multiple communities if they really want to understand best practices.
Ready to join a few communities? Here are a few of the best: