The 5 biggest benefits of paid Slack communities
In just one year, Slack had half a million active daily users. That’s a rocket-speed kickstart that would have any Silicon Valley tycoon drooling. But the whizzes behind this growing mobile and desktop app aren’t the only ones benefiting from its ubiquitousness; business owners and marketers around the world can harness the power of Slack’s real-time, rich communication platform to develop paid communities and grow their business.
When it comes to forming a private digital network, Facebook and LinkedIn groups are old-hat. Slack communities offer many of the same benefits of these other social networks — they’re private and allow users to bring their IRL identity into the digital world — but offer a slew of advantages over them, too. Here are just a few of the benefits of paid Slack communities.
Get paid for your time
As any small business owner can tell you, managing a private Facebook group is a labor of love. Between starting conversations, policing comments, and managing participant lists, there is a serious time investment involved in developing a community. Charging members to join your community reimburses you for your valuable time investment, and ensures that you can continue to invest the time it takes to keep your community great.
Keep out the riff raff
We’ll just say it: Every group has its trolls. While private communities can avoid many of the pitfalls of public forums, there are still plenty of members who join and never participate, making active participants feel like they’re speaking into an empty room. By charging customers to join your Slack community, you can be sure that only members who will participate and add value will join.
Have deeper conversations
Slack conversations trump traditional social media in a multitude of ways. As the folks at Buffer have explained, Slack drives high engagement because it’s a real-time conversation as opposed to a comment-and-notification forum. “There’s a sense of fun and support you get on Slack that can be tougher to achieve when there’s a lag between posting something and getting a reply.” This is not even to speak of the richness of Slack’s conversation media: add notes, create channels, and tag content for people to easily find later. (Did we mention emojis and gifs? Yeah, there’s plenty of that, too.)
Go everywhere
Slack has done a remarkable job of producing both desktop and mobile applications that keep people engaged no matter what device they’re on. With Slack, you genuinely can connect with your community whether they’re at the office, on the train, or standing in line at the grocery store. Other social media platforms can’t compete with Slack’s superb performance across devices.
Capture your community’s attention
Pure and simple, there’s less competition for participants’ attention on Slack. While Facebook and LinkedIn are optimized to show the viewer more “stuff” — exposing them to more advertisements along the way — Slack’s one goal is to keep community members engaged in conversation. Your community won’t encounter ads, popups, or distracting kitten videos while they’re engaging in your group.
Whether you’re considering taking your business’s service digital in the form of a Slack community, or you want to establish a brand new community of enthusiasts like you, paid Slack communities are a surefire way to make sure your community will be engaged and productive.
We’re building SlackPass, which lets you easily create paid channels for premium content within your existing communities. Check us out at https://slackpass.io or drop me a line at tucker@slackpass.com!
Best,
The SlackPass Team
