#44 Your Membership Needs Community Features
This week I had a conversation with a friend who is developing a membership but said they "didn't want to have a community aspect because they don't want to manage all that" ... and I get it!
I mean, really, I do. Community management is SO much work.
But without community features, a membership isn't as sticky and you find yourself on a different hamster wheel ... the content hamster wheel.
People don't generally buy for community, but they do stay for it.
This week's newsletter is about how to include community features in your membership without creating a full-time manager role for yourself.
Before I tell you how to make these lightweight community features... let me explain why it's worth it.
You're going to learn SO much from the conversations happening in the community.
It is seriously a goldmine to help you develop what products to build next and how to improve what you're already offering.
Your members are going to be more successful.
They will go farther because they have the opportunity to connect with one another and learn from other perspectives and experiences.
It's important to create a space for more voices in the room than yours.
You are curating a space for people that are on the same journey and transformation and allowing them to connect and grow together is a huge opportunity for you to take advantage of.
Products that have community features are more sticky – meaning people come back again and again.
Networks are valuable – this is why people pay astronomical amounts to attend top universities. It's all about the human connection. It's like that saying, "your network is your net worth" ... you might find that cringe but unfortunately it's true... this is the world we live in.
When it comes down to it: Community features are going to help you retain your members and develop a more valuable membership.
Even the top content subscription platforms like Netflix have community aspects with events, pop-ups, and their development of Netflix houses. Not to mention all of their social content is very conducive of community flywheels that lead back to subscriptions on the platform.
Okay, I'm stepping off my soapbox.
Here are a few ways to create a small community feature within your membership that can have a huge impact:
Create a lightweight forum infrastructure. The more channels and areas you create for people to connect, the more handholding you'll have to do. Keep it really simple like 1-3 channels.
Leverage platform tools to foster connection. MemberUp has a feature called "Spark" that allows you to customize a pack of discussion prompts to be sent to your community every day. In order to see the responses to the prompt, you have to submit your answer. The gamification is effective.
Create a space for Q&A. Allow your members to ask questions in a dedicated space, then once a week jump in there and record a video answering questions. Make sure to set expectations that others can respond to the questions as well.
Allow members to opt-in for 1:1 matching. Use a 3rd party tool like Meetsy to connect your members to one another based on certain criteria so that you can foster connection without having to facilitate the groups.
Not all community features are a 20-channel forum space or connection call that you need to moderate or facilitate.
Spotify wrapped is a community feature! Spotify users look forward to wrapped at the end of the year, and they share their results proudly (well, some of us do...).
It makes the product sticky because, like our photo storage, it's capturing important data that we collect and share with our loved ones.
If you share your spotify wrapped every year and enjoy seeing what others share, this community feature makes it much less likely that you'd cancel and join Apple Music. It's a lifestyle choice.
Lastly, if your membership totally crushes it like you dream it will, and you want to expand your community features, then you can always hire a community manager. There are tons of amazing people looking for community work - here's a brand new resource to find them.
Moral of the story...
Don't skip the community features, it can only help you develop a better product and a stronger customer journey in the long run.
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