Breaking the ice in the community

Every community manager has a motherly instinct irrespective of gender, just like how a mom would wait for her child to utter their first word and find unfathomable joy in it. Here, a community manager finds that in the first post or comment of the member.

But, imagine if it’s a complaint. This does break any community manager’s fantasy but, the state of mind does not change. To make the members open up and converse, a community manager works both strategically and tactically.

How do you build a strategy for members to open up?

1. Know Your Member

• Do you know who your first cohort members are?
• What data have you used to make them your first cohorts?
• How are their presence and activity like?
• Has anyone from your team spoken to them previously?

2. Talk to your members

• Interview your potential first cohort members
• Understand their sense of liking
• Set the expectations right when it comes to community
• Have a clear and defined messaging so that the purpose aligns
• Prepare a questionnaire that will help you track their interests and ideas

3. Connect

• Create a sense of connection with your members
• Build rapport with the members to understand their conversation triggers
• Connect to understand their lifestyle, culture, and habits so that you can make the community a better place for them

4. Document everything you did

• Document all the member conversations
• Document the questionnaire answers shared
• Document the takeaways you have had post your conversation
  with each of your member

5. Align your goals

• Connect data and conversations with the members
• Identify a pattern around interests, likes, lifestyle, triggers
• Match the identified pattern with your strategy

The tactical approach

• Create your ice-breaker conversation templates based on the pattern identified
• Your ice breakers should be based on the type of members you are talking to as well
• Keep ice-breakers for days that show less engagement and for new members to open up
• Keep a day for peer to peer ice breaker sessions
• Recognize frequently participating member

Breaking down how to prepare ice-breakers

Community member: Women entrepreneurs in India
Location: Metro Cities of India
Age: 35 - 45 and above
The pattern observed via conversation and questionnaire: Love to talk about self-improvement, Tricks, tips, Solving problems around lifestyle and health.
What members expected: Feel empowered, recognized, and belonged to women like them

Result: Naturally inclination to participate in the conversation

It may look like a small question that garnered maximum engagement or low engagement. But, a community manager goes through this process to understand the audience more than just increasing engagement.

Takeaways

• Ice-breakers are to set and create an amicable environment for members to open up
• It is not solely meant for engagement. It is meant to understand community members and make their life easier for a good head start in the community
• Good ice-breakers will improve peer-to-peer connect if they find commonality
• Interesting ice-breakers can make members come to your community every other day