The ultimate guide to community communications

6 channels that help you connect with your members

Now that we’ve covered the types of content you need within your community, let’s talk channels and methods of communication. 

Social media

Many communities start on social as interest groups, or just an entire following of fans, like with Angelica Automates and her AI tutorials on TikTok.

Even when you bring that group of people to a separate community platform like Circle, there’s still lots of engagement on the social platform itself. 

Whether that’s responding back to fans and users on TikTok, “owning” certain hashtags on LinkedIn, or creating broadcast channels on Instagram, there’s lots of ways to bring (and keep) your people together–even on the wider social platforms. 

Email communication

Although many claim “email is dead”–it’s still one of the most used (and most persuasive/highly converting) channels out there. 

Whether you’re communicating to inform with newsletters and digests, or sending personalized updates (think anniversary congratulations, “we miss you” re-engagement emails, event reminders, or congratulations for reaching a new level of community leadership) with Marketing Hub, email is still an incredibly powerful way to reach people in a way that feels 1:1.

And–we’re the only community platform with built-in email marketing capabilities.

Here are the top 10 best ways to use email in your community communications with Circle. 

Video and audio content

Creators and brand leaders like Julie Solomon are deeply invested in webinars and live streams as a way to sell–but they’re also a way to get current members engaged and excited about new products, community rituals, and upcoming releases. 

Others, like Sean Cannell and Justin Moore, have used video and audio content (podcasts) both outside and inside their memberships to teach, connect, and support their students. 

Video content is also the cornerstone of online events–which are big opportunities for you to share knowledge, raise up community champions, and cross-promote with other businesses.  

Regardless of whether you’re more comfortable with video or audio content–you simply can’t deny its impact in connecting people online. 

And that makes it an incredibly powerful lever for communities to become effective at creating transformations and building supports for members.

In-platform communication

Depending on the platform you use for your community (ahem), you’ll have lots of “in-platform” opportunities to reach out to folks in your community.

Whether that looks like starting threads on discussion boards or forums, direct messaging members (automatically or manually), or offering live chat on calls or within community spaces–each use case has a channel. 

For example, in Circle, you can 

• Use built-in notifications to reach members when you post in spaces. 
• Use spaces as your billboard to announce community programs, feature specific members, ideas etc. 
• Email your community (or segments of members) and external contacts via Marketing Hub
• Automate DMs and emails with workflows, based on different triggers and moments in your member journey

Push notifications

What are push notifications? Those cute little pop-ups you get on your phone (or computer/browser).

Did you know you could use those to encourage community engagement, event attendance rates, and buy-in to up-sells, courses, and more?

Once the One Point Five community took a look at their Circle Analytics, they realized that 50% of their members accessed them via mobile devices. (The other 50% were on their browsers.)

They then decided to:

• Update their onboarding for the next cohort to include downloading the Circle app
• Increase their use of notifications to remind people about new videos posted to their speaker library, and for event reminders (which were previously only within the community and email)

If you’re thinking about a whole-scale way to stay top of mind for your members, keep reading to see how you can connect all these channels together with ✨strategy.✨ 

Communication strategies and workflows that drive action

Strategy 1: Increase course purchases

If you’ve just launched a new waitlist for a course, here are some touchpoints you can program into your communications calendar for the launch:

• Email and in-app announcement
• Webinar to promote a teaser of the course
• A personal DM to those who didn’t open your email
• Push notifications before your promotional webinar
• “Doors closing” email, direct message, and push notification in a staggered format (one 12-hours out, then 6 hours, then 1 hour to go!)

Strategy 2: Retain your members

Community manager, Michael, at ExitFive recommends to provide value according to the timetable of your “renewals”.

For example, if you have a monthly membership, you need to make sure members feel like they’re getting something valuable from the community–a resource, an event, a connection, etc–at least on a monthly basis to avoid them churning out.

That could be:

• A weekly digest in their email
• An event reminder in the community and via email
• A leaderboard position update in their DMs
• A tag on a “connection” thread to connect them with someone at a different company
• Tagging your most engaged members on social media stories (to make them feel seen and important)

Some communities rely heavier on certain channels of communication than others, and it takes time to “train” your members to check different places, so make sure that you’re obviously reminding them about all your value somewhere they expect to hear from you.

Strategy 3: Increase attendance at events

When we have a big announcement to make over here at Circle (i.e: we're launching a new workshop), we make sure to:

1. Post an announcement and send an email via Marketing Hub (in-app and email)
2. Add it to our welcome banner so it's the first thing people see when they open the community (in-app)
3. Add a reminder and link in the weekly digest (email)
4. Voice it over at the beginning/end of our weekly events (video)
5. If needed: DM specific people (highly engaged members, those who attended events previously, etc) using workflows

For events, the closer to the event you announce and remind members about it, the better. We found that posting the event 1-2 weeks before the scheduled time works well for RSVPs–and then a reminder the day before. 

It's in the combination of different methods that you get a good response. Sometimes members need to hear the same thing multiple times until they take action!

Best practices for communicating with your members

1. Be a Very Human Representative of your brand 

Your communications–emails, messages, community posts–should come from your authentic voice in a way that fits with your brand. You don’t have to be 100% polished, or pixel-perfect. You can experiment and have fun with it in ways that traditional marketing channels don't allow.

In creator-led communities, people are often here to specifically hear from those people, while in SaaS or customer communities, community managers are encouraged to bring in their own flair. 

2. Contextualize your comms

Think about this: What are your members doing when they hear from you? What’s going on in their lives? 

While you don’t want to err on the creepy side, you can infer that a member who's just posted an introduction is taking their first steps in the community–and might be more receptive to receiving an invite to an orientation event than someone who just used your support channel. 

When it comes to recurring and automated communications: try to map your key messages to key moments in the member’s journey. Onboarding, exploration, engagement, value creation, learning, etc. 

3. Repetition, repetition, repetition

There are very few members who will read every message, post, and comment. Some bigger communities have hundreds of posts per day, and multiple events per week. 

So your saving grace to getting through to people is to repeat yourself like a grandma telling the same old stories (in new ways). Especially when it comes to important messages, launches, or events? 

Double down to get heard.

4. Save yourself time by automating and triggering community workflows

Don’t treat AI as the enemy here. Automations, triggers, and workflows can really streamline community management for you–and you should be willing to explore how you can automate repetitive processes and minimize busywork that can be taken on by a computer. 

5. Use segmentations to reach the right people

With tags and custom profile fields (like locations, cohorts, promotions, or types of customer you target) you can slice your member base in many different ways and use these segments when you communicate with members.

For example: invite members with higher activity scores to special roundtables or VIP masterminds; encourage members in a specific location to join a dedicated space to meet each other, etc.

6. Measure and analyze communication effectiveness

With more and more advanced community analytics capabilities, you can determine whether people are reading, engaging with, taking action on your content–or not. 

For example, you can see:

• When people are online the most–and therefore likely to read content
• How many people are interacting with your content via their computers vs. their phones
• Whether emails actually drive to event RSVPs
• And more

And if you’re looking for an all-in-one community platform that’s nailed their communication options for brands?

You’re in the right place.

Circle brings together your members, discussions, events, courses, and content—all in one place, under your own brand. Plus, you get access to our customer community full of handy resources and over 12,000 community builders on the same journey as you.

Start your free 14-day free trial today!