Creating healthy community habits
Rituals. Routines. Habits.
Most don’t think about them as a foundational aspect of building a community, especially when you have to figure out how to get clients, monetize the community, market your business, and the list goes on.
But, there’s a reason James Clear has built his million-dollar platform on habits–because there’s power in the small 1% effort compounding through everyday persistence, much in the same way that investment gains do.
Habits are also universally difficult to build 💪, and laughably easy to break. 💔
Unfortunately for us all, their impact is undeniable:
- Walking for 10,000 steps per day WILL improve your health
- Creating 1 video/day for a year WILL make you a better video editor
- Writing every day WILL make you a better writer
You get the point.
However, when it comes to communities, habits are a beneficial two-way street:
- They help communities grow stronger, more engaged, and more involved
- Communities help support new habit-building (and therefore support member’s transformations) exponentially thanks to all the emotional support and connection within them
So not only do habits help build better communities, but communities help members build good habits.
In this playbook, we’re going to explore how the structure of good habits and routines for communities and community managers can help you build a deeply fulfilling and manageable community that transforms your member’s lives.
Why positive community habits are so powerful
The goal is to build a community both you and your members love and enjoy. And, while boring, good routines and habits are at the heart of those goals.
The problem is, when we try to build habits on our own, without external support or accountability, we’re setting ourselves up for an easy “out.”
Danika Brysha, a self-care expert, plus-size IMG model, 3x wellness entrepreneur, and founder of Self-Care Society (which is focused on building healthy habits for members), says:
“I realized that people could read all the books, take all the courses, and know all the tools… but if they didn’t have a system to integrate that knowledge into their lives on a consistent daily basis, then they might as well not know it at all.” - Danika Brysha
So how do you…
- Build your dream community–without getting burned out?
- Create magical connections and transformations for members–without overwhelm?
- Design a routine that helps members engage–as well as help community leaders show up as their best selves?
How to create sustainable routines for members
Joining and engaging in a new community requires adopting new habits and ways of being. The easiest way to help members onboard and make interacting in the community a part of their routine is to make the habits,
Consistency and repetition play a massive role in comforting members and letting them know what to expect, as well as things like using templates and simple language. The less thinking your members need to do to engage, the better!
8 ways to build good habits for community members:
- Start small, stay consistent: Regularly scheduled events, posts, and interactions help establish a routine that community members can rely on. "When you're doing something consistently inside a community, you start to build trust." - Sara “No Socks”, Circle expert, and community operations and strategy consultant
- Role model your ideal member: Monkey see, monkey do. By consistently participating and engaging in the community, leaders set an example for members to follow.
- Celebrate participation: Highlight and celebrate members who actively participate. This can be through shout-outs, badges, or other forms of recognition like gamification.
- Create feedback loops: Look at analytics, attendance and engagement rates, and regular feedback from community members to understand what’s working and what’s not.
- Make it easy and accessible: Provide clear instructions, templates, and examples to lower the barrier to participation. For instance, use templates for introductions to make it easier for new members to share about themselves.
- Give options to engage differently: Different members may prefer different modes of engagement, so try videos, written posts, live sessions, and more.
- Bring members into routines: When you involve community members in creating and leading habits, you increase buy-in and make the community feel more involved.
- Don’t treat engagement as the only important metric: As Circle Contributor and community strategist Tatiana Figueiredo says, “Not all communities are about constant async chatting. Communities can be valuable for reasons beyond members always seeing new posts and comments pop up.”
Check out this Masterclass with Circle expert Sara “No Socks” to learn more community habit-building tips.
How Self-Care Society uses habits to build community
Now, let’s see how Danika’s community, Self-Care Society, puts all these principles into play, and how they’ve evolved their routines.
Over time, they’ve built up:
- Daily journaling and mindset practices and prompts
- Live 90-minute monthly planning workshops
- Yearly goal-setting with their members called “You Year”
“We discovered that while our daily classes are amazing, they often are a challenge for members to fit into already busy schedules–and that leaves us feeling behind on making progress on our own goals and creating a plan for filling our own cup. Enter our monthly planning workshop: a 90 minute session, held on the last Sunday of each month.” - Noelle Cochran, Community Manager for Self-Care Society
They also used the Topics feature in Circle to organize video prompts for daily affirmations. For example, if someone is feeling like they need some sort of manifestation and practice around ‘clarity’ or ‘creativity’, they can find videos in the library focused on those topics.
They organize class activities under each prompt and summarize it so members know what to expect every time they click into a lesson.
As a self-care community that focuses on creating healthy habits for members, “our challenge with [the community] is that we're really about helping people live their brightest, most beautiful life, in real life,” says Danika.
“And so there's this balance of having a community space–but we don’t actually want you spending a ton of time there. What we want to do is have a beautiful space where you can connect with these like-minded people and share resources to set yourself up for success.”
How to build empowering habits for community managers
“A commitment to prioritize your self-care is the least selfish thing you can do for the people you love and the dreams you have. We’re here to help you give from the overflow, not the backwash.” - Danika Brysha
Community managers are particularly at-risk for burnout due to the people-facing nature of their jobs, which means they have to be twice as mindful about their boundaries, their time management, and their habits.
To avoid burnout in this very people-facing profession, you need to prioritize your own self-care the same way you would prioritize sleep, movement, and healthy eating.
As Gwyn Wansbrough, one of our Circle Contributors explains it: “It’s the work I love to do. It’s not the what but the how I was doing it wasn’t sustainable.”
So how do you prioritize self-care for community managers?
- Identifying personal needs: As Gwyn Wansbrough, one of our Circle Contributors says, “When you run online communities you need to work at keeping burnout at bay. Every. Single. Day.” Whether you need movement breaks, screen sabbaticals, time to engage in hobbies, socializing, or spend time meditating or in nature–every person is different. Take a moment to review what makes you feel calm, energized, and ready to tackle your to-dos.
- Incorporating healthy daily practices: Pre-charging instead of re-charging has been a game changer for the many community managers we have in the Circle customer community, as well as Danika Brysha.
- Setting boundaries: This includes saying no when work feels overwhelming, no to another webinar (especially if the data shows people aren’t attending), and no to more work for the sake of work.
- Managing your energy: Creator Glo Atanmo is an expert at time-blocking to leave space for creativity. Community managers could easily do the same with engaging, ideating, planning, and responding to members,
- Limiting notifications and availability: Create off-hours, don’t download certain apps on your phone, and make sure you “leave work” even if you work from home. You can’t stop thinking about work sometimes, but practice doing so to create some mental division.
- Using tools to organize before overwhelm: A personal to-do list using a productivity tool of your choice (Notion, Asana, journal, etc) can help you prioritize the top 3 things you need to tackle every day–before you start stressing about it.
- Circle community member Patrick McCrann has created a community habit cheat sheet to help you plan your community habits and organize your time that you can get for free on his website by signing up for his newsletter.
Most importantly, remember:
“Self-care doesn’t take time, it makes time,” says Danika.
“If you're going to spend an hour working out and taking care of yourself, you will gain it back probably tenfold in your quick decision making, and your ability to focus and not task jump.
For example, if you make one wrong decision that wasn't rooted in clarity… It will take you a long time to clean that up. And a lot of times it costs you money.”
Adapt your habits to your business
The year that founder Danika was pregnant, she and her community manager, Noelle, decided to turn their signature live event–the You Year–into a pre-recorded course with certain live components (chat, slides with timing, and comments).
This event had:
- 85% attendance rate,
- A high of 400 members attending live, and
- Members signing up and attending specifically for Danika’s guidance and support
Why would they change something that was working incredibly well in their community?
Because she was due to give birth on Christmas Day, and unsurprisingly, You Year was usually held in December.
The results? “You Year, Anytime” got 280 sales and a whole world of opportunity for repurposing the “start” of the year to be anytime–the spring equinox, birthdays, the start of school, and basically whenever works for your life.
This year, they’re adding a 10x your dreams workshop, and an extra implementation workshops that work backwards from your goals to your habits that get you there.
Best practices for community rituals
- Balance community well-being & manager wellbeing. Pick 2-3 habits at a time to see what would benefit your members–without overwhelming yourself!
- Keep habits simple to encourage participation: Start with one, build on it, and see what sticks over a reasonable amount of time.
- Don’t be afraid to adjust habits with the seasons: Maybe your biggest value is live events, or resources, or connections. Maybe your community of parents are busy and burned-out in the summers. Give yourself grace, and reorient your expectations accordingly.
- Lasting change comes from empowerment, not shame. Build positive encouragement and success as an easy next step, vs. shame. “And so I set myself up to feel empowered by these mini wins all day, every day,” says Danika.
- Role model the habits your want members to adopt! If you want a quieter community led by resources and courses, do that. If you want a highly-engaged community, create a system of prompts and accountability.
- Feedback loops will tell you if you’re heading in the right direction. If habits are simple enough, people will join and adopt them over time. But you won’t know until you get started.
And if you’re looking for an all-in-one community platform that helps you (automatically) build healthy habits?
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 10,000 community builders on the same journey as you.
