How to build your community onboarding experience: tips, examples & more
Without strong member onboarding, driving meaningful engagement in your community will be an uphill battle.
And, like anything when it comes to community, there’s a lot of thought—and iteration—that goes into building your member onboarding experience.
To help you and your members start on the right foot, this guide will cover how to:
- Map out your new member experience
- Create a start here space that welcomes members and guides them through first steps
- Spark engagement right off the bat with an intentionally-designed introductions space
- Draft onboarding emails and create an email sequence to drive continual engagement
- Help new members feel welcomed through personalized outreach
- Nurture members post-onboarding with tried-and-tested tips
Wait … what’s member onboarding?
Great question!
Onboarding is the process of guiding new members into your community. It starts the moment a new member joins, and it ends once that member has taken a meaningful step within the community.
When done right, onboarding can make members feel welcomed, supported, and confident in their next steps. But when onboarding is done poorly, members can feel lost, overwhelmed, and reluctant to return.
Think of your community as a dinner party that you’re hosting.
A new guest arrives, and she’s never attended one of your dinner parties before. So, you greet her at the door, take her coat, and ask how she’s doing. You give her a quick tour and then introduce her to some of the other attendees. You let her know when she can expect dinner to be served, and what will be served.
This is what onboarding a new community member should look like.
Let’s dive into how you can create an unforgettable onboarding experience for new members. 👇
1. Map out the new community member experience
Here are some community onboarding ideas we’ve used to map out the new member experience for the Circle community.
👉 Figure out what a new member needs to know about your community to be successful.
What do members need to know about your community to successfully participate? This might include how different spaces in the community are used, where to turn for extra support, and what guidelines exist to keep the community a safe and positive space for all members.
👉 Figure out what a new member needs to do in your community to be successful.
What actions should a new member take right off the bat to start uncovering the value of your community?
Should they say hello in an introductions space to start engaging with other members? Should they attend an office hours event just for new members? Maybe they should share their goals or reasons for joining. If so, where should they do that?
👉 Map out your initial touchpoints with members.
Now that you’ve identified what members need to know and do, you can start to map out how you’ll share that information and encourage those actions.
Below are some common community onboarding tactics to achieve this:
- Create your start here space
- Create an intro video (including a tour of the community)
- Hold a 1-on-1 onboarding call with a member
- Host a group onboarding call with multiple members
- Draft an FAQ post (and give members the ability to comment with additional questions)
- Create an onboarding checklist or challenge for new members to complete
2. Set up your start here space
Your start here space is the first place new members will land when they enter your community.
If you ace setting up this space, you’ll make an awesome first impression that’ll motivate members to contribute during their very first visit.
👉Determine what your start here space should include.
What types of information would help your members feel most supported?
It might be helpful to look back at your earlier responses to the question: what do new members need to know about your community to be successful?
Look at that list, and see what types of content you might be able to create to address those needs. Ideas could include FAQs, as well as a map of the community and community spaces.
👉 Create your start here space.
If you use Circle, click on the + icon next to the relevant space group to add in your welcome space.
You can name it something other than start here, but be sure to keep the title clear and descriptive so members don’t get lost. Once you’ve created the space, go ahead and set it as the default space for new members. Don’t worry about content yet—we’ll add that in a bit later.
For inspiration, check out the video below 👇
👉 Draft your welcome post.
Now that you have your start here space, it’s time to draft your welcome post.
This post is especially important because it’s your first touchpoint with new members once they’re in the community. Done well, it should:
- Introduce members to the community
- Provide a quick lay of the land
- Guide members through the immediate next steps they should take
It should also tell members where to turn should they require additional support—should they drop you a DM, post in a specific space, or contact you via email? Consider how you can use this post to make members feel immediately supported.
👉 … including any immediate actions members should take.
Many community builders use the welcome post to share a checklist of actions members should take to engage in the community.
That being said, you don’t want to overwhelm members with a long to-do list. So, consider how you might put special emphasis on one particularly impactful task from the list. Ask yourself: if a member only completed one action from this list, which one would have the most profound impact?
👉 Set expectations with community guidelines.
Your community guidelines should outline what types of content are (not) allowed in the community, being as clear and specific as possible to prevent any ambiguity.
Create a post in your start here space for these guidelines so members can easily access and refer to them.
👉 Let members know where they can find things in your community.
You can do this directly in your welcome post, or you can create a separate post in the space that:
- Outlines different spaces in your community
- Briefly describes the purpose/value of each
- Includes a note about how members can engage in that space
Keep the community platform itself in mind, too. You may want to create walkthroughs that explain how members can perform basic actions, such as commenting, editing their profile, and more.
3. Kickstart engagement with an introductions space
Just as the start here space is your first touchpoint with new members, the introductions space is a new member’s first touchpoint with peers.
Posting an introduction is often the first step a member will take to engage with the community, so it’s important to tee up this space in a way that makes it extra easy for members to engage.
👉 Create a space for members to introduce themselves.
Create your introductions space just like you created your start here space.
Again, be sure to title your space something descriptive—like “Introductions” or “Say Hello” so members know exactly what it’s for.
👉 Set expectations and prompts for this space in a pinned post.
This post should tell members how and what to share in their introduction.
Make sharing a no-brainer for your members by setting them up with some prompts and thought-starters that they can elaborate on in their intro posts.
And if there are certain norms you want to encourage for your community—say, you want members to share their introductions in video format—this is the place to call that out!
4. Prepare to open your doors
Now that you’ve set the foundation for a great community onboarding, it’s time to get members in!
👉 Invite your members.
Community can’t exist without members! Will you bulk import members from a CSV file, share an invite link, or send an invite email to individual members?
👉 Personalize your onboarding messages.
Once you’ve invited members to your community, it’s time to personalize the onboarding messages they’ll receive.
In Circle, you can set a custom onboarding email and popup message for new members. You might want to use these messages to thank members for joining and remind them to check out the start here space or say hello in the introductions space.
👉 Create an email sequence to “drip” more information to members over time.
Consider creating an email sequence (you can do this using your email service provider of choice) for new members. This way, you can share even more information without overwhelming members by dropping it all at once.
Be sure to include a clear takeaway or call to action in each email to maximize the impact of your sequence.
- Welcome to the community, introduce yourself
- Complete your profile
- Ask a question
- Meet a member
- Best community resources”
5. Welcome new members to your community
Congratulations on inviting new members into your community!
You’re not done yet, though. Kick things off on a positive note and keep new members engaged by personally welcoming them, starting their onboarding journey off on a strong note.
👉 Respond to new member introductions.
Making the time to respond to new member introductions goes a long way. Eventually, your community will get to a place where members are commenting on introductions and making new members feel welcome.
But it’s up to you to set the norm.
Model the behavior and make members feel welcome by responding to introduction posts.
👉 Send new members a welcome DM.
Make members feel extra welcome by sending them a quick and thoughtful DM.
You can let them know you’re happy they’re here, share a resource they might find useful, or encourage them to take a specific action to engage in the community.
👉 Consider 1-on-1 onboarding.
If you have the bandwidth, consider offering members a 1-on-1 onboarding session to show them around the community and answer any questions.
This will go a long way when you’re welcoming your first members into the community—ideally, it’ll help to jumpstart activity.
Larger communities (especially those that operate cohorts) can also use this tip to uncover insights about their community members’ behaviors and preferences.
Bonus community onboarding tips and examples
Want to add a little something extra to your community onboarding experience? Check out the tips below for ideas on how to level up!
👉 Ask members what matters to them.
This tip comes from Tom Ross, CEO of Design Cuts.
Ask your members to share what successful membership looks like to them. Do they want to connect 1-on-1 with other members? Are they looking for resources on a specific topic? Something else?
Once you know what they’re looking for, you’ll be able to help jumpstart that transformation.
👉 Conduct a monthly check-in.
Ross has also seen great success with checking in on his community members monthly. The best part? The monthly check-in can be scalable, usingworkflows in Circle.
👉 Match members to one another.
Jones created a directory in her Circle-based course community where members can find and connect with other members.
👉 Gamify the onboarding experience.
Cait Curley, Founder of Never Board Learning, gamified the onboarding experience for her community by awarding members a badge once they’d completed an onboarding scavenger hunt.
👉 Create a member guide.
Dreamers & Doers has created a community space to list all of the perks members receive with their membership. Items you might want to include here include:&nbs
- Any regular community events (like office hours or weekly workshops)
- Member resources (like education, job postings, and swipe files)
- Programming (like networking opportunities or member matching)
You can set this up as its own space or as a simple post that lives in your start here space.
Looking for a platform that enables exceptional community onboarding?
Community pros choose Circle.
Among other reasons, workflows allow you to automate personalized interactions—such as onboarding messages—to help each member feel welcomed, whether you have 10 or 10,000. And with branding and customization functionalities, you can set up spaces specifically designed to welcome members and introduce them to your community.
