Member onboarding is the process of encouraging new members to become active members on your forum.
Most forums simply let new members join and then do nothing. They assume the member will become active on their own terms. However, many times the new member doesn’t know what to do next and typically will forget they joined because they were not quickly engaged from the start.
This is why it’s important to onboard new forum members if you to keep them around. In this guide, we’ll be going over how to do this.
Most forums simply let new members join and then do nothing. They assume the member will become active on their own terms. However, many times the new member doesn’t know what to do next and typically will forget they joined because they were not quickly engaged from the start.
This is why it’s important to onboard new forum members if you to keep them around. In this guide, we’ll be going over how to do this.
- Send a Warm Welcome: Do this by email and private message. Make them feel welcomed in the message.
- Offer a Quick Website Tour: You can do this with image guides or even a video or a series of videos showing your forum controls and features.
- Send Personalized Message: Send a real personalized message by PM that you actually write out and start developing a friendship with the new member.
- Offer Special Welcome Perks: Give away a free lead magnet, extra benefits, and more features as they get more active.
- Set goals for your community onboarding system: Make sure you have goals in place for what you want to accomplish with your onboarding system.
- Think of the User Journey: Imagine yourself as a new member on your forum. How would you hope your member journey would be like?
- Choose the best ways of communicating with your community members: This might be through email or private messages or even both.
- Get your community onboarding messaging right: Make sure what you’re saying to your new members is actually persuading them to be a part of the community.
- Follow-up with New Members: Try to keep in touch with new forum members and ask them how they’re enjoying the forum.
- Setup a New Members Board: Create a special section on your forum where new members can post a thread or reply introducing themselves to the community,
- Setup a ‘Get Started’ Section: Create a board, help page, or thread showing a new member how to get started with using your forum.
- Get Help From Your Loyal Members: Ask your most loyal members if they would help you by welcoming new members and making them feel at home.
- Collect Feedback: Try to survey your new members after the onboarding process to see if they have additional advice on how to do it better.
- Automated new member checklists: If you can put a checklist on the page for new members to complete tasks, this might encourage more activity.
- Live new member orientation: Consider hosting a live zoom call or chat session to help new members be able to use the forum better.
- Form a welcoming committee: For a committee of existing forum members and staff to help assist with onboarding new members as well as improving the system.
- Make sure new members know who to ask for help: Make sure you make getting forum support and giving feedback and simple process.
- Develop a Multi-Stage Approach: New member onboarding usually happens in multiple stages. Plan them out for better results.
- Ensure new members receive knowledge for success: Make sure you provide (with easy access) everything they need to become a full successful active member.
- Establish mentor assignments or challenges: Gamify your new member onboarding process by giving new members assignments to complete.
- Create a system for tracking: Create a spreadsheet or something of that nature that tracks onboarding processes for each new member.
- Create opportunities for new members: Create opportunities for promotion, access, and more for new members the more active they become.
