I can’t overstate the importance of a good onboarding experience for your community. People are most motivated to dive into your community right when they join — if you don’t get them started on the right foot, you’re squandering an opportunity.

Onboarding new community members is a sticky subject. You need to balance a personal touch with a steady drumbeat of content interactions that you honestly are going to need some automation help to pull off.

Here’s how I recommend people think about it with some tips for turning your new community adds into engaged core members.

Start building a relationship before folks are even in the community

Remember the quote about a village being one where “the average interaction is with someone they already know” form the starting small guide?

Well that starts with you.

Send an auto-responder to everyone that applies to join — thank them and also ask them to connect on LinkedIn.

Shout out to Sri from RocketLane for the idea

Day-1 onboarding

Day-1 should focus to the “job” they’re hiring community to do

In my "Building a World-Class Day-1 Onboarding" guide I discuss the importance of tailoring the onboarding experience for a product that serves multiple purposes. It emphasizes asking users about their primary interest and customizing the onboarding process accordingly.

Well people joins communities for several different reasons — it does different jobs for different people:

• ask questions about the problems they’re facing at work
• attend AMAs and other community events
• discover news and updates
• join mentor program
• join a networking program
• post or look for open job roles
• give product feedback