Today I was helping a client write guidelines. That’s a good time to be succinct & concise. People will glaze over them so make your points easy to skim. Less is more.
That exercise reminded me of this great welcome I received when I registered at docstoc. I saved it to share as an example. It accomplishes many things:
- a warm welcome
- personalizes the message & tells me who the community manager is
- invites me to engage immediately
- thanks me for choosing to join
Subject: Welcome to docstoc
Hey,
I saw you recently signed up and wanted to send you a message to say hello and welcome.
I’m Kat, the Community Manager here at docstoc, so if you have any feedback or recommendations about the site, please feel free to message me back.
Please consider taking a moment to upload and share some of your documents, so we can continue to grow our community.
http://www.docstoc.com/uploads/bulkupload.aspx
And FYI, you can embed any document on docstoc on other blogs or websites.
http://blog.docstoc.com/embed-documents-on-docstoc-into-your-blog-or-webiste.html
http://www.docstoc.com/docs/422284/Embed-Documents-in-Myspace
Thank you for joining our site, and I look forward to chatting,.
Kat
Thank You,
The docstoc team
What would you add to it? Do you reach out to your newcomers? Does it make a difference?
Hi Connie, thanks for a great tip! It is indeed a good practice to follow up by a personalized and short email following a person joining your community.
Do I reach out to newcomers? Yes!
Does it make a difference? Oh yeah!
The thing about building on on-line community is that you have to have a “two-way” conversation(s). Otherwise you may as well stick with a static website. I have an interest in learning about my readers because learning about them guides me towards developing more content (I want to connect with them more and more and I can only “push the envelope” so-to-speak if I grow to learn what motivates my community).
So yes, I reach out. I remember the first time someone reached out to me for commenting on their site. I received a personalized e-mail (it wasn’t just a template, though even those have a way of having a positive impact if ultimately you’re not disingenuous) that welcomed me to the site and responded to my comment. It was the best welcome I had ever received from any site! I developed an immediate sense of belonging.
Connie, thanks for this post. At Needish we have a welcome e-mail, but after reading this I’m going to take another look at it. In all honesty it’s pretty boring and could do with a bit of humanizing. Writing a good e-mail – succint yet informative, human yet not too informal – is harder than it seems, but it’s so important.
Connie,
great insight. I try to personally call each and every individual who comments on my site.
“Hi “name” this is Daniel from Mad Mortgage world… thanks for taking part in the conversation… my personal email if you ever need to reach out is…”
I have gotten incredible feedback and my site continues to grow exponentially by the week. Keep up the awesome tips!
Connie, thank you very much for a great tip. We are launching our community in few days and this post came just at the right time as a reminder for what is important.
Thanks @Darek
@Ricardo So much good advice there! thank you!!
@Emily I’m glad that you found it helpful. :)
Wow Daniel, That’s very personalized! I’m sure that they appreciate it though! And thanks for the encouragement. I have something new coming.
@Sabina – Congrats on your new community!
I hope that it goes well. :) Keep us updated.