Building a powerful community is an important growth engine for your subscription platform. A vibrant community amplifies engagement, promotes retention, and provides valuable feedback.
But how do you make your community stand out?
In this guide, we highlight the best community-building tactics and key practices for growing subscription platforms. So, are you ready to drive a meaningful community experience?
7 Top Community-Building Tactics for Subscription Platforms
1. Design a Seamless Onboarding
Onboarding is a crucial experience to foster a strong community for subscription platforms. A thoughtful onboarding process is welcoming, sets the tone for community experience, and builds a positive image.
It’s how you introduce your members to the community and whether they can easily navigate through learning resources, and speaks much about community operations.
So, how can you set a positive onboarding experience?
Best Practices for a Smooth & Engaging Onboarding Experience:
- Clear communication & process
Your onboarding process must not be confusing. Follow Steve Krug’s advice — “Don’t make me think!” at every phase. Introduce your onboarding workflows in the welcoming mail. This way, members know what to do next!
- Craft an Engaging Welcome Message
A compelling DM or email goes a long way to build the first impression. Incorporate a personalised greeting, a quick lowdown on what to expect, and a virtual hug.
- Include How-to-guides & Helpful Resources
Informative videos and visual walkthroughs of your community can be game changers. It enhances the overall UX experience and community strength!
2. Drive Engagement of Your Subscription Platform Community
While members get excited about subscription communities initially, the community loses its spark over time. Now, before the churn kicks in, you need to bring back the excitement.
Spur conversations, offer value, kick in live action, or celebrate with member spotlights. When members participate, the ongoing engagement flourishes and the community thrives! Community managers must think of new ideas to keep the community alive.
Use surveys, polls, and look into competitor niche communities to innovate and master content creation.
Best Practices for Driving Engagement:
- Discussion Prompts & Contests
Post daily or weekly prompts, giveaways, and contests to facilitate discussion. You can even host exciting 7-day challenges and reward members for their contributions.
- Gamification
A bit of dopamine-rush with gamified elements might be all your community needs to renew engagement. Introduce challenges and achievements (badges, leaderboards, points) to maximize participation and strengthen community-building.
- Live Events
Q&A and AMAs provide valuable insights and even kick-start momentum in the community. Add an announcement section that updates recent meetups, online/offline events and webinars.
- Track Engagement Metrics
Depending on your community type and purpose, determine your engagement metrics. Active participation, engagement rate, and retention are some of the usual north star metrics for a community. For platforms like Patreon, active members, comments, participation, and member retention are common metrics to track.
3. Encourage UGC & Build Trust
Another community-building tactic is leveraging UGC content, as it is often relatable and authentic. People trust people, and nothing works better than word-of-mouth marketing. After all, user-generated content is produced by none other than users themselves.
Be it an unboxing video, a video testimonial, or a success story, UGC content can maximize your sales and conversions. When people learn how your subscription platform has helped them or their business, they are more likely to make a purchase.
Notion is widely known for its UGC content, such as productivity templates, content planning dashboards, tutorials and walkthroughs. Much of the UGC goes out on Notion’s template gallery, social media, and community forums like subreddits and Discord.
Best Practices to Use UGC to Enhance Community Participation:
- Create Dedicated Hashtags for Your Brand
A unique hashtag for your brand makes your UGC content more discoverable and builds an extensive repository of experiences.
- Host Contests & Challenges
Incorporate exciting contests and challenges where users can share their experiences & win prizes for the best entries.
- Encourage Sharing on Diverse Marketing Channels
Motivate members to share UGC on your website, social media, and other promotional channels. This builds a positive impression about your platform and fosters trust among your audience.
- Provide Exclusive Incentives & Access
Reward the contributing members with exclusive content access, additional features, or early beta testing.
4. Create Dedicated Spaces & Facilitate Interaction
Your community is a dedicated place where members can interact, collaborate, learn & access valuable resources through guides, courses, and podcasts. This builds exclusivity and a sense of belonging.
For example, a subscription-based fitness app could include various features, such as a nutrition hub, a coaching center, and daily workout challenges. Include member-driven spaces like progress tracking, UGC space, wins-of-the-week, and member spotlights to pump in some excitement!
Best Practices for Creating Dedicated Spaces:
- Build Forums & Discussion Spaces
Start building different layers of community access. While your subscription platform may have an in-built platform feed, consider establishing forums & groups for daily prompts, challenges, and insights. Further, creators could reward access to exclusive groups depending on membership tiers.
For instance, Patreon has different community spaces like Discord servers, platform feed, creator communities and private Slack or Circle communities.
- Plan Different Content Channels
Some popular community channels include announcements, an exclusive content hub, a creator or coach’s corner, and AMA sections, among others.
- Build Resource Library
Create a centralized hub for information by adding tutorials, how-to guides, podcasts, templates, and downloadable assets. This way, members keep coming back and you position yourself as a go-to authority in your niche!
5. Participate in Related Dark Social Communities
Dark social is a phenomenon that can’t be ignored by marketers anymore. Despite being largely limited to private access and unmonitored mediums, they are relevant because everyone uses them.
Quora forums, subreddits, Slack channels, and Facebook groups are effective dark social groups for growing your subscription community. In fact, 84% social sharing is through dark social channels. However, analytics cannot accurately track sources of traffic coming from these dark social channels.
Best Practices for Dark Social Sharing
- Participate in Quora Forum Discussions
Quora hosts many niche groups dedicated to community building. You can either answer a question, drop a comment, or subtly introduce your platform as a solution.
- Private Messaging Apps & Groups
Looking to enhance engagement for micro-communities or offer exclusive access? Create small & private groups on WhatsApp, Telegram, or Slack. For instance, creators could post about content drops, packages, and seasonal offers on these channels.
- Build Trust on Subreddits
Participate in related subreddits by answering questions, posting thoughtful insights, and building a solid presence. This value-added engagement helps to build trust and credibility.
- Create Invite-Only Groups for Subscribers
Offer exclusive access to structured private groups once fans join the membership. Facebook groups, private Circle and Slack groups are great for networking and intimate conversations.
6. Build an Ecosystem by Integrating Multiple Platforms
A multi-platform ecosystem lays the foundation for a powerful community. Define a purpose or role for every platform. For instance, the main subscription platform for tiered content, Discord for peer-to-peer exchange, WhatsApp for quick check-ins, Circle for knowledge-sharing, etc.
Define personalized member journeys — onboarding -> engagement -> retention-> re-engagement. Thus, members feel motivated, grow along, and are recognized for their efforts.
Cross-platform engagement builds loops that foster member growth & retention. Additionally, integrating multiple channels offers a well-rounded community experience satisfying all kinds of platform members.
7. Keeping Transparency & Content Updates
A thriving community is one where members feel valued, informed, engaged, and part of a loyal tribe. Being transparent about your future community plans builds trust among your members.
When members can foresee a clear roadmap, they are more likely to stick to your platform. Besides, it also creates a sense of ownership.
When a community is constantly buzzing with notifications, members are engaged and gain continuous value. Create an intriguing loop of transparency & content loops to make members feel a part of this amazing community experience.
Best Practices for Transparency & Content Updates:
- Roadmaps & Future Plans
Keep members informed on what’s in the pipeline and up next! New platform features? Live events? Exclusive content drops? This sparks curiosity and builds hype around your platform.
- Establish Clear Community Guidelines & Rules
Setting community guidelines lays a clear framework and even boundaries for what’s expected from members. Thus, you build safe and inclusive spaces for all members to thrive and grow!
- Acknowledge Metrics & Achievements
Whether it’s a remarkable milestone, progress update, or onboarding your 100th platform member, celebrate your wins! Sharing your feat as a collective group inspires members and motivates them to keep going.
- Regular Live Interactions with Leadership
Hosting live meets, AMA sessions & interviews with leadership builds authentic and genuine relationships.
Conclusion
Subscription platforms are known for providing ongoing value & dynamic content experiences. Fostering a sense of community and belonging aids the growth of subscription platforms. It creates a dedicated space for interactions, collaborations and networking opportunities that extend beyond transactions!
Creating a robust community is an ongoing process that demands strategy, thoughtful ideas, and a deep understanding of the audience. We have covered some amazing community-building tactics for the growth and success of your subscription platform. Do leave a comment on which tip worked for your platform the most!
FAQ-Related to Community-Building Tactics for Subscription Platforms
1. How to build a subscription-based community?
Follow these steps to build a subscription-based community:
- Define the purpose & goal of your community
- Find the monetization streams for your community
- Choose the right online platform
- Set up your community structure & guidelines
- Engage members with exclusive access, events, and discussions
- Promote your community
2. Which is the best platform for community-building?
The best platform for building your community depends on your goals, feature requirements, monetization, budget and interactions. Popular options include social media groups (Facebook/LinkedIn Groups), Discord, and third-party platforms.
3. How to keep an online subscription-based community active?
Here are the ways to drive engagement in subscription-based communities:
- Set up streamlined onboarding workflows
- Drive engagement with discussion prompts, live events, contests, etc.
- Celebrate achievements with member spotlights & contributions
- Build trust & credibility with UGC across different channels.
- Participate in dark social communities related to your niche or business
- Create dedicated spaces & interaction
- Focus on retention-focused tactics
