Bri Leever: All right. So coming back to this analogy, I want to approach it from another second angle.
I love another like nature kind of reference. Social media has trained us to operate in an industrial farming complex where we are constantly feeding an audience and we need to intentionally shift our mindset from constantly feeding an on an audience content. To fostering community. So moving from like this, I grew up on a farm, so I love farming analogies.
Any other farm people out there moving from like industrial agriculture, where it's like, Oh shoot, there's bugs. We have to spray pesticides. Oh shoot. There's not enough nutrients. We have to spray fertilizer. Oh, we have to keep watering. Oh, we have to keep like weeding moving to this more of a permaculture.
Like model where the very organisms. existing in that environment, support each other in a way that you do less work. Now, I am not saying that your community is going to be completely self efficient, self sufficient, and you can walk away and just set it on auto. That is absolutely not what happens in community.
And if that's what you're hoping to have happen, you might want to find a different industry. Community takes a lot of work to set up and foster this environment. But we're trying to understand how do we get these organisms to support each other within our community context. A second way we can look at this.
And our engagement strategy is through a habit formation lens. So I like to use this table and I do want to ask I have a couple actions here listed, but I'm going to ask you all to add to the comments, like what are actions that you want to see your members take in your community and a dream girl, dream world?
What are they doing in your community? It can be as simple as they're liking a post. It can be as extensive as they are hosting like a local meetup. But comment in the chat. Laura said host a roundtable. Awesome. Absolutely. While you're commenting with those. For each of the actions that you identify someone wants to take, so you want someone to take in your community that's going to again support the whole ecosystem.
We need to laser focus in on how are we helping prompt that action? How are we helping to support that action? And reward that action. And if you've read habit formation books, you'll notice like the sneaky habit formation principles in here. Every good habit has a prompt and action and a reward. And so we're just layering that over.
Okay, some other ideas inviting others to join my community, be consistent, going through the lessons, applying the principles, getting results. Yes we, Sister Soldier, we will have that this download at the end. Meetups with other members, local in person meetups. First, start by completing their new member profile.
Absolutely. Yep. Okay, so here's just an example. And I would really encourage you With each action that you identify, how can you make that action really specific and even smaller? So an example when I was when I worked with Heartbeat, we actually went through this exercise for the hearth and an example that we had was we would love for someone to create a post and it's a very nuanced, tiny little shift, but instead of thinking about it, create a we we identified that we want them to start a post.
We want them to click. New post. That's actually like the tiny action that we're after make, if the action feels big, figure out for every single action, how can I make it even smaller? What's the very first thing that they need to do in order to get that action going? Cause that's very much like a tiny or atomic habits methodology.
So just an example here for introducing themselves, you're going to prompt them to do that in an onboarding email series. Maybe you send them a welcome DM or an automated welcome DM. A great way to support this action and to make it even easier is to provide prompts around what's the type of introduction you want to see, even linking to here's, Hey, welcome.
We'd love to see your introduction. Here's my introduction so that you can get a sense for what this feels like before you just vulnerably open yourself up and then consider a reward. So some of these rewards are going to be outside of your control. And but it's helpful to still think about Even if it's super tiny, what is some type of reward that can that you can give from this action?
And 99 percent of the time, these are non financial rewards. So reactions on their posts at a great one for the introduction is to tag someone who they have something in common with. That's a phenomenal also, if you think back to Laura's onboarding and wanting to the third step of connection, this is like a great connection point.
Awesome. Okay, I'll make sure, Caitie, let me know if there's any questions here, but I haven't been keeping up in the chat. All right, so some reflection questions for this. Where can you add prompts in the member journey? Even if you already are prompting members, how can you add additional prompts in other areas of your programs?
Maybe it's on the welcome call and you say, don't forget to introduce yourself. Are there other resources that could support them and how can you make those actions even smaller? All right. Yeah, gamification can come into play here. I, I like to say, I think gamification is like a cherry on top.
It's not, your members aren't going to come to your community to earn points. They're not going to come to earn badges. But everyone likes to be recognized for what they are doing. So the core principle behind gamification is recognition which you can do with, or without automated gamification.
So I would say if you're like hesitant to build a whole like game layer, start with recognizing your members, maybe you have a consistency. Like a title that someone gets when they've been consistent or someone who over the last quarter shows up with curiosity and generosity, which are the two core values of your community.
You like label them, they get to be a captain. I don't know. I'm using the hearth example of what we did before.
Laura Zug: It's like I have in our accelerator noticed when a member is commenting on another member's post using the values that Bri and I are trying to create in our accelerator. I will then go and DM that I'll affirm them right there on the post.
Thank you so much. Caitie for showing up in such a supportive way. This is a great answer to the question. And I will send a DM that says, Hey, look, I noticed what you did there. And I really appreciate all you're doing. This is exactly the kind of culture that Bri and I want to create here. Thank you for taking so much.
Time and care to answer X, X person's questions so thoroughly and what that does is if it's public, other people can read that and see oh, okay, that's how that's what we're modeling here. That's what we're building, but it also creates that. It's not gamified, but it's what Christina said, the recognition and reward.
Caitie Gehlhausen: And I completely agree with everything you both said. I try to do as much of that in the hearth as well. And I also think to just recognizing if people are consistently showing up and in events and things like that. And you consistently see the same names, like recognizing and saying, Hey it hasn't gone unnoticed that you've been showing up to all the tutorials.
We love having you there and seeing you engaged in the. In the chat. And just giving recognition that way too.
Bri Leever: It means so much. It's those little it's very rarely like the big thing of you attended 10 events, so you get a car. It's not that's not going to be what it's the slow, consistent, small steps over time that build trust, build connection and build loyalty.
Okay.
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