Starting out can feel awkward, especially when your community is brand new and no one knows each other. Sometimes your community chat can use a little help from you.

You’re there to initiate conversation, rather than lead every discussion that could be happening. You want people to be in the chat so the community can sustain itself.

So, when writing your first message to your community, there are a couple of things you want to cover.

Beyond your first message, here are a couple of ways you can encourage discussion and an active community chat.

Engagement and prompts

While you don’t want to be the only active person in the chat, getting people talking — especially in the early days of your community — can be a challenge. One way to fix this is to prompt discussion with topics in the chat. You can choose anything open-ended… Be controversial, thoughtful, anything goes as long as it’s not offensive and doesn’t alienate your community members.

Examples of discussion topics include:

Choose topics that go beyond “yes” or “no” answers. Otherwise, the conversation dies before it even has a chance to get started.

Create a chat for newbies only

Joining a group where everyone knows each other can be a massive barrier for new members to engage. No one likes to feel like the new kid at school. You can remove this barrier by creating a discussion board for new members only. They can get to know each other and feel out the vibe of your community without feeling like they’re intruding upon an established friend group. Once they’ve gained confidence, they’ll be able to move into the main discussion with more confidence, knowing that you helped support them in their earliest days.

We hope this makes your community building experience better than ever before. If you run into any problems, reach out to your account manager, or email hello@nas.io so our team can provide you with technical support.