4 tips to re-humanize the connection with your communities 👍🏼

With the rise of digital, creating, animating and growing a community has never been so convenient. Whether it's customers, employees, partners or even suppliers, companies have no shortage of ways to bring an entire community together around a common goal... All from a distance!

However, if the dematerialization of exchanges, virtual events or the multitude of online tools allow communities to maintain a solid link... The trap is to relegate the Human to the background, in front of all these technological prowess.

So, whether your community is 100% virtual or not, it's high time to re-humanize the link with (and between) the members. Ready to find out how, with our 4 tips? 👇

Say goodbye to top-down, impersonal communication

Your business community's worst enemy is none other than lack of communication... Or its distant cousin: top-down, impersonal communication!

A BtoB or BtoC community is based on the principles of sharing, mutual aid and benevolence. The worst situation would be to create a feeling of withdrawal, embarrassment, as well as a personal or collective blockage among the members.

This is what happens when communication is top-down within a community. This mode of communication is characterized by one-sided information sharing (the company communicates to the community, but does not invite it to communicate back). The members (such as a group of customers or employees) find themselves assigned the role of simple consumers of content and information.

The second risk appears when a company relies on impersonal communication within its community. Mass messages are then sent, without any real desire to create interpersonal and collective links. This lack of personalization in the exchanges does not help to strengthen the link with the community.

To avoid spreading top-down and impersonal communication within your community, here are 3 best practices to apply:

💡 Invite members to be content creators within the community, to foster horizontal communication.

💡 Avoid injunctions and the "order-giver" posture: you would risk scaring away the members, present within your community for the collective dynamics of mutual aid and sharing!

💡 Favor a community management of proximity: the objective is to get closer to your community, to get to know each member and to engage in personalized conversations.

Organize interactive events

To re-humanize the link with your communities, we recommend one approach: propose events (virtual or physical)! Online or face-to-face events are essential to engage your communities.

Bringing together different members (and even seeing "real" faces, hearing "real" voices and sharing "real" moments of conviviality) greatly contributes to rehumanizing the link with your community.

To facilitate this process, MeltingSpot adapts to your expectations. For example, why not organize a hybrid event, to bring together part of your community in person, but also remotely? Or why not plan a virtual event with us? Whatever the nature of your community, different formats are available to you:

💡 Team buildings for your community of employees
💡 Round tables for your partners' community, like Cosmo Connected
💡 Conferences or webinars for your customer community

And so on.

Whatever format you choose, our most important advice is this: bet on interactivity!

To give a more human dimension to your events, don't hesitate to invite participants to participate, through different means (ask questions in a chat, intervene orally during the event, send their own resources to the different guests, etc.).

Propose a personalized content strategy

"All together, but all different" could be the slogan of any community.

By bringing members together in a community, your company unites different individuals around a common guideline. Yet, even if the community is a collection of customers, employees or partners, each of them is unique.

Between the different members of a community, personalities vary, as do needs, expectations, availability... It is therefore essential to get to know each member of your community, in order to offer personalized content.

Indeed, within a BtoB or BtoC community, the group dynamic must not cannibalize the importance of the interpersonal and of each human. Drowning your community in a flood of information and content that only addresses certain members is not the solution.

This is why we advise you to lay the foundations of a personalized and adapted content strategy within your community. To achieve this, nurturing can be a suitable solution.

💡 The idea of nurturing is to analyze the profile and journey of the different members of your community, to set up a segmentation and then contextualize the different exchanges. By taking inspiration from the main principles of nurturing, you personalize the relationship with each member of the community... This allows you to re-humanize the link between you and to propose customized content!

Make room for emotions, to re-humanize the link with your community

Finally, to keep the "Human-to-Human" spirit within your community, here is MeltingSpot's last piece of advice: do not neglect the place of emotions. Emotions are natural and human. And even if your community is professional, emotion should not be excluded from your content, exchanges or organized events.

Indeed, the use of humor in conversations, the expression of joy and the sharing of uncertainties are moments filled with emotions. The impact of these emotions is considerable: according to a study by AOL and InsightsNow, emotion is the trigger for 66% of online purchasing situations.

If emotions are a decision driver in the purchasing process, their impact is just as strong within a community. They promote engagement, attachment, the creation of a more human link, conversation... In short, they re-humanize communities.

To put the emotional back at the heart of your business community, here are our tips:

💡 Plan "heart-to-heart" sharing moments, to let each member express their emotions around a specific theme: doubts, big questions that disturb members, sharing a success or a challenge...

💡 Show vulnerability (within reason): if the creators of a community share their joys or frustrations without filters, members will feel freer to open up in turn.

💡 Organize moments of celebration, to gather your community around positive emotions: even if all emotions are equal, those that have to do with joy, pleasure or victory allow to strongly federate the members. These celebrations can be weekly or monthly, by giving rise to virtual events such as online breakfasts or aperitifs.

Expert Tips: Maintaining Relationships and Scaling Your Community

In this insightful video, Andrew Claremont (from Glide) and Luc Hancock (from Spendesk) share their expertise on the importance of maintaining relationships while scaling your community. They delve into the significance of personal connections within communities!

If you missed the live session, no worries! The replay of Andrew Claremont and Luc Hancock's discussion is now available on The Community Lab.

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The growing importance of digital in our lives should not cannibalize the importance of human connection. This is the case in all areas... And especially within communities!

To re-humanize the link with its communities and between the different members, there is no lack of good practices. You now know the ones advised by MeltingSpot... So, ready to take action, starting (for example) by organizing federative virtual events? 👇