[📕 Guide] Creating your community

🔖 Be sure to bookmark this guide to refer back to these instructions as you’re implementing this guide!

Guide Purpose

Looking to build a private community for your members? This guide will walk you through how Membership.io's Discussions feature works and how to configure your own community.

💡Curious to see the community in action? Head over to community.membership.io to log in with your account or create one for free! You can also view a demo on the community feature here.

➡️ Feel free to click on any link to dive deeper into what’s being mentioned.

How to create a community

1. Create a private Hub
2. Open your Discussions page
3. Customize your sidebar
4. Create and customize spaces
5. Write your first post
6. Manage your community moderators
7. Link your members to your community
8. Manage and edit any incoming posts

Part 1 - Create a private Hub

Create a Hub to hold your community.

🚨 If you're looking to add a community to an existing Hub, you can skip this step and head to the Configure your Discussions page and Spaces section.

Communities are hosted in private Hubs. You can use a Hub to host a free or paid community.

If you haven't already, you'll want to build your first Hub. This guide will walk you through the step-by-step process of setting up your first Hub.

 

Part 2 - Open your Discussions page

Open your Hub Editor to get started.

Head to the Hubs tab inside your Membership.io account and click Customize next to your Hub's name to open the Hub Editor. This is where you can customize how your community looks.

Using the menu on the left-hand side, open the Pages list (highlighted in the image below) and look for the Discussions page under Default Hub pages.

If your Discussions page is disabled, you can follow the steps in this article to enable your community.

Part 3 - Customize your sidebar

Your sidebar is a great space to include a welcome message and your community rules.

Open the Sidebar menu when editing your Discussions page to customize the Title, Description and Spaces titles. You can see in the video below that as you make changes they will immediately appear in your community.

• Title: If you have a quirky name of your community, you can add it here. We generally add a welcome message here. This is a good opportunity to add the name field to introduce your members by their first name.
• Description: Describe your vision for your community, or add your community rules.
• Spaces Title: If your community is a house, your spaces are the rooms of your house. You can re-name this section if there's a term you think your members would understand better.

Be sure to change your changes to lock in your progress. 🔒 

Part 4 - Create and customize Spaces

Spaces are virtual rooms for specific topics or interests within your community. If your community is a house, then each space is a room in your house.

Well-organized Spaces improve member engagement, build connections among people with similar interests, and create a structured environment that meets different needs.

We recommend not going overboard with a lot of spaces. Having too many spaces can decrease engagement as it overwhelms your members with choice.

If you have a membership community, some common spaces you could create include:

• 🗓️ Updates and Up Next: A space that only you can post in that highlights what live webinars are up next and any updates you want your community to be aware of.
• 🔍 Ask Me Anything: A space where your members can lean into your expertise.
• 🗺️ Meet Ups: A space for members to coordinate different local chapters and local events.
• ✏️ Tips & Tricks: A space for members to share different tips and tricks that have helped them make progress in their own journeys.
• 🛋️ My Workspace: A space that encourages photo only posts from members of their office, or their kitchen, or their studio (depending on what industry you're in).

You can create and re-name your spaces in the Spaces Spaces section of your Discussions page. When you create a Space, you'll also be able to set the posting permissions. Something like an Updates space is a great one to lock down posting permissions so that you're the only person posting updates.

Part 5 - Write your first post 

Your newly created Spaces will not appear unless there is a post in your community. This is a great opportunity to post a template for introductions. Take the opportunity to create a post to share a little bit about who you are. 👋

Part 6 - Manage your community moderators

If you have team members or ambassadors who have agreed to help you manage your community, you can give them moderator permissions.

You must be viewing your Hub from the frontend and have your Directory pageenabled to be able to assign a moderator.

From your Discussions page, click your Members list to open your Directory. Search for and open the profile of the person you wish to assign moderator rights to. Once inside their profile, go ahead and click the ⭐️ Make moderator button to assign them the role. 

Part 7 - Link your members to your community 

Once your community is ready for members, we'll need to provide your members with a way to find your community:

• You can link to your community from an email.
• You can add a link to your community inside your Hub's menu.
• You can create a Section to invite your members to access the community.

And that’s it! You’ve just added a new pillar of your membership: Community. Now, your members can engage, discuss, and connect more than ever before. 🎉

Part 8 - Manage and edit any incoming posts

Your community is loaded with lots of different features to help you manage the posts that come in from your members. Click on any item from the following list to learn more:

• Creating new posts
• Engaging with posts
• Broadcasting a new post
• Managing Hub notifications
• Accessing the post management menu
  • This menu gives you the option to edit a post, delete it, pin it, turn off comments, make it private, or move it to a different space
• Assigning moderators