Community Best Practices & Hangs

At this point, it might be mentioned in every single article published under the Third Academy name, but it's important, so we'll say it again. Community is central in Web3. It's the lifeblood that keeps us moving forward, often the marker of a strong project, and the concrete change that sets Web3 apart from Web2 and other more centralized or hierarchical structures.

But, community is far from an easy skill. Each community is different, and being able to find what will draw an interested group, listening to them, and finding ways to bring in active contributors are all unique talents — both in terms of actions and communities.

But, all of these different tasks for building and managing strong, functional communities are instrumental. Today, we're going to just brush the surface, looking at the basics of what you need to take into account and which platform is right to build (or look for) your community on. But, trust, there will be more. Much, much more on this topic.

General Best Practices

Because at its core, community is bringing together diverse audiences, miscommunication and mayhem can occur. That's not to say it's the norm, but definitely having a well-rounded, aligned, and self-moderated community drop from the heavens into your lap is not.

That's all hard work.

So, here are a few important best practices that go for every platform, and just about every community, under the sun.

Set the Tone

Establish the use for your community. Why are people here? What should they share or look for? And, do your best to set the tone. This will take on a life of its own, but as basically your own first community member, you play an important role in giving people cues for how to behave.

It's also important to be as clear as possible with how strict you are. Setting clear do's and don'ts helps with this, as well. Just tell people what will get them blocked or banned, and then hope that nobody pushes you there!

Clear Pinned Messages

As communities grow, there is generally more and more information. Help new-comers sort through the noise by pinning important messages so they're easy to find. This is especially important in less structured platforms, like Telegram.

FAQs

Robust FAQs will also help reduce the noise, and also take a looooot off the plate of any mods. It also gives you a place to convert people by answering some basic questions about why they should believe in your project and addressing concerns, and just lays the ground rules.

FAQs also don't have to be anything fancy. A Gitbook or even just a spreadsheet can be enough, as long as the actual community questions are answered!

Scam Warnings

We all want scam and spam free communities, but that's just not a reality, especially in Web3. Keep your community safe by staying on top of the types of scams making the rounds in your community and warning people. You don't want anyone turned off your community because they fell prey to a scam there!

Engage, Elevate, Entrust

You need to value your community members, not just in theory, but in practice. Find ways to highlight and shout them out, talk about what they're interested in, and, if you're committed to decentralized power, ways to give them real say in your project. This is being formalized with DAOs and governance tokens, but even if you don't have that, there are informal ways to hand over some of the power!

Feedback

Perhaps the most important, you have to actually listen to your community. People don't just want to be preached at. They want to have their concerns dealt with and their desires listened to and met. Make sure there are clear ways for people to tell you what they think!

Platforms

The first step in Community Management™  actually starts before you have a community. You'll have to pick the right platform and lay some basic ground rules. Of course, start with the general best practices, but below, we provide a few more platform specific ones!

And, even if you don't want to build your own community, this information can be a good guide to figure out where you might want to start looking for different communities in Web3.

Telegram

This platform tends to be a bit more casual. One, Telegram has been a massive proponent of user privacy and limiting censorship. So, you can find alllll types of content, including some spammier channels. But, this is also where a lot of important people in the space can be found…if you know who they are.

Due to the limited structure and moderation from the platform, these channels tend to be less formal and need extremely fast CMs, good bots, and spam prevention measures. Caffeine is also a very good idea.

Discord (and Slack)

These communities are a bit different. Many people struggle to hack it, because they're used to open social channels, like Twitter, Instagram, or TikTok, where you share and amplify your content well beyond your community.

But, in Discord or Slack, the only community you have are the members who have already joined. That means that your reach is smaller. This can either really raise the bar on engagement, or tank it if you can't figure out what the people want and what will get them to engage.

That being said, closed communities are where you find real value and people who are looking to get actively involved. Discord is also home to many of the best dev communities, with a pretty consistent tilt towards devs.

Aside from that, Discord and Slack have more differences that set their usual audiences apart, possibly because of how they've positioned themselves as companies. Discord tends to take a more informal and community-led approach, likely from its beginnings as a place for gamers. Now, it's filled with gaming communities, groups of devs, DAOs, and other tight-knit groups.

On the other hand, Slack, which has always positioned itself for businesses, serves a more professionally inclined group for the most part. While there is cross-over, many Slack communities will be a bit more business focused and tend to be the place for private or alpha groups…so your member-only types.

Twitter

As mentioned above, Twitter gives you good space to amplify and go outside your bounds a bit more. This is ideal for representing your brand.

It means that you need a solid comms strategy, good info, an opinion on current events, founder insights, memes, and some interplay with crypto-meta. Sounds like a lot, I know, but basically, it's where you set the tone for your project, both in the messages you craft yourself, but also in the other content that you share and interact with.

And, of course, it's the place to have a bit of fun and show that you know what's going on in crypto culture. Miss out, and risk losing your cultural relevance, or dive in, and find your fit amongst the crypto chatter!

Also, now, with Twitter Spaces, there is the opportunity for real-time conversations that give you another avenue to draw in new audiences. These are great for AMAs, but also really work if you partner up with an influencer or another project with a decent following. The same rule applies here as for most content creation: the more regular you are with your scheduling and the better the conversations, the more growth you should see over time.

Wrapping it Up

This is barely a drop in the bucket of community. But, none-the-less, having a clear picture of why you’re using a platform, and if that platform is a good fit for you and your community is likely the first step in building a strong community.

After that, it’s a matter of finding the right people, providing them with value, and, eventually, handing over the reigns (or at least a bit of the reigns, if that’s possible), so that you and all of the members can truly benefit from being connected to each other.

And, don’t worry, we’re far from done talking about this topic.

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