Creating a community is just the first step—building a space where people actually participate, learn, and connect is the real goal. To help you get there, we’ve created the Best Practices Checklist.
Think of this checklist as your success roadmap. It’s designed to take the guesswork out of launching, ensuring you hit the right milestones to create a valuable environment for your members.
In this article:
- What is the Best Practices Checklist?
- Why Follow the Checklist?
- How Does It Make a Difference?
- Keeping the Momentum
- The Bottom Line
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What is the Best Practices Checklist?
The Best Practices Checklist is a powerful tool designed to provide Community Owners and Facilitators with a clear, step-by-step guide tailored to their specific community purpose—whether it’s for a course, orientation, mentoring group, or beyond. This checklist appears when you launch your community, helping you optimize your setup for maximum engagement and success.
Why Follow the Checklist?
Following these tailored steps isn't just about "filling out a profile." It’s about achieving the specific outcomes that make a community thrive:
- Build Immediate Trust: By setting clear expectations and a welcoming tone, members feel safe and excited to participate from day one.
- Boost Engagement: Communities that start with a "First Post" and "Pre-populated Topics" see significantly higher interaction rates than those that start empty.
- Save Time & Energy: Instead of wondering "What should I do next?", you get a direct path to a finished, professional-looking community.
- Drive Better Outcomes: Communities that follow these practices see stronger connections and richer sharing. Tools like the Community Health Dashboard demonstrate how alignment with these practices directly improves sharing, listening, and interacting scores. Read more about measuring success in the Community Health Dashboard.
How Does It Make a Difference?
- For Academic Communities: Learn how to launch with engaging posts, recognize student contributions with Accolades, and efficiently invite members and co-facilitators.
- For Co-curricular & Social Communities: Get specialized tips for welcoming members, sparking organic conversations, and using Accolades in creative ways to build culture.
Keeping the Momentum
Completing the checklist is just the beginning. Once finished, a "Keep the Momentum" guide will appear with long-term strategies to keep your community thriving—such as strategies for welcoming new members, modeling high-quality posts, and sharing community highlights.
The Bottom Line
Following the Best Practices Checklist sets your community up for success from day one—making it easier to manage, more welcoming for members, and more likely to achieve its goals.