5 Overlooked Ways To Engage Your Paid Membership Community Without Coaching (AKA Killing It By Accident)

You’re already savvy to the fact that coaching likes to face punch community engagement, which means you're ahead of the game.  {Not savvy?  Click the link above and get savvy stat}.

Now, if you are savvy, you'll want to learn how to engage your paid membership community WITHOUT inadvertently coaching it into an engagement coma.

My 5 simple – yet powerful – foundations series will help you do just that, and course-correct your approach to “engaging” your community.  Results? More time {and sanity} in your back pocket. ​

What you'll learn on this “engagement secrets” menu?

First we'll kick things off with the “pièce de résistance”:

• #1 – Stop assuming you have to DO sh*t to engage your membership community.

Then we'll move behind the velvet curtain, to dig into the remaining 4 gold nuggets:

• #2 – Be a Matchmaker; blind dates + strategic tagging.
• #3 – Front-load your community with “Uncommon Commonalities”.
• #4 – Spotlight your unicorns.
• #5 – A Welcome Thread (FB) or Topic (MN).

If you read #1 and it leaves you wanting more, sign up to get the remaining nuggets swiftly delivered to your email inbox by my email fairies.

Yes…Big D has email fairies.  Ok ok…they are monkeys but they like to wear fairy wings and pretend.  Don’t crush their dreams! Shh!

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Nugget #1:  Stop assuming you have to DO sh*t to engage your membership community

Seriously, if I could just take every membership host and community manager, pull up a chair and sit uncomfortably close to them…look them straight in the eye and break this news to them…the world would be a better place; with more thriving communities and fewer hosts and Community Managers on the verge of burn-out.

So many entrepreneurs assume that in order to engage a community that they have to be DOING something.

• I need to write a post.
• I need to create a new challenge.
• I need to jump in and answer questions.
• I need to get the ball rolling in the comments.  

I have to be DOING something!

Or so you might think.

The problem with this assumption is that not only do you foster passive engagement rather than proactive engagement, you make it impossible to sustain your membership in the long run and guarantee that you’ll eventually shut it down like Jill and Josh Stanton did in 2019.

Let's get on the same page about those 2 types of engagement real quick.

• Passive engagement: This is reactionary and members generally will not DO anything unless it is in reaction to something you or your team initiate.  Booooo to that!

When you DO everything in your community, have all your posts pre-scheduled and it’s always YOU sparking the conversation…your members will sit back, put their feet up and wait for you to do something.

• Proactive engagement: This engagement is organic and driven by a member.  Members feel compelled to share something to help others in the group, add value or reach out for support.  It does not require any effort from you, apart from fostering a safe space for them to share such a post.  YAAASS!

So stop drop and roll the next time you want to DO something in your community.

Oh wait.  That’s for when you’re on fire.

Meh…it works here too!

Stop, drop and roll around on the floor the next time you want to DO something to engage your membership.  Just make sure you clear a space so you don’t roll on your router or internet cables.

Instead, focus on…

DOING LESS and OBSERVING MORE.  

⇡ This right here is GOLD.  Please read it again…slowly…with emphasis. ⇡

I know it ain’t sexy, or a magic pill to engagement, but when you train yourself to watch what’s happening in your community and to engage strategically…THAT is when members learn that YOU aren’t the engagement engine.

So rather than DOING.  Observe!  

Be the lion in the grass… watching… waiting…. assessing… ready to POUNCE!

Not sure what this actually looks?

When you scan or review a community look for the following opportunities: 

• To enforce the community guidelines (you DO have guidelines right?!  RIGHT!!!).  Guidelines or a Community Manifesto – as I like to call them – makes it crystal clear who the space is for, what's expected of them (and you), what isn't kosher and more.  This allows your members to live up to your expectations and dramatically reduce the number of “incidents” that you need to “manage”.
• To connect members with each other.  If someone is struggling with an issue that another member experienced last week…jump into the comments and tag that person in.  It demonstrates that you’re paying attention, that you care about the person struggling AND that you value the insights and experience of  the person you tag in. It be rainin' WINs ya'll.
• To make your unicorns shine…more on that in nugget #4.  Sign up below so you don’t miss out on this game-changer.
• To introduce topics that could make for an interesting discussion.  This is not something you do on a daily or even weekly basis…but you are going to keep in mind so that you can organically add an engagement post here or there.  Think sprinkling rain showers of engagement posts, not a tsunami. This is NOT something you schedule every Monday for the entire year. That’s lazy and NOT engaging. Fuck me in the eyeballs!

If you want to be a fly on the wall and see how I scan a community…I share a quick video of me “doing my thang” in my “whole enchilada” of free resources.

Sign up below to snag that video & ALL my goodies!

So to land this plane…today’s mantra that you’re going to chant to yourself whenever you catch yourself DOING a lot of shit in your community…

STOP DROP AND ROLL…LESS DOING; MORE OBSERVING.

In a jiffy, {if you signed up} I’ll be creeping into your inbox {sloth style} to share secret number 2.

It involves blind dates, hearts bursting and strategic tagging. I'm excited to tickle your brain tomorrow via email!

Be sure to sign up for the whole 5 part series, so you get the remaining 4 nuggets and future word-babies (aka emails) from moi on all things “engaging paid membership communities”!

Hugs and skittles,

Diana