Part 3 - Selecting and setting up your Community platform

Selecting the right platform to your community is of critical importance. It will define the value of your service, your day-to-day work quality and directly affect your retention rate (earning perspectives).

Not choosing right will result in days (weeks) of extra effort to set up, cumbersome day-to-day operation, with constant support issues (“x doesn’t work, can’t log in etc”)  and the worst - projecting low value. You would be basically taking money out of your own pocket. 

When it comes to professional community platforms there is one - with nothing even close and that is Circle.

This is a very black & white statement, and to fully understand why, we have to take a step back and talk about SaaS tools in general, what you truly want from them, and what you want to stay away from.

I'm adding a support article on this subject in a bit, for now I just want to give a brief excerpt.

In general what you truly want from any SaaS tool - is to stay the best at the very thing their purpose is.

• A well thought out user- and operator experience - 10 years old gets it, no extra loops for every-day functions
• The core functionality robustly built
• A professional look - as it represents your business
• A fast and smooth setup with immediate and superb support
• Rich Integrations - it needs to be a popular tool 
• Clean, adaptive pricing - you know what you pay for, it makes sense, grows proportionally as you grow

As a software Circle checks all this, but I want to highlight specifically - as a Community Platform - why it is the single choice presently.

This will get important as we move on to the setup phase. 

The 4 engines of a high functioning power-community

That go circles around the usual churn-rates others are seeing

There are 4 driving elements of any great community based membership model. The platform of your choice has to provide you with these elements natively. (you can click on each to jump there, but I recommend reading through each in order)

I. Flow - (A newsfeed)

II. Engagement - (Comments with a bell)

III. Live touch - livestreams

IV. Ladder - Closed areas

We’ve all seen dried forums that look like my grass planted in July.

You have also probably seen out of control, messy forums that have a lot of noise with no directives. Like the back corner of my old backyard after a few years untouched. (Was kinda busy on the weekends.)

The Flow 

The newsfeed element pulls revisiting members into the flow of the conversation. Just like water, the discussions, the topics need to stay fresh. The power of a fresh newsfeed drives the success of Facebook, of every image or video hub from Instagram and Youtube to that awful Tiktok. 

In Circle - very cleverly - visitors land on the newsfeed by default and be able to sort the posts by recency, popularity, activity etc. Very Smart, very important for you. 

On top of that, they'll see the trending posts and upcoming events on the right, and you can set weekly digest emails. 

Ideally your members check in othen (each day). Ideally you want them to see some movement from what they read yesterday. 

This means that you have new intriguing content stacked up for about a week ahead and you post them as the discussion on the previous one starts to dry out. Like a new topic starting around the campfire after a few seconds of silent chewing.

The Engagement

The comment / reply / @mention / get notified functionalities are the beating heart of a thriving community. The text interface needs to be clean and easy so people are encouraged to use it. It must be a positive experience.

Replying to a comment is like smiling at someone across the bus. We hope it's a start, not an end. If we don't get a reaction we'll feel we made a mistake.

In the beginning YOU (the admin) need to make sure that every comment, reply is reassured. By a like, by a few words of encouragement. Others will join soon enough, but you need to be mindful of this obligation.

Circle allows likes, which is the minimum effort smile-back. 

The best practice is to reply to any first level comment, or attraction (a thread that gets 2+ replies.) Start with the @name of who you reply to. Circle will open a members search as you start to type @. 

Then the bell (up-right) shows that you were smiled back at. You want to keep this clean, so people jump on it when they see small number appearing. (Edit what is shown here at the settings. You want to take the no-value but high volume spaces out (eg. say hi) so those don't swarm the notifications.)

All these elements are important to be in place by default. Most community and forum platforms I worked in have this part covered more or less, however Circle conveys a certain elegance and cleanness to it that I didn’t feel in others, like Disqus - without CSS tweaking it. (Not to mention the constant user login issues we had there)  

But, we came to the last 2 elements, and this is what narrows the platform choice to a singular one.

Live touch

Circle has an event type space allowing you to publish online events using external webinar, call or stream tools. That’s essential for the Group Coaching approach I explained in Part 2. 

1. You can have 1) a post / email on Monday giving the ‘what’s next’. T
2. Then 2) a scheduled webinar on Tuesday (with accessible archives) to teach the ‘how’.
3. Then discussions along the week,
4.  with a Q&A Live call on Friday. 

This is a killer formula. (the pacing is flexible of course, doesn’t need to be within a week)

Now the event-space makes it easy for you to announce these but it’s not everything. In addition to the scheduled events you have an instant Live Stream function.

This is a secret weapon - if used smartly - to add a ‘right now, just for a few of us’ sense of opportunity to users. 

Live streams you cannot schedule; you open it on spot, inviting active members present. You can stack a few on-the-spot topics in advance to show here. Bags-of-tricks, secret sauce, small detail advice. Just like jumping on a call with an elite consultant.

Some of the live streams you can vaguely announce (ie. Somewhere after 10am EST) or launch on spot, or mark a 3 hour range for 5 min Q&A sessions starting every 20 mins.

Play with this. The reason for an unorganized, right-there-right-now event is to increase uptime and presence of the members. It’s like incidentally finding a jaw-dropping street-performer on vacation. 9 of 10 revisits that square the next day.

1-click Live Streams is a built-in function in Circle. There is a passenger limit, but you won’t make it a crowd event, not in the first year at least.

The Ladder

I remember I learned of this concept many years back from an old Dan Kennedy cassette. An early client of mine was a big fan, collecting ancient, crappy-quality footage from Kennedy.

The Ladder means a visible, but closed level above for your members to climb. It’s always there. Locked. There are some others accessing it, doing awesome secret stuff, but we don’t know what it is. We just hear rumors.  

Closed (private) Spaces in Circle are serving as this Ladder. It is a visible representation of the higher membership tiers, the next step everyone desires to reach.

You should always have at least a 2 step ladder in place. One with a minimum (easy to keep) price-point and one premium for the performers & highly-committed.

Depending on your niche you can divide this in several different ways. Learning and action (ie. sprints), low vs high involvement, entry level topics vs. advanced, hobby vs. pro.

Up to you. Generally the premium should be ~5x the price of the core tier. It doesn’t matter what your competition does, your prices should harmonize to one another and reflect on the value your members get. It is always the value questioned when the price is.

But remember. They have to be aligned. Like houses. A skyscraper next to a thatched bungalow feels weird. 

If the core is 10 and the premium is 15, then what’s the point of the core? If it’s 10 then 900 it feels like you missed 5 steps in between, nobody would jump.

You can make individual spaces as well as space groups private. The best practice here is to make your life easier on member management. Invites, tagging and integrations will get complicated if you have to puzzle together 8 different spaces from everywhere. So rather just group them together.

Use one group for the premium tier, that shows 1 space, while having 2 more hidden. It’s enough to show the Ladder, but when someone upgrades, it feels like discovering a secret when seeing the 2 hidden spaces.

I like to tag the membership tiers. This you can set in Circle within the invite link. Zapier or Integromat will help you with the switch. 

I will give you more details on this as one of the Bonuses, if you subscribe to the tool using my link. A reward for supporting my work.

Bytheway Circle has a payment gateway feature, if you don't have any other option for a checkout...just keep in mind that at the lowest plan it's gonna charge you 4% (+ the 1.9-2.9% Stripe cut). The 2nd tier takes just 1%...that's better.

A quick word on the structure

I want to be brief here, for this part is only relevant to those who will go and sign up to Circle.

I wrote an entire section on this that I’d like to send to you by email if you sign up to Circle through my link. I explain the most effective structure to your community, with key principles to follow. Among other good stuff.

Drop me an email if you joined via my link. I may have something for you.

Light Overview:

The discussions in Circle have 3 layers. Posts, Spaces, Space groups. 

The Space groups are like the tents in the tribe camp. Each has certain members in them and a theme.

The spaces are the topics. Posts are the articles that invite comments under them.

You can set posting to be allowed for users or not. If not, you control the structure of the space, but then the discussion can only happen in the comments. It's good for publishing the value content or to announce.

On the other hand free posting invites more engagement. These are better found and sorted than comments. In general you want to have mostly open-post spaces. 

This initial setup of the spaces - groups is straightforward and fast (about a day), if you know what you are doing.

Summary

I’m recommending Circle as my No#1 choice for a professional community platform for these reasons

1. Professional, intuitive interface

The default look feels clean and fits the quality standards of a premium-priced membership of virtually any niche.

It's welcoming and intuitive from the get go. The initial login process is smooth, with an SSO option to most platforms. (I can’t say the same for all the other platforms I tested.)  The mobile app looks pretty good too although I don’t use mobile much, just checked it.

2. Smooth day-to-day operation

After the setup phase you don't need to click through a forest of toggles to operate your community. Adding new content and replying is fast, and that's what you will mostly do. Finding the next task (recent activities) is also quick.

After the initial active-phase your workload will soften into 2 logins / day with additional live streams at your judgment. If you do things right, the community will grow into self-sustaining, with super-users providing most of the content and fuel.

Member management could be improved though, there are 2 overlapping tabs and another to add/remove tags. This latter should be automated btw.

3. All the key functionalities you need are there natively

You don’t need - by necessity -  any external tool to build a high-earning power tribe with Circle - other than Stripe for payment processing.

I’d still use an external email tool. For the Community/Membership model I described I recommend Convertkit. It is my No.1 Choice as an advanced mailer, and I recommend it for 2 important reasons. I think I get back to this in the bonuses once you subscribed.

You use emails as a supporting content on a separate channel. You can trigger these by tags, comments on certain posts or just time based.

Having a site/pages is optional - you probably already have one. The main message of this 3-part series is that you don’t use a site (or an email list) as the foundational force behind your business, but the Community itself.

For advice on the website, go to the Toolbox section of Isit.

4. They focus on it making better not more

This clarity is a rare character in today's SaaS landscape and I highly appreciate it. 
The Circle team has a very quality centric focus. They seem to understand what matters, what the really fundamental functionalities are and ultimately who they are and who they are not.

As an example I've just seen a note on them upgrading the Live Stream function with a Private mode, to filter the invite by tags/groups/spaces. See how it adds to the ladder dynamic?

Now it's time for the real fun to begin. You now know what to do and what to use, let's get to work. Remember, today is always a better choice to make the first step towards your dreams. Tomorrow is an inch apart from 2 weeks » 2 years » once » then never.  

If you choose to follow my advice and go with Circle I ask you to use this link below:

Thank you for your kind support, and I’ll see you on the other side! (Also, I will be forever grateful if you share your success story with me later. I don’t need testimonies on this site, I’m not selling anything, it’s just feels good to know)

Best,

Tom

You finished this mini-course. Awesome. 
I'm adding further supplementary articles on tool selection criteria and have two more full mini-courses like this one the workbench already. 
Check back in a few weeks, if you enjoyed this one.

↩︎ Back to Part 2

✗ or Exit like a boss