[Step 1 of 6] Creating your first 5 channels
1/ 👋 introduction
You can have this as the area where the onboarding intro questions from your community automatically come through and can be a great way to help new members understand what your community is all about.
2/ 📣 announcements
One of the best ways to keep members informed of the latest news regarding your community is to have every update in one place, and this is why having an announcement channel will be an essential part of your starting channels.
Most of the admins we've worked with prefer to have their announcement channel as read-only.
3/ 🏡 general
Having a general channel solely dedicated to welcoming members and introducing what the community is all about can be a great way to have new members ease into your community and potentially make new friends.
4/ 🤔 questions
Another great way of interacting with your community is to have a channel dedicated to asking and answering questions. This can be a place where members discuss important topics and share their knowledge.
5/ 🔊 watercooler
Commonly called voice rooms — this is where you can hang out with other members over voice and video to have real and meaningful conversations. Other members in your community can see if somebody is in the Watercooler and they can hop in to talk, say hi over the video, or share their screen.
[Step 2 of 6] Creating your first 2 documents
1/ ⚖️ Code of Conduct
This serves as the ground rules or community guidelines. It shows what is and isn't allowed in your community and what kind of content and behavior is or isn't encouraged.
2/ ❤️ How to Use Heartbeat
Teaching people how to do account settings, browser notifications, mentioning mobile and desktop apps, DMS, creating threads & posts, and editing posts.
[Step 3 of 6] Creating your first event
Heartbeat creates spaces dedicated to your in-person and off-platform events.
Pro Tip: Have one strong event to kick off the community, get to know who else is in the community, and give the onboarding invites early.
[Step 4 of 6] Configure Matchmaking
Matchmaking automatically connects people in your community.
Members can opt-in themselves, or admins can also put people in.
Admins can set up the number of pools and define who will match up with who.
[Step 5 of 6] Setup community theme
This is where you can upload and preview your logo and background color to reflect your branding.
[Step 6 of 6] Customize Onboarding
Create a customizable onboarding flow in your community by asking onboarding questions, giving them the option to join other groups asking their socials, and more!
Pro Tip: Make use of the onboarding questions as Bio for the members in the Introduction channel.