Community calls add another level to your DAO.
Something about talking with people, hearing their thoughts and questions brings a deeper connection.
If you're not currently doing community calls, here's how you can start running great ones.
If you already are, here are a couple ideas about how you can do them better.
First, where do you host them.
Where you decide to host your community calls will result in different results.
Are you looking for deep community engagement, or trying to host a big event. Are only a few people speaking, or do you want to have an open forum? Do you want people who aren't part of your community in it, or do you only want core contributors?
These are questions we must answer and which platform you decide to host it on will give you the clearest result.
Twitter Spaces
The first intuition most people have is Twitter space. Everyone is on Twitter. This has the greatest accessibility and chance for your call to get a bigger reach. However, what often happens is you get a lot of different people who might not be part of your organization on the call.
This feels good because you can get more people engaged and into your community, but the communication levels are less engaging. Also, it isn't a good format for introverts. On other platforms, you can ask questions via text which is a lot better for people who aren't comfortable with taking the stage.
We do a lot of our community events as a Twitter Space at Wonder, but it's not the platform we use for "internal community" calls.
The average listener engagement will also be less than alternatives.
So, if you're going for a wider breadth of members who may or may not be members of your community, Twitter spaces are great for greater reach.
If you want deeper community building, let's explore other options.
Zoom
Zoom works. Everyone knows how to use it. But as web3 is part-time for a lot of people, many are already zoom fatigued by the time the community call comes.
So using Zoom is a great option, but depending on your call size can also cost you.
At Wonder, we started with using Zoom. We had success with it, but we also felt like it made it feel more like a business meeting than a community gathering. So we continued to explore other options.
Discord
Discord is great because it'll be where your community already is. The downside of Discord is it's not a native video call platform, and the functionality is a bit disappointing.
You're more likely to have people with their mics accidentally on and more lag on a screen share.
You can have bots record your calls which is nice. There is also very little friction between your Discord channel and a call vs. other platforms you might get a smaller turnout.
Butter
Our Head of Community En found an amazing platform called Butter. It has timed agendas, QAs reactions etc.
It makes this call feel different from others. The calls are fun and dynamic.
The downsides are people have to use a new platform and it costs $300 for a year (depending on your community call size).
But, a great community experience is an easy investment in any project, but I understand if that's not desired.
We host all of our calls on Butter now. It's worth checking out.
Next, how do you structure your calls?
Agendas are key to a smooth community call. You might feel like a DAOs need to shoot from the hip, but we highly recommend coming up with a simple agenda.
We break up our calls into simple units, for example:
- Community Shoutouts
- Core team updates
- Product
- Growth
- Community
- Design
- Governance
- Questions
The power of an agenda is important. You can do a simple agenda on Google Docs and assign who will cover each section. This will ensure that you cover everything that you need to.
It typically takes us 30 minutes to go through all updates, then our community has about 30 minutes of questions. The questions are the most fun part in my opinion, and that is key to get an idea of how your community feels about your project.
Always give people space to ask via video or text (many people are too introverted to want to speak).
What do you do after the call?
Web3 is a global movement, so you're dealing with a lot of time zones. Not everyone is going to be able to make your community call.
If someone is in a time zone that doesn't work with the call, it's important to publish what happened.
That's why we publish our call agenda and put the call recording on YouTube. Some of our community members even translate the calls into other languages.
Every week, we also try to improve the format depending on what happened the previous week. It's important to also thank everyone who came, this will result in the same people coming back week after week which gives your calls an amazing community feel.
Have fun with your community calls! The best way to start is just start, each week you'll get a little bit better. Good luck!
