Slack
Slack
Communication platform for team collaboration
What is Slack? ✨
Slack is a communication platform that can serve as a digital hub where community managers can cultivate vibrant communities and streamline the oversight of member exchanges.
What Slack can be used for? ✨
Although Slack is designed for internal corporate communications and is not a community platform, it has gained a lot of popularity among community managers. Slack helps facilitate communication and collaboration, you may be able to make the process smoother and more engaging for all involved.
- You can create different channels for different topics, allowing for organized discussions.
- You can use Slack to directly engage with your community. It provides real-time chat capabilities, making communication more immediate and personal.
- Slack integrates with many other tools such as Google Drive, Asana, Trello, and many others, making it easier to share documents, schedule events, and manage tasks within your community. The free plan allows you to integrate with up to 10 other tools.
- You can alert your community to new information, updates, events, or deadlines using Slack's announcement features.
- Slack has a built-in search function that allows members of your community to easily find past conversations or shared files.
- You can create private channels for sensitive discussions or for specific groups within your community.
- Slack allows for direct messaging and video calls, creating opportunities for closer collaboration between community members.
- You can use tools like polls and reactions to boost member engagement and gather feedback from your community.
Comparison with other platforms: Discord vs Slack
Features ✨
Channels
Direct messages
File sharing
Searchable history
Integrations
Emoji Reactions
Voice and Video Calls
Notifications
Mobile App
Workflow Automation (for paid plan)
What are the limitations? ✨
It's always a good idea to balance the needs, size, and functionality of your community before choosing a platform like Slack. It might not be a good fit for community builders for several reasons:
- Messages and files older than 90 days are hidden.
- As your community grows, it becomes more challenging to manage on Slack. Channels can become chaotic and unwieldy due to unchecked user activity.
- Discussions in Slack tend to be less formal and more chat-based, which might not be suitable if you're aiming for detailed, structured discussions.
- Since Slack is primarily a real-time communication tool, important information can quickly get lost in the flood of messages. Those who don’t log on frequently may miss out on key discussions.
- Slack is a closed system, so it doesn't contribute to public-facing content that will appear in search results, potentially limiting your ability to attract new community members.
- Unlike social media platforms or forums, joinable via a simple link, Slack requires an email invitation for each new member, which can add friction to the signup process.
- If you want to give certain users restricted channel access, you'll need to pay for guest access.
- While video calling is available in the free version, you can only make one-on-one calls. For group video calls, you need a paid plan.
- Advanced features like workflow builder, automations, 24/7 support, SAML-based single sign-on (SSO), etc., are only available in paid plans.
Languages ✨
- English
- Spanish
- German
- French
- Portuguese
- Italian
- Chinese
- Japanese
- Korean