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#TipTuesday: The API isn’t just for developers 💡
Community Managers can use Vanilla’s API for everyday tasks too, and you can test requests directly from your Dashboard without writing any code. Head to Settings → API Integrations → API v2, choose an endpoint, and use Try It to see the results right in your community. This can be useful when you need to: Look up…
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#TipTuesday: Success Advisor or Support?
A field guide for those "Who do I ask?" moments You have a community question. Excellent! But where should it go? Should you contact your Success Advisor? Open a Support ticket? Search the knowledge base? Here's how to get your question to the right team, and get to an answer faster. The 10-Second TestASK YOURSELF: Am I…
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#TipTuesday: Create an Onboarding Widget That Helps New Members Take Action
Hello Vanilla friends! 😎🍦 Welcome back for another edition of #TipTuesday. One of the biggest challenges in any community is not getting someone to register. It is getting them to take that first meaningful action after they arrive. If a new member lands in your community and does not know where to go, what to click, or…
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#TipTuesday: The Answer After the Answer - Turning Solved Questions into Community Gold
You know that beautiful community moment when someone asks a question, another member swoops in with the perfect answer, everyone breathes a sigh of relief, and the whole thing feels wrapped up with a neat little bow? Amazing. Beautiful. We love to see it. But then what happens? Too often, that helpful answer drifts…
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#TipTuesday: Give Your Best Answers a Second Life
Accepted Answers are valuable—but only if members can find them. Every few months, review your most-viewed solved discussions. Ask yourself: Is the accepted answer still accurate? Could it benefit from additional context? Does it link to newer documentation? Should it be converted into a knowledge base article? Keeping…
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#TipTuesday: Use Category Descriptions Like Tiny Tour Guides
Happy #TipTuesday Everyone, Category descriptions are easy to overlook. They sit quietly under a category name, usually only a sentence or two long, and because of that they can feel like “set it and forget it” text. But those little descriptions can do a lot of heavy lifting. Think of them as tiny tour guides for your…
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#TipTuesday: Help Your AI Replicator Build Better Vanilla Widgets
You ask the computer for something simple. “Tea. Earl Grey. Hot.” And instead of a perfectly reasonable cup of tea, you get… a lukewarm smoothie in a soup bowl with a garnish of CSS errors. That is sometimes what it feels like to ask AI for “a quick widget.” You might give it what sounds like an easy request: “Make me a…
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#TipTuesday - Category, Tag and User Following
Never Miss What Matters: Personalize Your Community Experience with Following One of the greatest strengths of a thriving customer community is the wealth of knowledge being shared every day. New discussions, product updates, feature ideas, best practices, customer success stories, and expert advice are constantly being…
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#tiptuesday Using AI to Generate Better Test Variants, Faster
In an earlier Tip Tuesday post, I gave tips for getting started with testing in your community. You can read the full post here. One of the hardest parts of A/B testing isn't running the test... often it's coming up with variants to test in the first place. Writing multiple versions of a banner headline or your CTAs can…
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#TipTuesday: Mark an Accepted Answer when your question is solved
Q&A is one of the most commonly used features in many communities. Members rely on it to ask questions, get help, and learn from others who may have run into the same situation. Because Q&A is so active, it is worth the occasional reminder: when a question has been answered, marking an Accepted Answer helps turn that…
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#TipTuesday: Make Member Conversations a Regular Habit
I was well into my career as a community builder before I realized the value of intentionally setting aside time to talk directly with members — by phone, Zoom, or even in person when possible. It’s easy to get caught up in moderation queues, analytics, and content calendars. But some of the best community insights come…
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#TipTuesday - Brand-driven Ideation programs: the not so scary alternative
Ideation programs can be intimidating, and many community teams shy away from implementing them. Sometimes, it's because they feel they won't get buy-in from the Product team, or they think the initial support will eventually fade away. Especially in large communities, teams may also fear receiving a high volume of ideas…
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#TipTuesday: Workshop your big ideas in public first
A lot of content gets made in isolation. You have an idea for a webinar or conference talk, you start outlining, and by the time anyone outside your team sees it, you're already deep into production. Before you commit to the bigger piece, try posting the core thesis or take somewhere your audience can react to it. Maybe…
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#TipTuesday: Stop the Scroll - Spotlight Content with Featured Collections
Welcome back for another edition of #TipTuesday. Let's stop the scroll!! Featured Collections are your secret weapon to keeping eyes focused on what's important to your users. Instead of letting valuable resources get buried, you can spotlight key discussions, articles, or resources right where members will see them first.…
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#TipTuesday - Want More Community Engagement? Start With Ease of Use
Community managers spend a lot of time strategizing around engagement — programs, content, campaigns, tactics. But the single biggest lever you may be overlooking is this: how easy is it for members to actually find, access, and participate in your community? The best content in the world is worthless if people can't find…
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#TipTuesday — Rethinking Groups: From Spaces to Experiences
Groups have always played an important role in community building - creating dedicated spaces for specific audiences, topics, or levels of access. But with recent platform enhancements, Groups can now do much more than simply organize members. They can help you design more intentional, engaging community experiences.…
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#TipTuesday Build a Moderator Hub Using Custom Pages!
The Problem with Scattered Moderator Tools Your moderators are busy people. When something needs attention, they shouldn't have to hunt through the dashboard, remember URLs, or ask you where to find things. A dedicated moderator hub — a single page visible only to your mod team — gives them a home base where they can…
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#TipTuesday: APIs for Absolute Beginners – What They Are and Why You Should Care
If the word “API” makes your brain quietly back away like it just saw a command line prompt, this one’s for you. You do not need to be a developer to understand what APIs are or to use them to make your life easier. Today’s goal is simple: no code, no jargon, just enough clarity that “API” stops feeling like a scary…
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#TipTuesday: Create Momentum with Recurring Community Events
One of the easiest ways to boost engagement in your community? Give members something to look forward to. Recurring events create rhythm, build habits, and give members a reason to come back regularly. Here’s how to make them work: 1️⃣ Start Simple and Stay Consistent Pick one format and stick with it. Examples: Feature…
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#TipTuesday: Game of Logins - Building Community Behind and Beyond the Wall
When you play the Game of Logins, you either win… or you're like the rest of us and wonder if your community is missing out on great visibility and traffic by keeping everything behind the login wall because you're worried about direwolves, giants, and White Walkers reeking havoc. Many people look at the privacy of their…
