New Years’ resolutions will always be a trend at the beginning of the year. Memberships to gyms, book clubs, yoga classes, and other healthy and worthwhile lifestyles will begin to be trending by Jan 1. Well, that would be most likely the same as coworking spaces. You may have observed that there’s a growth in your membership at the start of January or in the coming days. That’s why you have to invest in creative marketing ideas as you welcome New year since this is a common trend for many people.
There are various reasons why freelancers, entrepreneurs, and employees would choose to start coworking at the start of the year. Let’s enumerate a few of their basic reasons.
Sense of Community
Most of the time they experience isolation especially on working at home. And being part of a team answers that deep longing for a sense of belongingness. Coworking offers a readily available network of like-minded professionals to collaborate or enjoy a chat over a cup of coffee during breaks after work.
Work and Life balance
Coworking helps you separate your home from your office. Anyone can relate that working at home can cause familiarity and neglect over some important responsibilities. Getting out of the house for work helps them moving throughout the day. Coworking space offers flexibility to provide just the right feel of work it might require for a day.
Creative outlet and Collaboration
Coworking environments are designed to inspire creativity and innovation. It provides unique setup and amenities for professionals, entrepreneurs, and freelancers to execute their projects from start to finish. Not just that, but able to collaborate and connect with like-minded people to help them with their workload. It relieves them from psychological pressure and improves their business because of connections.
Here are some tips that you can explore and try for your coworking space:
Make them feel welcome
Hospitality is a common thing, however, it is often overlooked in the business world, especially if there’s an overfamiliarity of the process. Introduce your new members to your staff and the existing coworking members. On the Orientation, space owners should be there to accompany new members not only the community manager of the space. In this way, they’ll feel welcome and have that sense of being valued. Make sure they got to interact with the existing members so that when they come to work on the next day, they have already connected inside. You can be creative in welcoming them like announcing it on your community feed or have a random welcome dinner for them together with the community.
Make them understand all of your services and amenities
When onboarding your new members, communicate to them the value that your coworking space can give to their business and in their professional work and skills. Dedicate ample time to show them your different amenities and the services they can expect from your space. Aside from that, bring in testimonies from other members who have thrived in your coworking space. Let them know that you have different events that foster skills and collaboration with like-minded people. They need to know all these things so that there’s something that they can look forward to in the coming months.
Drive engagement with other coworking members
Help the new members to engage with your coworking members. Plan activities with your Community Manager to ensure that new members are not set aside, but instead, they’ll feel that they are part of the community already in their first week of joining. Good rapport with your members can translate into member satisfaction, then all the more increasing the chances of retention.
Provide organized classes
Providing organized training courses for higher-level skills like SEO, graphic design, leadership courses or anything that can be beneficial for everyone, can not only become a strong marketing asset but also can add value for your members. You can offer special discounts on some members who have been with your space for like 3-6 months.
Do a Feedback survey to know their needs
After a month of joining in your space, your new members would most likely able to identify the things that they need and love about your space. Send them a feedback survey so you can further assess their needs on how you can tailor-fit it to your coworking solution. You can have a casual discussion with them on how they’re experiencing so far; if they have some concerns or proposals that they want to bring up. Through this, you’re showing them that you value their experience and you want them to experience the best in being part of the coworking community.
Conclusion
There are many ways to retain your members, but what matters most is that they can experience a sense of belongingness in your coworking space. If they’re able to experience that, even if there are some gaps on your services, they will still stay. After all, coworking gives them an opportunity to meet useful contacts, form friendships, and try a different environment. By implementing these simple tips, you can make your new coworking members continue toward building and growing their community.