Fun Icebreaker Activities For Your Online Community
Today, communities are more popular than ever. For wherever your interests lie, whether that's yoga, live music, or freelancing, there's a community out there for you to be a part of. And for anyone who is aspiring to start their own, there are a plethora of online tools that can help you build an active and striving community.
If you have already created your own community, you might be thinking of ways to engage with your community in a fun way. Especially for anyone who runs an online community, finding ways to connect with your members and get to know them better is incredibly important. That's where icebreakers come into play. An "icebreaker" is a broad term for an activity that helps people build trust and loosen up around each other. They come in many shapes and sizes, but they are a proven way to create connections between strangers.
In this article, I'll go over available tools and strategies that will help you implement successful icebreakers within your community.
Icebreakers For Video Calls
We all are familiar with Zoom meetings as a way to communicate while working remotely. But if you're the owner of a community, how do you engage with your community without the hassle of setting up Zoom meetings?
Virtual Venue allows you to host video meetings directly within your website. It's a great way to engage with your community where they already live! It has flexible customization options to fit the style and needs of your own community. Here are some fun icebreaker activities you can do while hosting a video call on Virtual Venue.
Virtual Pictionary With Skribbl
Playing a quick, fun game is a great icebreaker for the beginning of a video gathering. Skribbl is a virtual version of the classic game, Pictionary, where players guess each other's drawings. It's free to use, and incredibly easy to set up. So at the beginning of your next video call, send over a Skribbl link to your members for a 5-10 minute game of funny drawings and wild guesses.
Icebreakers And Games With Slides With Friends
Slides With Friends uses interactive slides to bring a new level of fun and engagement to your video meetings. There are many different games and activities to choose from, so you can find what works best for your community. Does your community like to travel? Then check out their Travel Trivia. Or does your community like to grab drinks? Then there's a Happy Hour Hang that you can integrate right into your video call. You can also customize your own game using one of their templates and adding custom questions relevant to your community.
Icebreakers For Slack
For many people, the Slack "workspace" has turned into a place where striving communities are found. Communities on Slack have the potential to grow fast, so if a portion of your community lives on Slack, you might be wondering how to engage with all the new members you'll find yourself gaining.
Here are a couple apps that can be used as fun icebreaker activities within Slack.
Bill Is Fun
Bill Is Fun is a Slack app that helps people get to know each other better creating a game using fun and original icebreaker questions. Bill will reach out to members of your community and ask them an icebreaker question, like, "What historical figure would you like to skydive with?".
Later in the day, members will be asked to guess each other's answers to this icebreaker question. This is a fun, fast, and easy way to learn interesting facts about members of your community.
Snack
If you're looking to create organic, serendipitous conversation within your Slack community, Snack is a great Slack app to try out. Snack is similar to the popular app, Donut, but instead allows for more spontaneous conversation. Members of your community can use Snack to send out invites to have quick chats with each other, as well as customize the topic of discussion.
David O is the Co-founder of billisfun.com. You can find him on at Twitter at @David_O_J.