AI and automation for community management

• Brainstorming ideas: Tools like ChatGPT, Claude, or Gemini can help you come up with fresh ideas tailored to your community’s interests, current trends, or past engagement. Whether you’re planning weekly discussion prompts, networking events, or creative challenges, AI can offer a steady stream of inspiration. Just keep in mind: AI doesn’t know your community like you do. Before putting any ideas into action, take the time to review and revise. Your voice and judgment are what make the content authentic.
  
• Drafting content—from surveys to automated messages: AI can also help you draft a wide range of content for your community—from surveys and community guidelines to blog posts and onboarding guides. It’s especially useful when you need to create clear, consistent materials quickly or at scale. Think of AI as your assistant, not your replacement. Use it to generate a first draft, then focus on refining the details to match your community’s voice and values.
  
• Analyzing audience research: Making sense of large datasets can be a major time suck for community managers. Try using AI to analyze community feedback, Live Feed posts, or member profiles to identify common themes. AI can be used to spot patterns in what people are asking, sharing, or struggling with. These insights can help you prioritize content or initiatives that align with your community’s needs. Some of our customers use tools like Airtable as their CRM, which now have AI assistants that can help you find trends and derive insights from your data.
  
• Developing engagement strategies: You can also use AI to brainstorm, test, and refine engagement strategies. Start by writing a prompt that describes your members’ general interests, backgrounds, challenges and goals (without sharing personal data, of course), then ask the tool to generate a few engagement ideas based upon your desired outcomes. After testing them in your community, you can return to the tool to analyze what worked and why—then use those insights to develop even better strategies.
  
• Fostering 1:1 connections: Automated community management tools like Orbiit can assist in matching members for one-on-one conversations based on shared interests, goals, or expertise. Spendesk, for example, uses Orbiit to power 1:1 connections in its CFO community. While their team had been doing this manually—a task that took two days per week! —they were able to automate the process based upon their members’ experience level, industry, language, and location.

This list is non-exhaustive! If you’re looking for additional ideas, try asking ChatGPT to generate a list of ways it can support your efforts. The key to getting a useful response is providing context. Include details about your community’s purpose, who your members are, and what outcomes you’re hoping to achieve. The more specific your prompt, the more relevant and actionable the suggestions will be.

Getting started with AI for community management

With or without AI, the key to starting any initiative is to first identify your desired outcomes. (Take a look at our guide on community onboarding and community analytics to get some ideas on how to define and enact your goals.) When starting out with AI for community management, it can help to begin with a few individual tasks, familiarizing yourself with the tool’s capabilities.

Here are some tips on writing successful prompts:

1. Offer a clear definition of the task and your desired outcome. Imagine your AI tool is a new intern: the better your instructions, the better the outcome. Maybe your goal is to create a re-engagement campaign for members who’ve gone silent or you’d like to develop a series of Live Feed posts using profile data to target your copy.
2. Provide as much detailed information about your community and its members as possible. (Again, avoiding personal information or other sensitive data.)
3. Consider the data available to you as a community manager. From member interests and background information to Live Feed posts and previous successful campaigns, you can provide a variety of information that will help AI learn about your community and generate more targeted results.
4. Give instructive feedback on your results, essentially teaching the tool the type of outcome you desire.
5. Remember to review and refine all generated text or images for accuracy, tone of voice, and alignment with your community’s values.

Responsible use of AI for community management

Generative AI is a powerful tool. Using it responsibly starts with understanding how it handles the information you provide. Data shared with large language models (LLMs) may be stored and could potentially be used to train future models—so it’s critical to avoid uploading anything sensitive or personally identifiable.

1. Always anonymize member data.

Do not upload:

• Personal details such as names, addresses, or contact information
• Proprietary or confidential business information
• Copyrighted materials
• Unpublished research or reports
• Sensitive data, including medical or financial records

2. Maintain a human touch

We’ve also discussed the importance of maintaining the human touch. While AI can assist with content creation, moderation, and strategy, it still requires your oversight to ensure trust and transparency. AI-generated outputs may contain biases or even stereotypes based upon the data inputs. That’s why reviewing AI-assisted work is essential—ensuring your content is fair, accurate, and aligned with your community values.

3. Avoid over-automation

Relying too heavily on AI for tasks like engagement or moderation can make your community feel impersonal or robotic. AI lacks a deep understanding of your community’s unique culture, history, and relationships. What works for one community may not translate well for another, so use AI-generated suggestions as a starting point vs a final answer.

The key to using AI successfully is to pair its capabilities with your own judgment, empathy, and experience. By keeping humans at the center of your work, you can use AI to enhance—not replace—the relationships and trust that make your community thrive.

Hivebrite is taking a thoughtful approach to integrating AI into community management, focusing on features that enhance rather than replace the human elements that make communities special. By automating routine tasks and providing intelligent insights, we’re freeing community managers to focus on what matters most – strategy and relationship building. Our AI capabilities are designed to create more opportunities for meaningful engagement while making daily workflows more efficient and effective. From smart member matching to predictive analytics, see how we’re using AI to help you build stronger, more vibrant communities. Request a demo and learn more about our AI vision.