Why Your Club Should Be Using Group Chats

Group chats and chat rooms are as much a part of modern life as world-altering plagues and memes of Michael Jordan. Though unlike those two, group chats and chat rooms are useful for your club. 

 

So useful, that Member Jungle offers member group chats as standard and has just introduced chat reactions and event-based chat rooms. So, we thought we’d spend a little time today talking about all the chat features of the Member Jungle system. 

Why Use Chat Rooms For Your Club? 

Using chat rooms for your club can be a great way to communicate with and engage your members. As someone who runs a club, you already know just how important good clear communication between you and your members is, and using group chats is another excellent way to do so. Group chats may be shorter and less detailed than emails, newsletters and blog articles, but they certainly have advantages. 

Emails, newsletters and blogs are effective communication methods, but they lack that personal touch that chat rooms have. Most people talk to their friends via group chats and texts rather than emails and newsletters. Group chats and chat rooms have a more personal and relaxed vibe. Using chat rooms to talk to and with your members is a great way to build a sense of community within your club. Also, communicating via chat rooms is more in line with most people’s attention spans and methods of communicating today. As someone who studied communication theory, I can tell you this makes a big difference in your communication effectiveness. Not to mention that chat room notifications are sent directly to members’ phones. Giving you more direct communication with your members than ever before. Of course, if a chat is extremely busy and it becomes too much for a member, they can mute notifications.  

Member Jungle Chat Rooms 

Member Jungle offers member chat rooms as standard as a part of all its packages. The only difference is that in the Essentials package, chat is only available via the app, while it’s available on the app and the website for the other packages. If you’re an admin, you can utilise Member Jungle chat rooms in various ways for your club. By going to the module section of your website and selecting “Chat Room”, you can view all current chats and create new ones. 

In the settings of each chat room, you can decide who has access to it. This allows you to establish separate chat rooms for general members, board or committee members, or for different membership levels and security clearance. This makes communicating between administrators or specific groups easier without regular members cluttering up the chat.

If you enable it, individual members can also set up their own one-on-one or group chats. If you enable this, it can be a great bit of extra value for your members to enjoy. Below is an example of how the chat looks on both the website and the app. 

Event Based Chat Rooms With Member Jungle

Member Jungle has released its newest chat-based feature for you to use, and that’s event-based chat. This allows you to set up chat rooms for specific upcoming events that your club is hosting. Like with normal chats, you can restrict access to the chat group, but with event chats, the chat room is restricted access to only those who have bought tickets or registered for your event. If your events are open to the general public, then any members of the public who buy tickets will also be able to access the specific chat for that event. 

Of course, for the sanity of the people running the events, all events eventually end. So it only makes sense that your event-based chat does too. You can set how long after the event takes place that the chat gets automatically deleted.

Chat Reactions & Other Features Of Member Jungle Chat Rooms

You need to know a few other things about using chat rooms on Member Jungle. As of early 2023, chat reactions and direct replies have been added to Member Jungle chat rooms. You can click on a message and ‘react’ to it using any emoji on your phone or device. You can now also reply directly to a particular message in a group chat. Doing so will show the message you are responding to with your message. This is particularly useful in a busy chat where vital context can be easily swept away by the tide of the conversation. These are simple features, but they are quality-of-life improvements that are sure to bring a smile to the faces of your members.

 

 

Of course, not everyone is well-behaved all the time. If someone in one of your group chats starts talking inappropriately or using unacceptable language, other members do have the ability to report that member’s behaviour through a chat room feature. From there, you or any other admin are able to pull said member aside and speak to them about their behaviour. 

 

 

As an admin, you are also able to delete any message in the group chat, just in case someone does post something inappropriate. 

You are also able to post images in any of the chat rooms, which can be a great added function to keep your members happy. This isn’t just a fun feature; some clubs have worked out how to make this feature a super useful tool. There is a fishing club that uses Member Jungle, and during their big fishing competitions, they use the chat to log who has caught what fish. When a member catches a fish, they immediately take a photo of the fish and post it in the group chat. This helps them log and keep track of who is catching what throughout the competition. Plus, it reportedly leads to a lot of fun banter in the group chat. 

Opt-In Group Chats

Member Jungle has recently realised the ability to allow you to make your group chat rooms opt-in. Meaning that members will be able to join or leave a group chat with a click of a button. This can be an awesome tool for clubs that are home to multiple different interest groups. If you want more details on how opt-in chats work and why they are useful. Then have a read of, Opt-In Chat Rooms: What They Are & Why Your Club Needs Them.

Go Communicate Better With Your Members 

Well, that’s about all there is to know about using Member Jungle chat rooms for now. Though product development never stops around here, and next time new chat features are available, I will be sure to update you. If you are looking for new ways to better monitor the engagement of your members, why not read Why Your Social Club Needs Data Reporting.