Members-only Slack Best Practices
Your Guide to Our Slack Community
To provide more opportunities for connection within our community, members now have access to a community-run Slack group hosted by Naturally Boulder. Naturally Boulder’s Slack community exists to facilitate sharing information, resources, and encouragement among natural and organic product professionals. If you would like to get to know a great group of friendly peers, share your knowledge or learn something new, join us!
Getting Started with Slack
Naturally Boulder Account
- Members can request an invite to join here.
Once accepted, set up your account at naturallyboulder.slack.com and fill out your profile.
- Your username should be First and Last name (e.g. @Jane Smith)
- Add your contact, position/title information, and a photo to your account
- Notifications: Open your profile preferences set your notifications to “Direct Mentions, Mentions & Keywords”
- Download the Slack app to your desktop and your phone so you can always stay up to date and enjoy an optimal Slack user experience
🙋 Slack help: Manage your profile
Introduce Yourself
- In the below #introduce-yourself channel, please set up your profile and introduce yourself upon joining with your Name, Company/Brand and Title and anything else you’d like to share.
Channel Surfing
We’ve curated a set of channels to help guide your conversations and questions. Join as many channels as you’d like and start engaging:
- #announcements – Moderator: Naturally Boulder
- #introduce-yourself – Moderator: Naturally Boulder
- #marketing-pr – Community Moderators: Dustin Finkel, Awakened Foods; Kuvy Ax, ROOT Marketing & PR
- #start-ups – Community Moderator: Stephen Cowan, Beyond Microgreens; Julie Nirvelli, Julie Nirvelli Consutling; Dustin Steerman, ePac
- #sustainability – Community Moderator: Kate Christian, Eco-Cycle; Nancy Schoemann, Natural Habitats
- #jedi – Community Moderator: Penny Tompkins, Charlotte’s Web
- #product-development – Community Moderators: Barbara Shepard, Aseppak Global; Abbie Hohman, FlavorSum
- #random – Moderator: Naturally Boulder
- #sales – Community Moderator: Chris Mears, Salt Box Advisors
- #supply-chain – Community Moderator: Allie Brimlow, Fresca Foods Inc.
- #financing – Community Moderator: Liz Myslik, Loft Growth Partners
- #job-opportunities – Share job opportunities and resumes. Please note that members and sponsors can post job listings for free on our website!
- individual conversations – At any point, you can ping others in the channel (or multiple people) and start other channels that are private
⚡ Tip: Use the keyboard shortcut Command + K to quickly switch between channels.
Best Practices
- Do use Slack as a chat/messaging platform
- Do download the Desktop app so you won’t miss messages and can stay connected to the channel
- Do use channels for organized and streamlined communication that is relevant to the audience in that channel. If you are unsure of the channel’s purpose, click on the channel and toggle your mouse over the top of the channel to review the channel purpose.
- Do use “Remind Me” and or “Mark as Unread” feature to increase your effectiveness of read messages
- Do use the “Reply in a Thread” feature. If you use this feature, it’s recommended that you “@” mention them within your comment to ensure that they see your response.
- Do use direct messages and tag users in relevant posts @TEAMMEMBER (you can direct message multiple people in one thread if necessary).
- Do use “@channel” when you want to notify every person in the entire channel
- Don’t abuse “@channel” messages – remember, these send a direct notification to everyone in the channel
This Slack group was created as a complimentary hub to our in-person meetings. Generally, this is a space you could visit with questions like:
- “Hey, who is going to be at Expo East?”
- “Can anyone recommend a co-packer in the Fort Collins area?”
- “What’s the best e-commerce platform?”
- “How can I become organic certified?”
- “Where can I source sustainable packaging?”
- “Should I work with social media influencers to help market my product?”
- “Anybody want a job?”
Questions like these get asked and answered every day, along with general conversation about the natural and organic products industry. We aim for this space to become a valuable means for creating ad-hoc dialog within our community across a wide range of organizations. For that to happen, we hope all of our members are cooperative and willing and able to help each other.