A Warm Welcome for New Contributors in Your Zinery Hub

To onboard new contributors to your music blog with Zinery, you send them an invite that now carries your hub's name and logo, the role you picked and a personal message from you. When they accept, they land on a welcome screen and a short "Getting started" checklist, and they find the guidelines you wrote for their role. That's the update I just shipped, and it comes from a part of running a blog with contributors that I know too well: the first few days of someone new. I had a checklist of things I need to do: add them to the Google Sheet with the guidelines, add them to my contributor mailing list, send them a welcome mail and so on. No I only need to invite them to the hub and everything is handled automatically.

What does a new contributor see first?

The invite email. Before this update it was a plain notification. Now it comes from your hub: it shows your hub's name and logo, uses your brand color, says who invited the person and explains what their role lets them do. If you add a personal message when you invite people, it shows up as a quote in the email. It reads like an invitation from a person, not a notification from a tool.

What happens after they accept?

They arrive on a welcome screen that explains what their role can do. On their dashboard sits a short "Getting started" checklist: complete your profile, add a profile photo and request your first show. A progress bar shows how far they are, the next open step is highlighted, and the checklist disappears once every step is done. Nobody has to wonder what to do first, and you don't have to answer the same message again.

How do you tell your team how you like to work?

Every blog has rules that never get written down: tone, length, how to shoot, how to credit. In your hub you can write them down in one place, with a general section for everyone and a section for every role. A contributor sees the general text and the part meant for their role, nothing else. The welcome screen points them to it with a "Read the guidelines" button, and a Guidelines item sits in their menu from then on. If you've ever kept your guidelines in a shared document, this is the same idea, without the link to lose and without forgetting to share it with a new contributor.

Quick answers

How do I invite contributors to my Zinery hub?

Choose "Invite Contributors" in your hub, paste one or several email addresses, pick a role and add your personal message. The step-by-step version is in the guide for music blog owners (opens in a new tab).

What does a new contributor do first?

They accept the invite, create their account and follow the "Getting started" checklist which includes finishing their profile and request their first show. The guide for contributors (opens in a new tab) explains how requesting shows works.

Does it cost anything?

The Contributor Hub is free to set up.

Where can I see every update?

On the changelog (opens in a new tab), which lists only what makes running a music blog easier (rest assured, I fix bugs too). You can also sign up to the newsletter if you never want to miss an update.

If you want to see where all of this comes from, read

The Story Behind Zinery

If you run an independent music blog with multiple contributors, you already know this feeling: you spend more time on boring admin work instead of writing reviews, conducting interviews, shooting shows or discovering your new favorite artist. I got tired of it. So I built Zinery.

And if you invite someone new this week, I'd like to hear how their first login felt. Just message me on Instagram (opens in a new tab).