There’s more to a community than just building it and hoping people will come. It takes time, effort, and nurturing. Instead of waiting for people to come pouring in - you must make it worth their while. Remember the adage, “what’s in it for me”? Your audience is likely to ask themselves that question.
Since the pandemic, the time we spend online has been increasing. Some signs show many of us are a little tired of it. Initially, it was called “Zoom fatigue” because many people were stuck in Zoom meetings all day long. But when we couldn’t socialize outside of our homes, we also talked to family and friends online, got our entertainment online…and I started calling this digital fatigue. This is important for community folks because it adds a hurdle you will have to overcome to encourage visits to your site. The ecosystem you’re building must be compelling enough to justify the time spent in it.
Start with Content
Often, when we imagine our ideal community, we think about people connecting with each other and building amazing relationships that last a lifetime. Hashtag goals, right? If you’re really lucky, you may see friendships form in communities you’re a part of. But that’s not where it starts. It starts with content. Why would a customer (or potential customer) visit your site? Because they’re looking for something.
In the early months of building your community (yes, plan for at least six months), the majority of content will need to come from your team. Plan ahead and have a calendar mapped out with a steady stream of content going into your community. Until you have enough members posting daily and engaging with each other, you need to give them a reason to stop by. Brian Oblinger likens it to a refrigerator full of food in the content episode of In Before the Lock. If the fridge is empty every time someone walks by and opens it, eventually, they’ll stop checking it. But if it’s stocked with new and interesting things, they’re more likely to keep checking when hungry.
In my previous post, I mentioned talking to your potential audience. Did you ask them about problems they’re currently trying to solve? Or any pain points they could use help with? Those data points make for excellent content inspiration. Create helpful, actionable posts that can be implemented immediately, and the audience will thank you. And likely come back for more.
Do Things That Don’t Scale
Why would you want to do things that don’t scale—especially if you have a small team? You don’t want to do them forever, but high-touch actions in the early stages of community building can have a considerable impact.
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Personally welcome new members and give them a list of resources that might be helpful.
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Thank members who answer questions for other users.
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Schedule calls with members to get their input on how things are going and what they’d like to see improved.
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Like every single post from others.
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Encourage people to introduce themselves in an evergreen thread.
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Enlist help where you can so no question goes unanswered. (You’ll need to decide what’s a reasonable timeframe for your company.)
You’re building relationships at this stage, and it’s much easier when your community is small. And you may start noticing some future superstars.
It’s Not About You
As much as companies want to make a community about them—it’s really not. It’s about the members. You can’t lose sight of these things:
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Why are your members here?
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What problems are they trying to solve?
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How can you uniquely help them?
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What value are you providing?
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What will make someone want to come back?
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How are you thanking/rewarding people for being helpful?
Yes, you want also to provide value to your company and tie your actions back to business goals. But your visitors don’t care about that part. Internally, you may report on these objectives, but externally, your goal is to make members feel valued.
Data Isn’t Just a SciFi Character
From the moment you start planning, have data in mind. How will you measure the success of the community? It depends on your objectives.
When you first launch, you may focus on traffic and visitors to build up your audience. As you grow, it may shift to return visitors, how much content is being created, and whether members are getting their questions answered. And in the longer term, maybe you’ll also look at your top of funnel (marketing), reduction in support tickets (support), customer retention of customers in community vs. not (success), or other items unique to your business.
The goal is to have your short- and long-term data needs in mind as you build—and also as you improve—your community. Perhaps you’ll integrate with your business systems to get a better understanding of who’s visiting and what accounts you’re interacting with. Maybe your account and success teams can follow their customers and get to know them (and their pain points) better. And it could be that product teams will be interested in feedback around new features or recruiting for user testing. How will you collect and distribute information back to teams internally? This is a continual question—you can’t answer it once and be done with it.
Are you reviewing your metrics (at least) monthly to ensure you are hitting your targets? Are you setting quarterly goals? Are you reviewing your priorities each quarter and using data to inform your decisions? You’ll need to show your work.
If you’d like to dig in further, here are some additional resources: