Build an Online Community for $0*
I’ve unlocked the secret ingredients to the groundwork for a robust and knowledgeable community that naturally attracts new members…
A community that grows itself!
Isn’t that what they’re supposed to do?
YES! Transform your “mere idea” into something much larger ⏬
CONTENTS
- TLDR SUMMARY
- STEP #0: ADVANTAGES OF CREATING ONLINE COMMUNITY
- STEP #1: INFORMATIONAL INFRASTRUCTURE
- STEP #2: COMMUNITY FRAMEWORK
- STEP #3: METRICS & STREAMLINING
- STEP #4: “SAKURA” & MEMES
- STEP #5: FUN & SPREADING THE LOVE
- $1000 IDEAS
TLDR SUMMARY
Strap in and squeeze something tight. This part is intentionally dense:
Start by carefully organizing every detail of the project, then display the details in a couple online locations logically and cleanly. Set up, “bot,” and prepopulate Telegram/Discord servers with “sakura” if necessary. Run a series of social media events in order to generate member-to-member chatter while simultaneously cultivating a network of “high-affinity” influencers and constantly pumping out memes. Once there is a critical mass of members, begin empowering them more while rewarding them randomly with gradually larger prizes to elicit brand loyalty/pride. They will do marketing for you while keeping your community free of “weeds.” Once your community breaks through to the next level (your true fan population is large enough to be a community on its own,) you begin setting up and sponsoring larger related events… Wash, spit, rinse, repeat. Finally you start trying to replace yourself with a smarter person, automation, or if it makes sense: expand the team by hiring more smart people. Congratulations. Project wins and that’s why you do it, though this has been at the expense of boats of nuance…
Details below:
STEP #0: ADVANTAGES OF CREATING ONLINE COMMUNITY
Why WOULDN’T a company have an online community is the question any company with internet presence should actually be asking themselves.
The benefits aren’t always easily quantifiable, but they are frequently palpable, allow me to nutshell this really hard:
For starters, the Customer and Product Insights are invaluable. An active community serves as a full-time Focus Group and R&D department eager to try out new things. This cultivates a group of highly platform-knowledgeable individuals that may also one day act as a potential Talent Pool from which HR may hire.
“I alone cannot change the world, but I can cast a stone across the waters to create many ripples.”
— Mother Teresa
Content Creation and Community Moderation are behaviors that arise organically out of a well engaged community. The content and chatter rarely stays in the community, and tends to spill out into other social media, serving as flash points for more meaningful social traction and further Organic SEO. When users are educated properly they also serve as an organic around the clock Support Desk for new users that functions for “free.”
Increased Customer Loyalty is forged in the heart of a good community. People will come to your project because of what it does, but they will stay because of who they can be there. When business gets bumpy, these members are more likely to remain, and they will also be creating word of mouth and the web traffic to naturally Boost SEO, bring friends & family as New Users, and snowball!
STEP #1: INFORMATIONAL INFRASTRUCTURE
Like a theme park, we want the roller coaster safety rails up before we start letting people ride. Similarly, before opening the doors to a community, a team must be sure to create a robust “informational infrastructure.”
Ensuring that project info is easily accessible and logically structured cannot be overlooked, as it serves as the fundamental skeleton on which the community will flourish. In turn, well-educated community members help initiate member-to-member interactions (most important community metric) and serve as the keepers of the online social playground we’re building.
Notably, we are effectively building an online learning community.
The secondary benefits of a robust informational framework are significant but difficult to quantify:
Good informational infrastructure empowers “true fans,” the die-hard 1% of any community.
Good info frameworks empowers “true fans,” the die-hard 1% of any community, to more or less become unpaid community moderators! We also inadvertently create a pool of passionate and talented individuals who eventually make HR’s job easier if we begin promoting from the true fans population.
My favorite tools for building out the informational infrastructure are Gitbook, Medium, and Notion, but there are many others.
STEP #2: COMMUNITY FRAMEWORK
We can’t only ask people to join a Discord or Telegram. Unfortunately, the population of so-called “trouble makers” is vast, and community creators quickly find themselves inundated with scammers, hordes of the confused, predatory marketers, “haters.”
Cutting corners on this step can lead to a toxic community that self-cannibalizes by design. Remember, we’re building an online community of learners, not burners.
Keeping platforms tightly organized: setting up corresponding channels (announcements, embedded twitter feed, etc.) and ensuring that the various platforms being used are linked up beforehand cannot be stressed enough as a “must-do” and can also be considered part of security too.
Communication rails should be botted to pass conversations between chat platforms such as Telegram and Discord. That way, we aren’t siloing our community into smaller ones arbitrarily based on a single app-download choice.
In order to stave off the inevitable onslaught of various predators, we use bots in our chats and make sure our rules are clear (step one done right reduces work here immensely.)
I prefer Telegram’s Rosebot above all others, as she is simple to use, diverse in the actions she can automate, and just downright charming.
Bots are necessary and make the space more colorful to boot!
Bots tie into step one in that they further serve as a key part of the informational infrastructure; they can be programmed to direct people where they need to go without human intervention, and can be used to create random joy with greetings, games, community easter eggs, and more!
STEP #3: METRICS & STREAMLINING
Metrics and social media management platforms not only help you succeed, they make life much less painful. Even if you’re not plugged into some of the more advanced tools, many of the social media platforms have their own built in metrics that can serve us well.
Among their many uses, they help you determine who to build better bonds with, as it is important for community leader to have direct connections with key community members. They also allow you to figure out when your community is most active, and to track basic indicators of group growth — of course.
That being said, it’s important at this step to get google analytics running properly and/or utilize a services like Mixpanel or Adobe Analytics instead. Then Tweetdeck, Sprout Social, and/or HooSuite to prepare for the streamlining and non-nightmarish management of your efforts. It’s possible to do this with spreadsheets and a helper or two, but the apps are nice and improve efficiency (trust me.)
One pitfall often overlooked is what I call “fake metrics,” such as easy likes. In reality, there are two types of engagement, and we should be aiming to get engagement from those who believe in the core value proposition of what we’re offering, as opposed to random scrollers that we gave a chuckle too, or even worse, some people that were just paid to like someone else’s content.
Ideally, we take some time here to do our homework on the space we’re entering and find influencers/other groups we can engage with; that way, all of the engagement will be more meaningful from the outset; Then, we must share shareable things… (that’s ANOTHER article in the works.)
Unfortunately, some of this boils down to hands-on social media detective work, but it tends to pay off in spades.
STEP #4: “SAKURA” & MEMES
There is an interesting job in Japan called a “sakura” (cherry blossom tree.)
The job simply involves taking up space at an establishment and politely making noise, effectively “looking pretty” on behalf of an establishment owner or performer, despite not being a real customer. This strategy can be useful in creating a new community from zero, because who suddenly wants to walk into a deserted theme park? Scary!?
4 or so people (with two or more Telegram accounts each) can be set to research the project and hang out in Telegram. They make sure the room doesn’t look abandoned and keep it “alive” long enough to establish organic fans. They of course can also go out on Twitter and other social media platforms “shilling” with memes…
This is not a necessary step, but can be useful, particularly if the community formation greatly precedes the product release. Can also be done in-house if you have enough helpers on your core team from the beginning.
Memes should NEVER be underestimated!
Despite the inherent silliness of memes on their face, they are unquestionably integral to any strong online community foundation efforts in the web3 era. More than mainstream advertising avenues, the memes function as the base of your community messaging and are the best method for grass roots community growth.
Ideally, you empower the community to make memes first thing, and distribute them second. Resistance is futile. You will be memed.
STEP #5: FUN & SPREADING THE LOVE
The final step is often helped to be driven by the community, and is the easy fun part, for me. This is how you create natural organic events that become their own marketing.
Creating games, events, and giving things away. AMAs, parties, giveaways, and contests (peek how I did it myself here) all help create mutual chatter amongst community members; it is a great way to forge the community core and where creativity comes into play more than anywhere else.
The key, as cheesy as I’m about to sound here, is friendship…
🌈 THE SECRET INGREDIENT IS FRIENDSHIP!
Humans create acquaintance bonds typically after being in each others’ proximity for a certain accumulated amount of time. Usually, we are forced into these spaces, but sometimes we seek them out… From time to time, we make friends in these spaces.
When friends come into play, you can be in the world’s darkest place and somehow still seem to sparkle. With friends, we start enjoying a place a bit more, via commiserating, and maybe find ourselves wishing we were there when we are not… the simplicity of it is almost mind-blowing. Closeness and intimacy makes humans do what appear to be “bizarre things” if you are not aware of the power of close relationships. [See: Romance Scams]
Eventually, from those first one or two connections, we start to meet other members, we feel connected. Perhaps we introduce our outside friends, family. Maybe even good ole uncle Al… Community.
Thus, our goal should be to make sure each new member always has a reason to come back. Always. We can do this with redeemable prizes, events, sakura, and of course, FRIENDS!
We’re not done though… May I have your attention?
Giving and Receiving, as a Transactional Behavior in humans, can act as a very powerful motivator for group-centric behavior. We should give our community mods (members themselves) items/goods intended to be given to other community members. Merch, points, rank, it almost doesn’t matter, as long as people are giving and getting in your community. It should almost have a mini-economy inside of it once it’s optimized.
Again, the success metric is when people start making friends in the community. It’s may be hard to measure, but it’s easy to see, and when you do, you’ll know you’re already on your way.
SCALING
BWOOP! BWOOP! Mini section!
The tools prescribed should help you forge the foundation of a small to medium size community, but what to do when they get bigger?
That’s going to be another article. Be sure to follow me and visit my new website to get one-of-a-kind insights like these.
https://www.notion.so/loganfulcher/Logan-Fulcher-f8bad609ddd744fda739d2a134428a03
$1000 IDEA
I have 1000’s of ideas for building online community.
Follow me for more, and if you found this thought provoking or useful at all, please smash that clap button on your left a few times. It helps, and I appreciate it.
Thank you for your attention too. It’s the most valuable thing you’ll ever give.
