1. Planning
Plant the right seeds
Communities that lack a clear goal or mission are set up to fail from the start. To avoid this, we recommend using our WHY, WHO, WHAT, HOW method to clearly define your community mission.
Community is more critical for companies than ever before. The Social+ Community Corner is anyone's go-to place to discover how to build a thriving digital community.
The Social+ Community Building Framework is a comprehensive and constantly evolving guide for building and maintaining an online community. It covers all aspects, ranging from initial planning to successful launch, ongoing operations, and effective monetization strategies. The framework highlights the importance of understanding your community's goals and purpose while ensuring value is delivered to both users and the business.
Communities that lack a clear goal or mission are set up to fail from the start. To avoid this, we recommend using our WHY, WHO, WHAT, HOW method to clearly define your community mission.
Not only do you need the right seeds, but you also need to nurture your community with the right team to ensure a strong start to its growth process. Make sure you understand the stakeholders you need and get them prepared.
You only get one chance to make a first impression. Planning a successful launch with a seamless user experience is vital for community success. In this section, you'll find metrics and strategies to create awareness, attract members, and drive activation within your community.
After the initial onboarding of users, it may seem challenging to encourage engagement among community members. But it doesn’t have to be. By diversifying your engagement strategies, you can improve your chances of success.
To build a self-sustaining and lasting community, you need to recruit, recognize, and give responsibilities to your power users.
Learn how to effectively track the success of your community and its impact on your business. Discover strategies to monetize specific aspects of your community for direct revenue generation.
A community truly flourishes when it grows organically, with minimal intervention or prompting from community management teams. In such cases, the heavy lifting is often carried out by power users. These passionate individuals take the lead in onboarding new members, providing support, and actively engaging with them. This self-sustaining dynamic is a key indicator of a thriving community.
As your community grows and evolves in the initial adoption and engagement stages, you'll notice that some users are more active than others. It's crucial to identify your core group of users, as they hold the key to unlocking the true power of your community. This dedicated 10-20% of members will drive over 80% of the interactions and engagement within your community. Recognizing their contributions is essential to nurturing a thriving and vibrant community.
It’s important to keep track of your power users to identify:
• Members that are regularly returning and contributing
• Members that post regularly and prompt discussions
• Members that are regular commenters and facilitate discussions
• Passionate members who have an emotional link to the community
• Members that are aiding and interacting regularly with new members who join the community.
By nurturing and developing these active members, you can establish dedicated groups tailored for these power users. This allows you to engage them in specific campaigns, align with them on your mission, and gather ongoing feedback. Building a strong relationship with these influential members will greatly contribute to the growth and success of your community.
As members become more active, it's crucial to provide them with opportunities to grow. This not only boosts their confidence and sense of purpose within the community but also reduces the reliance on your internal community teams. Creating space for growth fosters a self-sustaining community where members can thrive and contribute independently.
Having roles at varying levels encourages community members to grow out of simple membership to active leaders in the community.
• How can you support these leaders in their new roles?
• How can you recognize and amplify valuable activities?
• How can you minimize or terminate activities that are not as valuable?
Some leadership roles that power users can be considered for are:
• Moderators: moderate and organize content for groups
• Ambassadors: advocate inside and outside the community for the brand
• Community mentors: supporting new users to onboard and use the community
• Facilitators: host discussions, conversations, and even live-stream webinars within your community
• Content creators: develop content, videos, and collaterals.
Encouraging your users to take on a more active role in your community brings tremendous benefits, elevating the authenticity of your community experience.
90% of consumers rely on posts, comments, and reviews by fellow consumers when making purchasing decisions. People inherently trust other people and value genuine opinions and insights, making user-generated content (UGC) more influential than any other form.
By fostering user participation and promoting UGC, you enhance the credibility and influence of your community, making it a valuable resource for users seeking authentic information and perspectives.
A few tips for encouraging user generated content:
• Don’t fake it - members can always sense it
• Create a safe space for members to share experiences
• Welcome different types of UGC (reviews, images, videos, queries, blogs, etc.)
• Incentivize UGC by giving rewards and promotions
• Incentivize users to share UGC on other social media channels as an acquisition technique.
• By nurturing your community members and transforming your power users into community moderators and leaders, you can foster a self-sustaining community that requires less direct involvement from the company.
• Empowering your dedicated members to take on these roles promotes a sense of ownership and responsibility within the community.
• They become instrumental in guiding discussions, enforcing community guidelines, and facilitating interactions, reducing the need for constant intervention from the company's side.
• This shift towards member-driven moderation and leadership not only frees up company resources but also strengthens the community's sense of autonomy and engagement.
