Over the years, we've had the privilege of partnering with hundreds of companies. Leveraging our extensive experience and in-depth research, we've put together this page to equip you with the essential steps and practical tips for building your very own 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.
Planning out the foundation of your community is a necessary step to complete before you introduce a community to your platform. Unfortunately, many communities launch without a clear goal, leading them to fail from the start. We’re here to help you set up your community for success.
The most important factor in planning your community is having a clear WHY. A community without a purpose and without benefits for all its members will inevitably encounter potential points of failure.
While the community you're building is primarily focused on your users, it's important to remember that the business itself is also a member of the community. It's about more than just creating a space for the community. The active contribution from the business will keep the community engaged and growing. And just like any other community member, the business is only effective when the community provides value to it as well.
In a successful community implementation, activity in the community directly overlaps with the business goals to generate value.
By understanding the areas where community can overlap and drive an impact on your business, you can focus in on the key takeaways you want from your community. The SPACES Model shown below, created by David Spinks (Founder of CMX) provides a few key areas to consider where communities can benefit your business:
Communities are the foundation of humanity, and humans are at the core of communities. Understanding WHO you’re empowering through your communities enables you to plan with their needs in mind, significantly enhancing the value created for them.
To answer the above, it’s necessary to have an in-depth understanding of your user base. TIP: Conducting user interviews can help in highlighting some key points to consider.
Once you’ve identified your target user base, it becomes easier to determine WHAT you should provide to your users. Understanding what will bring your community members together and what they need further shapes the core identity and values of your community.
By carefully assessing the current user journeys on your platform, you can seamlessly incorporate community capabilities into their existing habits, making it easier to encourage adoption in the future. This evaluation also assists in understanding HOW your users will interact on your platform.
These questions are designed to help you brainstorm now to save you headaches in the future by eliminating problems before they happen and helping you define the right roadmap to success.
Everything we have done till now is to define your community mission statement.
Clear and well-defined answers for the WHO, WHAT, HOW, and WHY allow for the formation of a clear mission statement for one’s community. It should be easy to articulate the reason for your community’s being.
• Having a clear understanding and goal for your community is vital to its long-term success.
• Diving deep into your WHY, WHAT, WHO, and HOW will help you understand your community's mission and the value you provide.
