Building a successful online community takes more than just setting up a forum or social media group. With over ten years of experience in community management in the video games industry, I’ve found that a well-structured, phased approach can help lay a solid foundation, foster meaningful engagement, and sustainably grow a community.
That approach, or strategy, is an important piece of the community-building puzzle. And "puzzle" isn't a bad way to describe how many people -- especially those who aren't experienced community-builders -- might view the process. It can seem daunting and it's easy to put a lot of undue pressure on yourself, but trust me, anyone can build an effective community with a few tips, and you know I've got tips for you!
Below, I’ll give you the outline of a simple community growth plan to guide you from your first members to a thriving, active community. I'll also include a rough timeline for each phase that will give you an idea of when you should take stock of how things are going and start preparing for the next phase. Whether you’re managing a community for a brand, a gaming title, or a shared interest group, these steps will help you foster a connected and engaged community.
One quick note before we get started: building communities takes time. The tips in this post will help you build a community, but it's up to you to provide two important elements: patience and consistency. If you're consistently showing up for your community, it will grow with time. Many people give up before their community even gets started. Don't let that be you. Stick with it and good things will happen! Ok, let's get to it.
Phase 1: Build Your Foundation (Months 1-2)
Define Your Purpose
The foundation of any successful community is the shared purpose that unites its members, so the first thing you'll want to do is define the purpose of your community. What IS your community? Why should your ideal members spend their time in it? Answering these questions is key to starting things off on the right foot. You have to know your "why" and once you figure it out, it makes things a lot easier.
After you've defined your purpose, clarify your goals. You've figured out why people should spend their time in your community, but why are you building this community? Maybe you want to create a support network, foster a learning environment, or provide a fun, interactive space. Regardless of what your purpose or goals are, here are the first three things you should add to your to-do list:
Define the Purpose: Think about what value your community brings and how it addresses a specific need. That last part is important. What sets your community apart from similar communities? For me, having built and managed many gaming communities over my career, the answer to this boils down to one main factor -- the fact that my communities are the official communities, which makes them the place to go if you're a player and you want official information. That's not something other communities can compete with. Find the thing that sets your community apart and lean on it.
Set 3 Main Goals: Establish goals that are achievable and relevant. For example, aim to reach 50 active members by month six, increase member retention, or improve engagement rates. Keep your goals simple, attainable, and most importantly, measurable. Know what tools you might need to measure your results and keep a spreadsheet that can help monitor your progress weekly.
Establish Guidelines: This is another important foundational thing that you need to make sure you do -- create basic community guidelines to foster respectful interactions and set the tone for member behavior. These guidelines don’t need to be extensive, you can always add to them over time, but they should promote a positive environment. Also, remember that it's important to enforce them, otherwise, what's the point?
Start Small
It's easy to forget that every community starts at zero. A successful community doesn’t need thousands of members to feel vibrant, and starting small often leads to stronger foundations. Inviting 10-15 core members who are genuinely interested in and committed to your community's purpose could be a great way to kick things off. A couple of other ways to spur growth are:
Weekly Meetups: Weekly meetings, whether online or in person, to get everyone acquainted can set you up for success by fostering a sense of belonging and closeness.
Foster Welcoming Spaces: Take an active role in making new members feel at home and encourage them to join in on discussions. While personal welcomes may not always be possible as the community grows, they are known to help establish a warm and welcoming environment.
Phase 2: Create a Community Engagement Strategy (Months 3-4)
Regular Activities
Once you’ve established your community’s purpose and built a small, engaged group, it’s time to focus on growth. The best way to do that is to create more engagement. Regular activities give members reasons to keep coming back and participating, giveaways, and even tactics as simple as "questions of the day"-type conversation starters are great for keeping your community engaged. A few more things you could try are:
Bi-weekly Events: Host Q&As, AMAs, or other live discussions or topic-based talks. Not only are these great ways to communicate with your members, but they also provide a sense of "appointment viewing", encouraging members to mark their calendars and attend.
Launch a Simple Newsletter: An email newsletter could add opportunities to engage and activate your audience. Not only can you provide members with updates, event announcements, and highlights of community discussions, but you can also include CTAs that encourage them to perform any number of actions.
Create Discussion Topics: Spark conversations by posting relevant topics and encouraging members to share their insights.
Be Involved in the Discussion Yourself: As I mentioned in my How Comment Engagement is a Cheat Code to Growth post, being there to engage your community daily is the best thing you can do for growth. The level of involvement varies depending on the size of your community, but it's pretty easy to pop in and briefly chat each day.
Encourage Introductions: Give new members a dedicated space to introduce themselves and encourage existing members to join the conversation to welcome them. It can be easily done on a platform like Discord and will create a sense of belonging from day one.
Empower Members
As engagement builds over time, start identifying members who show interest in helping and invite them to take on simple roles such as being a volunteer moderator. Empowering members to contribute not only lightens the load on you, it also strengthens their connection to the community.
Volunteer Moderators: Look for members willing to help with minor tasks like welcoming new members, enforcing the rules, or organizing small events.
Member-Led Activities: Allow members to suggest and lead activities, giving them ownership of the community experience.
Create Simple Roles: Establish creatively named roles to give structure to the community and keep engagement active. The names can reference something about the community, or they can be more generic. They can also be handy for recognizing members for things like creating content, being a "super fan", or being helpful to newer members.
Phase 3: Grow Your Community Thoughtfully (Months 5-6)
Grow Your Reach
Once your community has a solid base and regular engagement, it’s time to start growing. Expanding thoughtfully means keeping a close eye on your community’s culture and avoiding the risk of “growing too fast” without the infrastructure to support it. There are lots of ways to encourage growth. Here are a few examples:
Encourage Member Invitations: A personal invitation from a current member is often the most effective way to bring in new, quality members.
Share Success Stories: Highlight success stories to inspire current members as well as new prospects.
Form Partnerships: Partnering with similar communities can expose you to new potential members without sacrificing community quality.
Establish a Social Media Presence: Start a social media page to share community updates, events, and relevant content that aligns with your community goals.
Strengthen Connections
As your community grows, maintaining strong member connections becomes more difficult, but it remains essential. Build smaller interest groups or specialized events to keep members engaged.
Interest Groups: Creating subgroups around niche topics or specific interests within the community can deepen engagement. An example from the world of video games could be spaces to discuss the different modes in the game, such as the campaign mode, competitive mode, etc. This provides a space for people who may have joined the community because of their interest in a specific subject.
Special Events: Host special events and giveaways regularly to keep things fresh. These kinds of tactics also benefit growth and increase engagement, so bonus! If you want to do a giveaway but don't know where to start, check out my How to Run Community Giveaways That Drive Growth and Engagement: Complete Guide in 2024 post.
Recognize Active Members: Publicly acknowledge contributions from your most engaged members. Putting them in the spotlight for doing positive things encourages others to do those same things.
Keys to Success
As I said at the top, building a community requires both patience and consistency. It's both an art and a science and that's one of the reasons I love it. The things that worked last time may or may not work this time, so there's always room to experiment and improve. With that in mind, here are some essential do’s and don’ts:
Do's
Welcome Everyone Personally: If you're able, and in the beginning, you should be, take a moment to greet each new member. That personal touch can go a long way.
Listen to Feedback: Regularly solicit feedback and adapt as needed. Continuing to iterate on your community is important and doing so with the community's feedback in mind is the best way to do it. Make sure to have open conversations with your members and let them know which bits of feedback you're using to improve things.
Stay Consistent: This is probably the most important one. Consistency helps members know what to expect and establishes routine engagement. It also facilitates growth over time because it builds trust with members.
Celebrate Small Wins: Whether it’s reaching 50 members or hosting a successful event, acknowledge these milestones. Celebrating doesn't mean the job is done and while it's good to keep this in mind, celebrating tells both you and your community that things are working and progress is being made. Progress leads to growth.
Don’ts
Grow Too Fast: Expanding too quickly can dilute your community’s culture. Slow and steady wins the race as they say, and that philosophy applies here. Make growth decisions deliberately and thoughtfully. You'll be glad you did!
Let Discussions Go Unmoderated: Everything you do in your community hinges on moderation, whether it's you moderating or a staff of volunteer mods. If society's laws aren't enforced, anarchy ensues, and the same is true with communities. It's much easier to stay on top of things and ensure the rules are being followed than it is to save a community that's already tipped toward "the dark side".
Forget Quiet Members: Not everyone is blessed with the gift of the gab and many times, people will join the community and lurk. Check in with less-active members to keep them engaged, but don't feel bad if you don't hear back from them.
Try to Do Everything Alone: As soon as it makes sense to, empower trusted members to help manage tasks. From there, create a mod team to help ensure the rules are followed and the community is healthy and thriving.
Measuring Success
To assess whether your community is thriving, consider these key indicators:
Member Sentiment: Survey your members occasionally to gauge overall sentiment, but also try to keep an eye on things each day so you have a good sense of how the community is feeling. If you're a community manager, it's only a matter of time before someone asks you about the community's sentiment on a given subject, so make sure you're ready to answer.
Event Attendance: Track attendance rates for events and activities so that you know how they're performing.
Active Participation: Have a rough idea of the number of members who actively contribute to discussions. Not only can this help you measure engagement in your community, but you'll often find that these are the members who end up being great mods.
Discussion Quality: High-quality discussions indicate a healthy, engaged community. Over time, you'll be able to get a sense of whether the discussions happening in your community are high quality or not.
New Member Retention: Retention is an underrated community metric, in my opinion. You hear a lot more talk about engagement, which is an important metric, as we know. However, retention can often give you insights into how your engagement strategy is performing. Monitor the retention rate of new members.
Quick Tips for Community Growth Success
Prioritize Quality Over Quantity: An engaged community is better than a large but inactive one.
Be Patient: This one is hard, but remember, sustainable growth takes time.
Stay True to Your Purpose: Consistently align activities and initiatives with the community’s core purpose.
Involve Your Community in Decisions: Establish a healthy conversation around feedback with your community, and have a process for gathering, passing on, and implementing their feedback. Communicate to them how their feedback is being used if you can. Empower members to contribute ideas and shape the community. Multiple heads are better than one and your community will be full of people with ideas that are worth listening to!
Keep it Simple: Simplicity helps avoid burnout and confusion. Only do the things that you believe are right for where your community is in its lifespan. If your community is brand new, it's probably not necessary to get super granular with your reporting or plan super complicated events. Remember, if you're overwhelmed, your community will be even more so.
Few things are more gratifying than building a community from the ground up, and while it can be stressful, it's also tons of fun. By following this simple, phased approach, you can establish a thriving community that not only attracts members but retains them and grows with purpose. A well-managed community is a powerful asset, providing lasting value to members and building long-term engagement. Whether you’re looking to grow your brand’s online presence or cultivate a shared space for passionate individuals, this plan will set you up for community success!
Do you need help figuring out the next steps in building your community? If so, you're in luck. I have over ten years of experience as a community and social media manager in the video games industry -- one of the toughest audiences around -- and I'd be happy to help. Just reach out to me via the Contact page or LinkedIn and let's see how we can partner to make your community the best it can be.
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