Q&A from Swarm members about online community building

I hope you are finding a bit of calm whenever this email finds you. On Thursday, February 6th, I will be sharing answers to questions posted in the ​Swarm​ Hive Community.

Knowing that you might not be able to attend or join me, I wanted to share a few questions that have already been asked, along with my answers.

I hope that this helps you as you consider building, launching, and growing an online community. :)

“What are the most common pitfalls you see when communities are launching or relaunching, and how do you help clients avoid them?”

The most common things I see that clients do that slow or halt a launch or relaunch:

I see community builders trying to launch several initiatives at the same time. If you are launching a course, stick with that for now, and then decide after the course ends if you want to do a membership.

I recommend clients put their ideas for community into phases, so that we can tackle one at a time. For example, focus on beginners (who are new to what your topic is) and decide on the journey they will have in your course, program, or membership.

Start with a 30-day challenge, a 90-day cohort, or a 6-month coaching program — start and end dates help your members and you know when it will no longer be happening and can make plans on their calendar for events, decide if they want to invest, and if they are ready to start this new adventure. You will get “YES” much faster when having a specific program.

That being said, you may want to consider something smaller that helps you align your ideal member with your community concept.

I help clients with this by guiding them to decide which one of their ideas is the one to focus on first, and then as they grow, see what naturally arises from members in the community.

The important thing is that they focus on alignment of business goals with community member interest and participation.

“There’s often a gap between content creation and actual member engagement. What strategies have you found most effective in bridging this disconnect?”

Content creation is something that you create with your community members. I believe that if you only create the content that the members want, and/or you do it with them, they will be more engaged in the process.

Many of my clients think that they need a lot of content to start a course, program, or membership. The truth is that you need to spend more time dialing in your community concept, getting validation from potential ideal members, and working with a founding member cohort to decide on the content.

A course, for example, can have an outline with recommended resources (books, podcasts) but you don’t need to record a video, you can simply have a discussion about the topic, and/or the resources shared in the course.

Content isn’t what is most interesting to members. If you think of a community you are in, is it a place where you only look at content? It may be that that content isn’t something you are interested in, or want to share in a forum style community when you don’t know who’s there.

The way to bridge this disconnect is by knowing who is in the room and asking them to introduce themselves and why they have joined this community. Start a conversation during a “Welcome Party” and if you have the ability to use Zoom, you can set up breakout rooms, doing this allows you to create a sense of intimacy that is required for people to connect and bond with each other.

“Could you walk us through your process for helping clients identify their ideal community members? What aspects do people often overlook?”

Yes, I have found that doing ideal member interviews or chats with potential members helps to see if you are connected to their problem and how the community could be a possible solution or refuge for them in a challenging situation.

I have written this out in my book, Creator to Community Builder — I call it the IDEA framework — Identify, Discover, Evaluation, and Assemble. The most common part of community building that most people overlook is discovery — it makes all the difference. Approaching a launch with validated concepts is way easier to sell than a strategy that includes no feedback.

Identify:

The first step in building an online community is to know who you are bringing together. This can be the most challenging part because your community concept may serve many different people. The key to creating a sense of belonging in an online community is to clearly define who it’s for and who it isn’t. When others hear about your community, they should know easily if they belong. Community is about exclusion, which can be counterintuitive, since you will define who, essentially, “doesn’t belong.”

Discover:

When working with clients, I am often asked about what “discovery” means when it comes to launching an online community. It is a process in which you become curious about who will make up your online community. It means getting to know actual humans and requires a few skills, all of which can be learned, developed, or resourced.

Discovery interviews can help you answer your questions before you launch a community. I recommend speaking on a phone call or a Zoom call with at least ten ideal members, people who have expressed interest by answering your social media posts, responding to an advertisement, or filling out an application to be a part of your upcoming program.

Evaluate:

The responses you collected in the discovery process will give you what you need to determine the next step in your community-building process. Because community building takes work and time, reviewing your results carefully will prevent wasted resources.

When speaking with your ideal members, you’ll learn if they have experienced online communities and, if so, how they are currently participating. This will help you identify the best way to provide your members with a unique and memorable experience.

You can ask them who they leaned on most during those times and discover if a community would help them in solving a problem they have right now. When reviewing the notes from your conversations with ideal members, think about their journeys. Look for evidence that they want to solve the problem your community addresses.

Assemble:

Planning when, how, and where to launch an online community usually takes about three to six months; I recommend spending one month on each of the first three phases and a subsequent one to three months assembling your community design and launch plan. This will include preparing for prelaunch, launch, and postlaunch, with time built in for you to beta test the platform. If you don’t have a team or organization, start small with a beta group to test your idea. Five to ten people is enough.

“How do you define a successful member experience, and what are some key elements that contribute to it?”

Success is something that is defied by an individual and can’t be broadly applied to all online communities or experiences. However some key elements of success include a solid community concept which has been validated and feedback from participating members.

A community can be many people or just a few. When a community gets big, it’s hard to make it feel personal for each member so I encourage you to find ways to create small groups and get to know them, and give them time to get to know each other.

For example, if your community is focused on business networking, it would be nice to share what your members do for fun when they aren’t trying to gain customers or clients. Search for fun experiences you can bring to the community such as game nights, watch parties, and scavenger hunts. I’ve been part of an online community that conducted a murder mystery night! At the end of the day, your members want to have fun, and so do you!

“Can you share an example of how you’ve helped a client transform their community engagement strategy? What were the key changes that made the difference?”

After conducting ideal member interviews for a client, I was able to learn that the members wanted more opportunities to share what they know with the members. We developed member-led sessions which included a form for members to fill out if they wanted to share their expertise or specialty.

Once we collected some submissions, we could contact each member and discuss the format, style, and content for the member-led session. This benefits the host because they aren’t required to show up, or participate in the discussion. I find member-led events to be the best way to improve engagement in an online community.

“When it comes to content creation, how do you help clients shift from a quantity-focused approach to one that truly resonates with their members?”

I love graphics, videos, and photos like everyone else, but I believe that members will resonate with content that connects to them and their challenges, or their successes. Not everyone will check in every day, actually you are more likely to see an average of 3–5 days members will visit a community.

If it’s a course or structured program, that may be different, however thinking about the concept of “less is more” is typically how I guide clients through this change.

If they were posting every day, start with scaling down to 3 days a week. Ask members what would be helpful and decide what kind of content you enjoy sharing or creating. It doesn’t always have to be something you create, share the work of others, and give them credit. (Don’t recreate the wheel)

“What is the best way to get visibility for the community and then the most effective way to invite ppl to become members of the community?”

Community building takes time and effort. The average community might see active engagement a year to three years from when it launches. Knowing that gives the ability to cultivate relationships over time and see where this group wants to go.

I encourage you to have an email list, or begin to collect email addresses and start communicating with them before the launch.

The pre launch phase is when you are planning your events, preparing promotional materials, scheduling tasks, creating content, cultivating partnerships, building relationships, writing content for emails, engaging on social media, and securing conversations on podcasts, radio, television, and news outlets.

This is the most important phase in your launch, and it’s the phase on which you want to spend the most time because it will streamline the rest of your launch. Set yourself up for success by creating a launch plan that fits your needs and let go of the expectation for everything to be perfect.

A few ways to build relationships with potential members is by attending networking events, communicating updates with your email subscribers, and sharing your community-building journey with your followers.

I’d love to hear your comments or questions here!