- Two questions when starting a community:
- Who do I want to get together
- Why are we coming together? Most people confuse the "why" and answer it with what they're going to do. But the What != the Why.
- Vibrant communities give people chances to act on their passions with one another. Communities are strong when driven by a shared sense of purpose.
- "Build communities with people, not for them." Progressive, layered acts of collaboration.
- Communities are a mix of "bridge" (bring diverse people together for a common task, look outward), or "bond" (look inward to connect similar people together, reinforce identities) activities. Which axes of life do you bond vs. bridge? Every community is a combination of both in different areas.
- "People want to realize a shared purpose; not watch you realize it for them."
- People show up initially for the activity and purpose, but they come back for the people, for the relationships they make.
- This means community members need to speak directly to one another. No lingering on huge forums or email lists.
- In the beginning, demonstrate firsthand what it looks like to participate in conversations the way you want. Be the role model.
- New folks joining need to join because they're genuinely excited about joining. The agency is important, and ignoring it will kill growth.
- "Create a pull, not a push." Send a clear outward signal about the community that pulls new people in, don't try to sell it like a product.
- Craft an origin story that everyone in the community can repeat and own; one that isn't just about you.
- Story should drive motivation / urgency for: Self, Us, and Now.
- The most effective way to grow any community is for everyone to be recruiting, not just leaders.
- To grow by word of mouth, make the community's content sharable, and make it easy to share conversations and artifacts of activities from within the community. Photos, recap blog posts, snippets of quotes or interviews from events people attended.
- "People can't be what they can't see." - Establish an aspiration pipeline through community ranks.
- Encourage members of the community to make and share their own "badges" of belonging to the community. Posters, apparel, logos, branding.
- Retention is the ultimate metric.
- Things like DM counts and out-of-platform interactions are leading indicators to retention.
- Measure retention from event to event, not just month-over-month or weekly actives.
- Community can only scale when the organizer shifts from viewing their job as simply managing the community, to growing community leaders. Without this fractal structure, the community will collapse under its own weight.
- Community: Grow leaders. Leaders are the anchor people for whom the community is a core part of their identity.