Actionable community building

Working as a community builder is exhausting: constantly keeping in touch with people, solving members` problems and planning future activities. A never-ending diverse list of tasks. And this is not even the biggest problem.

Building a community often sounds intangible, and yes it very well can be. Sometimes even for the people running the community. Community managers (Operators) likely have a hard time turning the leadership`s abstract vision into concrete, measurable activities.
Even in cases when everything fits, and Community Managers are able to translate the mission into actions, all the efforts and countless hours of work might remain hidden in front of the leadership. ( →good way to burn out as a Community Builder).

While building and working with a bunch of communities like #CPHSW together with Aleksander Bordvik and Jernej Dekleva we use a simple but powerful process on how to turn community Missions into Goals and Operations. It makes community building tangible by creating a shared language with KPIs, and it also enables Community Builders to communicate their work in a more visible, easy to understand way.

Step 1. Create the Mission

I wrote about this earlier. Building a community starts by creating the Mission, a one-liner which resonates with all the people (members, supporters and operators) involved.

Example:
You are working for a company in the Media industry, and you are hired to build a community. → Co-create the Mission together with the leadership.
→“A community to support the local Media ecosystem by gathering and educating Media professionals”

Step 2. Create your Goals

List all the Goals of the community in line with- and supporting the Mission. Likely you already have some ideas from creating your Mission statement.
Be in touch with the upper management while creating the Goals, and make sure that the Goals are aligned with their expectations. The Mission should be easy to agree on for all, however, the Goals can give room for discussion between the management and the Operators.
Remember to create SMART Goals (Specific, Measurable, Assignable, Realistic and Time-based).

Example:
Come up with ideas on how to make the Media community`s Mission a reality:

• Organise monthly meetups where you invite people from different segments of the industry (content creators, broadcasters, advertisers).
• Create an online forum where people can jump into a deeper discussion on industry specific topics (eg. future of media creation, consumption or advertisement).
• and much more

You might get into great details here, but don`t be afraid if it feels incomplete. Goals can be added and adjusted later on.

Step 3. Create Operations

This is the time when you can go crazy with details and documentation (your new best friends). Create a list of achievable and operational actions on how you are going to reach the community Goals.

You might consider two aspects here:

• “Plan and execute”: working out a detailed Operations plan and then executing all the tasks
• “Learning by doing”: iteratively adjusting the Operations plan time-by-time based on your new experiences

Note that the purpose of this task is to get a good idea about what you have to do and how much time and effort that will be. This is how you measure everything you do as a community builder. If you are building together with financially involved partners, this is where you justify your time and expenses.

Example:
Create a long highly detailed list of how you`re going to organize your activities:

Goal: creating a Facebook group for the community to discuss industry topics

Operations:

• Finding a FB group name and creating FB group
• Inviting people you already know
• Asking people to invite their own network
• Sharing the group in other relevant networks
• Initiating discussions in the group
• Moderating discussions
• Maintaining a good mood in the group
• Creating guidelines
• and much more…

It doesn`t have to be a complete list, but it should reflect the amount of effort and time it will take to pull off the activities.

Community building doesn`t have to be more complicated and blurry than it already is. Being a Community Manager can be tough and exhausting, but using the right operational processes can save you a lot of time and avoid misunderstandings. Remember that it is your job to make people understand and acknowledge the work you do, it might be hard for others to fully grasp what it takes to build and run a community.

Start by creating the community`s Mission and Goals first together with the leadership, and then split up the Goals into actionable steps, Operations. This will help you manage and communicate the sometimes - seemingly- infinite tasks of a Community Manager.

Hey, thanks for reading this. Please let me know what you think, I would love to hear your thoughts on Community Building.
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