So you want to build a community? Follow the steps below:
Step 1: Create a facebook group
Step 2: Profit.
If only it were that simple! Community building takes time, effort, and a whole lot of perseverance. Building a community not only means finding members, but having them stick around as well. So how do you keep your members engaged?
Lets take a step back with an example… Say you are obsessed with foxes. You find an awesome Facebook group called Fox Fanatics . You click join, but then you don’t really know what do next. After a few weeks, a post by Fox Fanatics appears on your news feed, and… unsatisfied with what the community has offered you, you decide to leave the group.
What have we learned here? We learned that right from the get-go we had no idea what to do as soon as we joined the community. Communities aren’t always just about chat threads like forums, communities can be much more than that. They can be a group of users that are brought together to complete goals. One way to increase community engagement is providing a list of contributions that is easily visible to all members.
Enough talk, show me some real world examples!
ArtStation Challenges
The ArtStation community has a list of challenges where artists can take part in design competitions. Each challenge has a detailed brief, judging criteria, rules, and a FAQ. It’s very easy to spot the challenges tab in their header, making it simple for any new member to start competing.
Open Source with Github
If you are unfamiliar with Github, it’s a site/tool where programmers can work together and share code. A concept in the world of programming called open source is when a group of people (or companies such as Facebook) release their code to the public and anyone can contribute to the code. One way that Facebook allows new community members to get started is by creating issues and adding tags labeling their difficulty. That way it’s easy for new members to work on less difficult problems to get them familiar with the code.
Twitter Trends
You might think Twitter trends is just for trending news, but it is also a way for twitter users to find new things to engage with! Trending hashtags such as #TBT or #humpday give users a collective subject to tweet about, while hashtags such as #FF (follow friday) help people discover more users to follow.
Know of any other communities that provide a list of actions for their members? Please comment below! And if you like what you read follow me to get weekly posts on community building tips.
