21 New Lessons from Building Community in 2015: Pitfalls, Content, Communication, Boundaries

Sharing my community-building lessons has become an annual tradition of mine. It’s become a moment where I can reflect and celebrate the little and big wins, in the hopes that you’ll do the same.

In 2013, I learned a lot about the tactics. I made up a lot as I went, and I did a good job at it, scaling a large community around a product.

In 2014, I learned a lot about strategy. I learned how to set realistic expectations.

This year in community building has felt like five years. I’ve delved deeply into the foundations. I’ve also helped build a company around all this stuff.

It’s also been a year of recovery, of self-love, of forgiveness. It’s been a year of deep heart hurts that don’t lift for days, of running away, of building a new personal community from scratch. I’ve been seeking connection through technology and finding the tools still lacking.

It’s been a year of turning over all the furniture to find the keys I misplaced. It’s been achingly and equally rewarding and challenging. And now it’s an honor to spend some time sharing with you, fellow community builder.

My 2015 Year in Review:

• I moved from San Francisco to Seattle. I’ve had to build my own community from scratch while holding on to old, valuable ties.
• As part of CMX, I’ve interviewed and worked with hundreds of badass community builders. They hailed from the FBI to YC startups to the nonprofit sector.
• I’ve worked with David Spinks all year, who is the kindest, most visionary community leader I know.
• I’ve collaborated with clients that I have dreamed of working with, whose energy for their work inspires my own each day.
• I joined a nonprofit board, where I help an organization better serve and support the self-esteem of young women.
• I wrote about how I survived an abusive relationship that ended in 2014. Unleashing my secret healed me and set me on a forward path that I hope to set other women on as well.

Here is what all this taught me about building community.

On the Biggest Community Pitfalls

• Community starts small. It took me several months to get my Seattle meetup moving. It’s a small group, but it’s a warm group. People stepped up. In that space of uncertainty is where it all begins.
• Know your value. Know the business value that you drive. Just one business value. All your work, for a branded community, should derive from knowing where you stand in your organization.
• You don’t need to measure everything. You only need to measure what matters to the business (see the above point). Some people will disagree with me on this, but I’ve seen what happens (in hundreds of organizations) when you focus and what happens when you don’t.
• ROI isn’t easy. Don’t believe anyone who tells you otherwise. I will tell you this: it starts small in one area with extreme focus. Report regularly on the results. If you’re moving the business forward after a few months, keep doing that. If not, move on. Get outside perspective and start again.
• Growth is not the point — not always, not even usually. You can have a “community” with millions of members, but if they feel no responsibility to one another and no shared identity, that community does not have any real value.
• Your work matters, so sell it. At some point, you’re going to have to take credit for the work you do. Bring numbers. Ask your boss how best to share the data and why it matters. To push this industry forward, all of us have a responsibility to sell community within our organizations.
• If you want something to happen, ask for it. If you want someone to ask you out, ask them out. If you want to be the leader of a new program, start to lead that program. No one is going to give you permission.
• To make friends and grow your personal community, initiate. When I moved to Seattle, I knew no one. I met people slowly, and spent a lot of months hanging with my dog. Then I realized that no one was going to ask me to get brunch or go dancing. I had to make the first move.
• You’re going to be wrong a lot. When you first have an idea for a community space you want to build or participate in, you’ll have to make some assumptions to get started. Your value proposition might be wrong. Your content may not be helpful. But you have to be willing to be wrong, to wait until you find something that resonates. The path to community success is littered with failed experiments. Just. Keep. Going.

My dog Bruce Wayne and I in Oregon in November

On Content’s Role in Community

• “Every community needs a mission statement.” These are Douglas Atkin’s words. If there is one thing missing in most companies I’ve worked with this year, it’s a content strategy and mission/vision statement specifically for their community.
• What you write (and what your members write) binds you to others. Words are the beginning. Emojis and GIFs and videos and in-person hugs matter, but words leave a footprint like nothing else. As a community builder, your job at its most essential is to tell stories.
• Content is the community. You may not have a branded community just through shared conversation, but you have the basis for creating something from nothing. You create a shared vision through content. You find members through content. You keep them engaged through content. Content is the community.

David Spinks (right) and I on stage at the end of CMX Summit West 2015. Photo via Tessa Greenleaf.

On Open and Honest Communication

• Messy conversations are the crux of everything significant. This is as true in individual relationships as it is in larger community discussions. You’re going to hurt and be hurt. It is inevitable.
• Don’t approach people with an answer in mind. I learned that my best interviews this year or member meetings came when I threw out the script and talked in-depth about the things that excited the other person.
• Self-awareness is more powerful than trying to “do it all.” I’m good at execution, process, organization, management, written communication. I’m not so good at letting things be, at spontaneous persuasion, at relaxing and waiting in uncertainty, at picking out one vision to run with. I’m okay with that now. What are you good at? What do you hate doing?
• Want to get better at communicating? Surround yourself with positive mentors and role models. They’ll remind you what you’re worth and get you through those days where imposter syndrome looms. That’s what two of my new friends in Seattle (Erin and Melody, pictured below) have been for me.

“Costorming” with two great minds. Photo via Melody Biringer.

On Boundaries, Again

• Saying no doesn’t make you a bad person. You don’t have any responsibility to take care of someone else’s ego.
• Not everyone is “your person”. You’ll never make everyone happy. When people try to change you or ask too much of you, you have to love yourself enough to know that what someone else wants from you has no reflection on your worth.
• Acknowledge all the progress you’ve made. You’ve been through that and you’re still going about the world, trying to connect and love and create? You’re a goddamn hero.
• Burnout, for community professionals, is not if but when. There are things you can do to stop spiraling down into burnout though, to save yourself before hitting rock bottom. Here’s a checklist.

Image by Scott Heins for Gothamist August 2015

Now go out there and make meaning in 2016. Tell me about all the light you bring to places that were previously shrouded in darkness. I can’t wait to meet you there in the sunshine.

I originally included a meditation on community’s future in this piece. You can now find that here.