Building Communities of Tomorrow from Scratch with Carrie Melissa Jones
Every living being in this world wants a sense of belonging. A place where they can let go of their insecurities and talk right from the heart. That’s the place community is.
The word community in itself is pretty self-explanatory, a place for like-minded people to belong in.
But the bigger question is how do you build a community?
And when you have figured that out, more questions come to mind like who all can benefit from a community? is it only for individuals? can the brands also benefit from it?
To get the answers to all of these, I looked towards the superheroes of community management, as I like to call them. And found this interview of Carrie Melissa Jones with Community Folks around How to Build a Community from scratch.
What should be the vision while thinking about a community
According to Carrie, vision in a community is really about stepping back and saying what change do you want to see in the world. Setting a vision is like saying “When we have accomplished our mission, this is what the world will look like” How will it be different from when you started. Vision is something that is done in collaboration with multiple team members and not one single person.
Does community building help a brand? If yes, how?
This has both the answers, Yes and No. How? Let’s see. Companies using communities to increase their sales is both good and bad. It depends on the intention. Like if you’re building a community just because you want to sell something, you want to take from the community then it’s not gonna work. On the other hand, if you have the right intentions and you’re building something that has a deeper meaning and is actually meant to help people in their life, in their work. Then the sale is a natural byproduct of building a brand community that works.
How it works is, When you give people something to belong to as a ground value they chose to stay and they chose to come back and interact, and isn’t that what it’s all about “Giving people a sense of belonging”. If the community is grounded in a shared value then people love to discuss that. That value can be an idea, a product. And in the case of product, they also discuss how they use it. In turn, it’ll help spread word of mouth about the product and how to actually use it. LikeApple has been doing this for 40+ years and so is Microsoft and many other giants.
What’s your way to bridge new users and old users in a community? And what do you suggest to increase member engagement?
When we talk about community, we think about community members. And when building a community, one big question that everyone has to face is, how to make sure that new members don’t feel excluded in the conversations and old members are not turning into micro-groups. One way to do that is, solid Onboarding, let the new members know what the culture is like(can be accomplished through guidelines, initial emails). That way they understand how things run and can jump in the conversation and engage. Train the old members in how to welcome new members. Make a ritual of welcoming the new members every week or every month, and make sure to include the old members in it.
How do you build and strengthen online communities?
When building a new community it needs to have a very high active to inactive ratio, so as to not let it die and keep people interested in it. One of the best pieces of advice that I got from Carrie was that when building a community from scratch, Gather a core group of people who can be your founding members. They have a shared goal, they care about the reason the community is built upon. Nurturing the core group will aline your community for success. The core group will feel connected to the community like it’s their own child.
Get to know your community members individually, this is something that every community manager preaches and has found to be true. The more 1:1 connections you have with the members of your community, the more successful it is bound to be.
Another thing that Carrie recommends is using the Commitment curve, it is something that helps you understand where you are in terms of progressing as a community.
What’s the biggest challenge you faced in your career as a community professional?
Carrie in her long career as a community manager has faced so many challenges, and when asked this she didn’t had to think twice. She said,
What I am currently facing is my deep desire to be a perfectionist and needing everything to be perfect. When a community is actually about getting something out there and having it be as messy just as it is and then working on it together to make it better. So, if I’m constantly putting things out there that are perfect then no one will have anything to improve in it, and then what’s the point of having a community.
One of the hardest things I’ve faced is fighting off Burnout and fighting off exhaustion from a 24-hour day cycle that the community involves.
When things start to happen like this, I generally take a step back and then ask how can I delegate what’s happening and what do I need to say no to and what am I doing too much of and what can I hand off to other people.
I’d like to finish this with what I feel to be true:
Community Builders are the Unsung Superheroes who don’t wear capes.
If you want to get more of your questions answered. We at Community Folks are hosting another AMA with Carrie Melissa Jones on 17th November 2021 from 9:00–10:00 PM IST.
You can register here — Chronicles of Community Builders | Carrie Melissa Jones
Hello community people, I’m Akash and I write about the growth strategies and the working of communities around the globe. If you like my style of nonchalant writing, then follow me to stay ahead of the normies(people who don’t follow me). Would love to hear back from you, how did you like the article.
