You don’t “Launch” a Community
you build it….
Many people talking about Communities say they plan to “launch“ a Community.
So do you really “launch” a Community?
Is a Community launch the same as a website or a product launch?
I say NO!
I’ve been building communities for over 5 years and can surely say that this requires a different approach than launching a product or website. Let me tell you why…
I prefer to “build” Communities.
A Community is not a platform or a product that is “released” on a certain day.
No matter if it starts as an initiative or out of pure coincidence, building a Community means there is often no real start and definitely never an end.
It is always about people, not platform
So how do you build such a Community? There is much written and there are tons of ressources such as CMX that can help you to find out how to “build” your Community.
Here is what I learned at my company GlowingBlue in the past:
1. Find the purpose
Why exactly do you need a Community? You should have at least some hypothesis of what your Community is all about.
There are some good frameworks such as the SPACE Model that help you to classify the purpose of your Community but more important you should “leave the building” and check if your assumptions proof to be right. Start with the first most obvious thing: Google!
Are there Communities, local groups or brands that talk about the topics you think about? Can you collaborate with those? By checking these hypotheses you’ll first of all LEARN a lot and maybe even start to pivot your initial idea.
2. Find your audience
During this first research you’ll probably stumble upon your first potential Community members. Don’t just pass by try to connect and start a dialog with them. Be open and proactive about your idea. If you’re lucky they’ll like your idea and follow your path and collaborate with you. This could be the start of your Community.
3. Give it a face
Community business is people business. So if YOU try to build a Community YOU should be the face of the Community, no matter if it is out of pure passion or if you are acting as a community manager for the company that pays you for that. Community is all about people, relationship, communication, trust and there is a lot of “all day” psychology involved (trust me I’m a psychologist).
If you think now….too long…think twice if you’re the right person to go that step!
4. Initiate dialog
Even if you found some fellows that share the same passion and would like to participate you have to initiate a lot. It is like a cocktail party you are hosting, bringing people that did not know each other before together. Go out, introduce each other, start a dialog. Again it is a lot about YOU.
5. Enable participation
Taking again the cocktail party example (..who’s having cocktail partys nowadays..?) don’t take over the party. Give people space to express themself. Play around with different topics easy for everyone to participate, give positive feedback and see who likes to express himself more than others. You’ll immediately see who could have which role in your future Community.
6. Give time to grow
Even if you had a good start, remember that Rome was not built in a day. You have to iterate yourself forward to the construction of a Community. Which brings me to the next point…
7. Pivot if needed
Maybe you were just wrong. Even if you had initial success, a lot of Communities die within a short time. Don’t be disappointed just think failing is NOT failing. It is first of all LEARNING (some of you will notice the lean startup mantra here). So try again, tweak it or find a new “purpose” for your Community. Pivot or preserve!
You may have realized that I did not talk about platforms. Not that they are not important but they will start to be relevant after experimenting and having built an MVP (will be topic of another article I plan) that of your Community. You can use a Blog, Facebook, your favorite Café around the corner; it does not matter during this first phase.
I’ll write more about plattforms later..stay tuned!
So if you have any plans to “build” a Community or if you already did,
I would love to hear about your thoughts and experiences.
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Little more about me:
Thanks to Vanessa Meister, Ferdinand Vogler and Ramun Hofmann for reviewing this article.
