VALUE

You’ve seen a lot of talk about growing a community in the digital era but don’t know where to start? I asked 5 community managers for their take. Let’s peep under the hood.

Before the internet, communities have always been a staple in business. You may not have known the importance of a community + you probably didn’t know you existed in one.

In fact, history shows we form communities around likeminded topics.

As we grow more reliant on technology and the digital world, so do our communities. Whether you agree or not, the future of community building is online. Robust communities leverage technology to increase their association.

Let’s get started.

For this breakdown, we’ll make “value” the basis on which the community is built around and we’ll look at the community from three perspectives…

-The value provider
-The value seeker
-The value observer

The value provider is simple these are the folks responsible for driving content, value, utility and dialogue in the community.

The value seeker represents those that join a community to consume. Their main goal is to seek value. They’ll take action to seek and gain the value

The value observer is tricky because it represents a few personas into one anyone that joins a community to be a fly on the wall, joins because of “herd” mentality, or simply to fit-in are categorized as an observer.

Great! Now we all understands each role in the community. Let’s continue.

The community managers I talked to all agreed that community is nurtured through relationship building and interaction. So this leads us to the first point…

Zone One: Establish your niche
Identify an area, a very specific area, you want to work in. You can’t be all things to everyone so you must pick a field of work you’re a subject matter expert in or passionate about. Also be sure to pick an area you see yourself in years from now.

The worst thing you can do is pick a “trending” niche you care very little about just for temporary gain. The community will sense it’s fake, you won’t invest in the community, and eventually your interest will fade.

Focus down a community for streetwear e-commerce owners, a community for digital marketing agencies, a community for an NFT project, a community for basketball enthusiasts, etc.

Zone Two: Find your audience
Time to dig deeper with research. Go to Instagram, Twitter, TikTok, Discord, Clubhouse and find people in your niche. Follow and engage with them for some weeks. Don’t do it all in a day because then it doesn’t come off natural.

Once you have a good amount of people rocking in your niche, provide a CTA (call to action) invite them to your community platform with incentives. Do this on repeat for months. Find value providers, seekers and observers.

Zone Three: Build for them, not for you
The community is about your members and building something great within your realm of expertise. Research what the audience enjoys in your niche.

Example, if your niche is selling NFTs and your audience are those that actively participate in the NFT space, dig through marketplaces and Discords to understand what they enjoy. Another way to learn about what your community cares about is to ask them…

People forget that asking questions can lead to answers. Don’t rush the research, spend time with your members, especially the value seekers. They’ll tell you exactly what you need to hear. If you do this right, it’ll get easier to build a sustainable community for your members.

Zone Four: Create good content
This is the most important zone to kickstart the community. All three perspectives are touched in this zone. You and the value providers’ jobs are to provide content your audience enjoys.

The value seekers and observers will let you know via engagement and dialogue if the content is good. Wish I could give you more but since I don’t have a specific niche I’m targeting for this thread, I’m keeping this general.

It’s up to you to do the research on what content sticks with your audience. Shouldn’t be hard if you spend time where your audience lives.

Zone Five: Engage and promote
Your members are your community. Without them, you have no community. Give the value providers a way to generate their own content and join the dialogue. Listen to them. What do they love, what do they hate, what could be better?

Encourage them to share their stories and incentivize them. Listen to them. You should also create a space safe for sharing wins. Giving people the opportunity for a little bit of self-promotion pretty much guarantees their desire to actively participate in your community.

Also, highlighting specific members of your community for their achievements and allowing others to revel in the spotlight is a gratifying experience for the individuals involved.

Zone Six: Build as you go
Be open about what you’re doing/working on. Start small, don’t have it all figured out, make mistakes and learn as you go. Members, especially the value providers enjoy having stake in the development of the community.

Remember the community is about them, and not you. The community will strengthen as the engagement strengthens. It’s your job to provide the mechanics and standards of the community, and then take a hands-off approach

Zone Seven: Value!!
Real value starts and ends with problem solving. Build your content + overall gameplay about providing value to your members. Remember when you were researching your audience? Right, you should of captured takeaways of the things that audience values the most.

Provide value through content, education, incentives, exclusivities, monetary gain and information. What can the community get from you and the value providers on a consistent basis? A great product to start and then great incentives to follow.

Zone Eight: Form a culture
Whether you realize it or not, as more members join your community and interact with each other, a kind of culture is created. Since you’re leading the community, it’s important to model the expectations for how members should treat one another.

Draft a community engagement guide with the basic rules and expectations of your community. Once you’ve done that, begin practicing what you preach in how you interact with the members of your community.

This is a great practice to have because it ensures that everyone is on the same page + it will make your community a much safer place. Try experimenting with different ways of making your community culture feel unique create a slogan or saying that relates to your big purpose

The value observers love a good culture. This is what keeps them around. In fact, a great culture will often lead to word of mouth to friends, family and other likeminded people. Check retention, engagement and drop count numbers on a regular cadence.

If engagement is lacking but members aren’t dropping, the culture may be keeping people around. I can’t tell you what will make your culture unique, but don’t be afraid to get a little weird and try something out of the box.

Zone Nine: Leverage Experts
Most people want to get better at what they do, but often struggle with the what and the how. Make your community a platform for been-there-done-that experts (value providers) to share their knowledge with community members (no strings attached).

The more value your audience finds, the more it will flock to your community. If not experts, find influencers to help drive the most important things in your community.

Zone Ten: Analyze
Set monthly goals and check to see if you’re meeting those benchmarks. If so, great. Start to set bigger goals. If not, figure out what isn’t working by experimenting, retesting and implementing. Nothing is truly broken or 0.

Synopsis: Word-of-mouth is the only way to grow a community and make it thrive. To do so, your brand must step down from the pedestal and instead hoist your audience on its shoulders. You do this with great incentives and a defined culture. All three perspectives are satisfied.

If you can make your audience feel like they’re part of something big, something that they can relate with, your community won’t just build engagement. It’ll build advocates who invest their emotions in what you do and stand by you no matter what.

Hope you enjoyed this

If you like this type of content, give me a follow. If you would like to start your own NFT project, message me! I go by The NFT Plug in this space and help creators get started

Also let me know, did I miss anything, am I off on certain points, is there more to add to this? Want to make this thread as collaborative as possible.