Just like you, we want your community to be a success. So here are a few essentials you need to figure out.
Define your community's purpose:
You need to establish what your community is for.
- Why will your Members join?
- What issue are you solving for them?
- What will keep them coming back?
Once you’ve defined your purpose for yourself, keep revisiting it. Keep asking yourself the same questions to see if you’re still achieving what you set out to do. And don’t be afraid of change – you might find that your community has evolved slightly from when you originally conceived it. Communities are organic, they change and grow, and that original purpose might too.
Establish your goals:
You won’t know whether your community is working or not if you don’t set up some goals. Goals for your community could be things like:
- The amount of migration from your existing platforms to your new community.
- Growth rates for the first 1, 3 and 6 months.
- The number of monthly active users.
- The percentage of organic activity.
- Revenue if you choose to monetise your community.
Your goals need to be ambitious but realistic. You should check your progress regularly to find out whether you need to tweak your targets, or even to set up some new ones.
Decide how you're going to launch?
Deciding how you plan to actually launch your community will massively help while you create your community strategy. We often advise Hosts to carry out a soft launch followed by regular growth activities, rather than go all out on one big launch. This is because some potential Members might miss that one big launch or it might just not be the right time for them (or your community might not be ready).
By having a soft launch, with a small number of initial Members, you’ll give your community the time to find its feet, to create some engaging content and get a good idea of what works. You can then plan different phases of growth for when your community is ready for them.
Find out more about how to market your community.