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Where community strategy
meets intentionality.

Online Community Strategy and Marketing
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C2CB Book Resources

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C2CB Book Resources

Welcome to the Creator to Community Builder book resources page, where you will find links to worksheets, templates, checklists, and tools to help you find calm in building your online community with ease. 

If you have a print or digital version of the book, or you haven’t gotten the book yet, these resources and links are designed to help you find what you need to build an online community. This page will provide downloadable resources to print out to accompany your creative community-building journey so you don’t feel alone. 

If you want to level up your experience, join the Community Builders with Purpose Community and the Book Club to see how others implement what they’ve learned from the book.

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Worksheets, Checklists, and Templates

Community Worksheets

You can use these worksheets to help speed up your community concept, community strategy, and launch plans. 

1. Click Here to download the Creator to Community Builder Companion Workbook. 

2. Click Here to download the NEW Membership Mindset Worksheet. 

3. Click here to download the pre-launch worksheet.

Community Tech Tools Checklists

If you appreciate a good checklist, you are in the right place! Before starting your launch plan, check out the Community Builders Tech Tool Checklist and Recommended Tech Tools Checklist. 

1. Click here to download the Community Builders Tech Tools Checklists. 

2. Click here to download the Recommended Tech Tools Checklist. 

Onboarding Checklist and Best practices

Onboarding community members is the most important thing to “get right” because it will ensure your members successfully navigate, participate, and build relationships with others in the community.  

1. Click here to download Onboarding Best Practices. 

2. Click here to download the Onboarding Checklist. 

Community Definitions and Terminology 

Online Community

Online Community 

Google this question, and you may find a variety of answers. To ensure we’re on the same page throughout this book, here’s my baseline definition: An online community is a group of three or more people with similar ambitions who gather virtually to inspire each other through content, experiences, and encouragement. There are three important elements of an online community: 

1. A place to meet digitally online to be seen, heard, and valued. 

2. A routine, habit, or ritual that community members do together. 

3. A group with a common challenge, goal, desire, or need. 

Online communities can take place in many different places and in many different ways. Here are a few examples: 

• A single virtual call that offers members a space to connect. 

• An email that is shared with more than 3 people. 

• A forum, chat room, group, or text that allows people to share photos, video, audio, or other content. 

• A platform that invites a specific group of people into a private online place for connection, collaboration, and conversations 

• A virtual event that offers attendees an opportunity to meet, network, connect and discuss topics related to the event’s focus, themes, or learning content.  

Community Strategy Launch Plan

Community Strategy Launch Plan

Without strategically setting the stage for a community, a launch may need to be postponed due to a lack of clarity, leadership, and goal setting. Understanding the roles and responsibilities of community leaders, hosts, and managers is important. To build a community strategy, there are five stages I take my clients through to develop what will become the foundation for the next phase and a roadmap for success. 

Stage 1: Community Concept – What’s the why behind your community idea? 

Stage 2: Community Curiosity – Who is this community for, and what’s in it for them? 

Stage 3: Community Clarity – How will this community transform or support them? 

Stage 4: Community Architecture/Structure – What content, events, and programs will support them? 

Stage 5: Community Strategy Launch Plan – Who, when, why, where, and how will this community be shared with my audience? 

Determining your community strategy (and your launch or relaunch plan) will require going on the journey through these stages (outlined above). 

Existing business owners will want to determine how a community fits within the organization and how a community aligns with your existing business goals. For new community builders, you’ll need to determine how the community will fit into your existing life with other commitments, jobs, or responsibilities. 

The Calm Method™

The CALM Method™ has helped me over the course of my community-building journey. I’m going to break down the CALM Method™ of Clarity, Awareness, Learning, and Motion to help you find calm in the community-building process. Finding calm has not been easy over the past two years. I’ve learned that adding layers, complexity, and/or several concepts can create more confusion than clarity. 

The fastest way to find calm with community building is to keep things simple. (Which isn’t easy) This framework became what is now called the CALM Method™ that I’ve developed and improved over the years to come up with the best way for me to help myself, clients, and community members in an easy way to find calm in the process of building, launching, and 

growing an online paid community. 

• Clarity of your unique concept. 

• Awareness of your validation sources.  

• Learning what structure will work best for you. 

• Motion through taking action.     

The 5 Elements of Community Design

The 5 Elements of Community Design

1. Architecture – A strategy for the layout of a community.    

2. Member Content – How written, visual, audio, and video content will be organized inside the community. 

3. Experience – The community member experience includes onboarding, communication, notifications, and interactions. 

4. Culture – Setting the tone, creating guidelines, and managing expectations 

5. Participation – Encouraging others to share, connect, and communicate inside a community. 

Community Architecture 

Community Architecture 

The architecture of an online community refers to the structure you’ll build. This includes the features, member benefits, user experience, and the structuring of content and resources within the online space. A well-thought-out community aligns with the vision, mission, and purpose established by the group’s host. Leading an online community requires understanding how you want to communicate with your members and how they enjoy connecting with each other. 

• Identify the your community architecture: 

Decide if you want to do a Cohort-based or Membership based model. 

• Cohort-based 

1. 1. Self-study course with a cohort

   2. A immersive course with a cohort

   3. A coaching group

   4. A mastermind cohort 

   5. A challenge cohort 

• Creator Community Memberships 

1. 1. YouTube influencer (funded by brand deals) 

1. Niche content creator (Creator-to-Creator marketplace, Business-to-Business marketplace, Software-as-a-service) 

2. Community creator (Memberships, courses, masterminds, or a combination of revenue streams from online stores and sponsorship. 

Below are a list of some categories of memberships you might be familiar with:

1. Podcast supporter memberships 

2. Skill sharing memberships 

3. Support communities 

4. Educational communities 

5. Networking communities 

6. Technology communities 

7. Industry-specific communities  

8. Special interest communities 

9. Change communities (leading a movement) 

10. Creative, entrepreneurial, collaborative, and resource-sharing communities such as collectives of experts or specialists. 

Community Platform 

Community Platform 

An online community platform is software technology that an individual, organization, or company can purchase on a subscription basis to communicate with their audience, customers, clients, or members. These are known as membership sites, and a new term community creators or creator communities is emerging a new way for entrepreneurs to earn revenue by creating courses, programs, or offers and providing that to their audience on a subscription basis which creates income for the business owner and provides education and resources for the members, in addition to providing a way for the members to meet each other. The main benefits of purchasing a community platform subscription are that in most cases you will own all of your content and have the ability to keep your member data private. There are hundreds of community platforms. You can research the best platforms and compare features that fit your business and community needs. 

Community Architecture 

Community Architecture 

The architecture of an online community refers to the structure you’ll build. This includes the features, member benefits, user experience, within the online space.

Community Content 

Any text, information, data, graphics, messages, sounds, videos, content, code, scripts, software, or other materials. All content is copyrighted and/or attributed to the appropriate source. 

Community Roles

Community Roles

A Community Host – to guide the vision, mission, and purpose. 

A Community Facilitator– to support the programming, events, or workshops. 

A Community Manager – to onboard members, support members, and encourage participation within the community. 

A Strategy Consultant – to create processes and tools to increase conversions from your marketing and advertising efforts to your programs. 

Marketing Manager – either internally or hiring an agency to help promote, advertise, and scale your business. 

An Active Community Member – to participate in events, share successes, ask questions, view content, read articles, answer polls, fill out surveys, and give feedback. 

A Passive Community Member – to see if they belong here and how they could participate in the future, view content, read member comments, not ready yet to commit to active membership but is interested in the opportunity. 

Community Culture

Community Culture

Community culture can be explained as the way you invite and instruct members to participate, share, connect, and learn together. It is the path for members to feel seen, valued, and heard. Culture is written into your community guidelines, demonstrated in your member testimonials, and expressed by members when they talk about your community to non-members.

Community Cohort

Community Cohort

A cohort refers to people who have common characteristics, and it’s also a formal term that describes a small group taking a class together. There are five kinds of community cohort structures: 

1. A self-study or self-guided learning course with a cohort 

2. An immersive, time-based course and cohort 

3. A coaching program 

4. A Mastermind group 

5. A Challenge  

Ideal Member or Ideal Client

An ideal member or ideal client is a person who fits the profile of the community creator’s target audience. They have a problem that the creator can help them overcome or resolve with their assistance, support, knowledge, network, or resources. 

Ideation

The creative process of generating, developing, or communicating new original ideas which can be visual, concrete, or abstract. Included within this term is the thought cycle from innovation, to development, to actualization. Ideation can be conducted by individuals, groups, or organizations.  

Validation

Once you have a problem & potential solution, go find your target users in online communities and try to interview them about their problems & current solutions. Don’t try to sell to them just yet, but confirm that they have the problem you are solving, and would be willing to pay for you to solve it. Read “The Mom Test” for tips on how to validate your idea without describing what it is and risking them lying to you

C2CB Resources: Book References

Introduction

1. Mt. Sniktau, Loveland, Colorado

2. Travel Pulse, Denver, Colorado 

3. Location Indie

4. Achieve Your Goals with Hal Elrod (Podcast)  

5. The Miracle Morning (Book) 

6. Jon Berghoff, creator of Xchange

7. Workshop about essential oils (YouTube)

Chapter 1 Learn the Community Building Basics

1. Querétaro, Mexico, Exploring Mexico article and photos by Deb Schell 

2. Carrie Melissa Jones, Author of Building Brand Communities 

3. The Great Resignation: As the Pandemic Recedes, Millions of Workers Are Saying ‘I Quit’ (Article) 

4. What is ‘quiet quitting’ and how it may be a misnomer for setting boundaries at work (Article) 

5. Powerhouse Women Podcast 

6. How to Start Monetizing Your Platform (Podcast episode) 

7. Hivebrite (Community Platform) 

8. Public Social Networks vs. Private Online Communities (Article)

9. Small business owners revel just how much the Facebook outage affected them 

10. The Pursuit of Passive Income 

11. Pamela Slim

12. How to Build Community and Why it matters

13. Ayelet Baron

14. Create a purposeful community (Podcast episode) 

15. Conscious Community

16. Clifton Strengths Finder Top 5

17. YouMap® Career Assessments 

18. There is no one else like you 

19. Turn values into verbs: Adventure and Community 

Chapter 2 Develop Your Community Strategy

1. Jim Thorpe River Adventures, Pennsylvania Poconos

2. The Find Calm Here Community

3. The Community Strategy Podcast

4. Discovering your niche (Podcast episode)

5. Implement a book club inside a Mighty Network (Podcast episode)

6. Community Strategy Podcast Episode 90 with Laurence McCahill (Podcast episode)

7. The Happy Startup School 

8. The CALM Method 

9. Community Teams: Be intentional about community management (Blog post) 

10. CSP Episode 90: Finding happiness together as an entrepreneur with Laurence McCahill

11. The Community Tool Box: Learning How to be a Community Leader

12. 10 Qualities for Community Leaders 

13. Building Brand Communities: How Organizations Succeed by Creating Belonging, by Carrie Melissa Jones and Charles H. Vogl

Chapter 3: Explore Your Community Design and Structure

1. Peña de Bernal, México

2. Community Structure

3. Creator Economy: From Passive to Purpose

4. The Pros and Cons of Social Media  

5. Voxer

6. Whatsapp

7. Gen X and Millennials

8. Teachable 

9. Kajabi 

10. Maven

11. Podia  

12. Robyn Conley Downs 

13. Mighty Networks 

14. The Feel Good Effect 

15. Community Culture 

16. Leading a Global Mindfulness Community (Podcast episode) 

17. Tribes: We Need You To Lead Us

18. Disciple Media 

19. From Music To Members with Benji Vaughn (Podcast episode) 

20. Copyright infringement 

21. Own Your Brilliance

22. Dare to lead training program 

23. 2022 Creator Report  

24. YouTube Influencers

25. For creators, community is the new follower count 

26. Creator now 

27. Podcast membership platforms

28. The ALMANAC 

29. The Good Dirt Podcast

30. The Community Maturity Model   

Chapter 4: Discover Your Ideal Members

1. 2018 Forbes Article 

2. The Art of Gathering

3. Earning your members’ trust (Podcast interview) 

4. Free survey tools  

5. Member Surveys

6. The Value of Discovery Work (Podcast interview) 

Chapter 5: Validate Your Community

1. Acadia National Park 

2. Using online communities to validate ideas 

3. Ideal Member Interviews

    

Chapter 6: Plan Your Community

1. Slow launch strategy (Podcast interview) 

2. Community Marketing Workshop (Recording)

3. Use social media to build your online community for your brand (Podcast interview)

Chapter 7: Grow Your Audience

1. Monarch Butterfly Sanctuary, Central Mexico

2. The History of Blogging

3. CreativeLIVE

4. Dave Banks

5. Cue the Camels 

6. Vanessa Codorniu, The Biz Bruja

7. Meetup: Find people, connect, and meet in person

8. Keep Connected with David Siegel, CEO of Meetup (Podcast interview)

Chapter 8: Launch Your Community

1. Growth Seat Checklist 

2. Tech tools checklist 

3. Launch resources

Chapter 9: Onboard Your Members

1. Onboarding strategies (Recording) 

2. Onboarding guide (Podcast episode) 

3. Connecting members (Article)

4. Community Strategy (Podcast episodes)

5. Community of conscious leaders (Podcast interview)  

6. Member experience (Podcast interview) 

7. Be intentional about community management (Blog)

8. Cultivating and nurturing connection (Blog) 

Chapter 10: Keep Members Coming Back

1. Rosie Sherry

2. Ministry of Testing 

3. Indie Hackers

4. The Independent Community

5. Rosieland

6. Adrian Speyer

7. Episode 96: Becoming an Accidental Community Manager with Adrian Speyer

8. Céline Riemenschneider 

9. German Canva Creator Community

Chapter 11: Grow Your Membership

1. A quick guide to Mighty Networks spaces

2. Episode 93: Community Strategy that utilizes data with Richard Millington
   

Chapter 12: Maintain Your Community

1. Be intentional about community management (Blog)

2. Pat Cooney, ProntoForms

3. Glory Osiagor,  NNN, an ecosystem that “empowers the Crypto revolution

4. Matthew Grande

5. Pablo Gonzalez, BeTheStage

6. Jenny Weigle 

7. Paul M. Bradley,Kaplan

8. Robert Maddox, Delinea

9. Vineet Nandan Gupta

Afterward: So, what’s next?

1. Contact Deb

2. Book A strategy session 

3. Hire Deb to be your YouMap® Coach

4. Join The Community Consultants Collective

5. Mighty Network Design Services 

Companion Workbook

Get this free workbook now!

 Creator to Community Builder offers time-saving tips for struggling entrepreneurs to establish and scale online communities, enhancing business growth and client connections. This companion workbook provides a quick overview of the book with actionable steps to help you build an online community and business faster and with less stress so you can find calm.

Download this workbook Now

Email: Deb@FindCalmHere.com

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