Chapter 1: Learn the Community Building Basics
Due to the global pandemic, the world had to adjust to living in a bubble and withdrawing from in-person social connections. I don’t know about you, but the events of those years shifted my perspective on how I spend my time.
Most people I’ve talked with have shared that they’ve enjoyed exploring their hobbies, spending more time with loved ones, and building new relationships with peers with similar values, challenges, and goals.
Trends such as “The Great Resignation” and “Quiet Quitting” ultimately stemmed from the awareness that each of us has a limited time on Earth.
For some, that means rethinking personal lifestyle goals. Many of us have looked at how the life we’re currently living stacks up to our “ideal life.” Noticing the distance between where we want to be and where we are… makes an impact. We start questioning what is accurate, and each person may answer differently.
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Should I be married by the time I’m 35?
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Do I need to have children to be happy?
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Are there only some people who get to enjoy life?
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How can I choose happiness when I always work hard to find it?
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Do I always have to please my (mom, dad, brother, sister, boss, cousin…)?
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What will happen if I say no? Why can’t I do what I want to do?
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Why must I accept the world’s version of what is “right” for me?
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Why can’t I be a writer, designer, photographer, author, visionary, painter, or any other creative endeavor (and still pay my bills)?
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Why do I need to find another path to succeed because the world doesn’t financially value my work?
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Do I want a big house with three cars and a boat that I can’t afford to impress other people? Would these things make me happy?
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Why am I working at this company if they can fire me at any moment?
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What’s the point in working for someone else’s dream when I can make my own dream a reality? But how do I do that? I can’t figure it out… so I give up!
I’m sharing a gift that was given to me, a quote I remind myself of often:
“Comparison is the thief of joy” – Theodore Roosevelt
If you grew up without siblings, you have had a different experience than someone who didn’t. If you grew up with siblings, you each had a different experience with your parental figures. Some people have lived in poverty all their lives and have no idea what it’s like to live in a world where their needs are met.
Some live through trauma, stress, and drama and act like it’s just another week, then wonder why the body hurts.
Since social media has become such a presence in our lives, it has become difficult to understand how our lives “should” look compared to what we see when scrolling through thousands of perfect family photos or impeccable food images in destinations that some of us could never afford.
It has led many of us to feel we are “not enough” and focus on the “hustling” to start doing our own thing since we haven’t found peace or satisfaction at work.
That is why many new online communities offer virtual events, masterclasses, and networking opportunities to replace traditional local meetups. This gives people looking to expand their awareness about different ways of working the opportunity to connect with others worldwide.
With this new technological capability comes the responsibility to actively participate in the community because it is an ecosystem and only as strong as its members. You can join thousands of online communities today to learn a new skill, meet new people, or share common interests.
If you have decided to start a community because you have discovered, like me, how wonderful it is to be in a group of individuals who share the same values, have the same problems, and support each other, you have a unique challenge to identify your “ideal members” and validate that they want to be in an online community.
Creators are shifting their focus from passive income to purposeful content. Since I began working on becoming more mindful and intentional about my life, I’ve noticed that two movements are happening in the creator economy.
The first is a term you’re probably familiar with hustle culture, which has blossomed out of the need for constant content creation. Creators are searching for brands to partner with for sponsorship and ad revenue. Content creators know they can create great content but don’t know how to monetize it.
One of the past ways creators monetized their content included affiliate marketing or brand ambassadorship. These ambassadors are now called influencers. Bloggers, marketers, and social media creators monetize their content by leveraging their large audiences to get brand deals.
I’ve learned that it is easier to work with smaller groups of people and charge one thousand dollars than to try selling thousands of ten-dollar units (memberships, courses, programs) every day, month, or year. But if you aren’t going to build an audience of 100,000, how do you become profitable as a community builder or membership site? Find your purpose.
Chapter 1: Learn the Community Building Basics
Your Community Needs Purpose
Chapter 1: Learn the Community Building Basics
We’ve all heard stats about how many people are online— more importantly, many people who engage regularly online are also looking to make connections. According to an article by PeerBoard, 76 percent of internet users were projected to participate in some online community in 2022.
Over 2.9 billion people are reportedly active on Facebook, which is home to more than 10 million groups—chances are likely that the majority of those nearly three billion users are in at least one group. Reddit has more than 130,000 active communities, mainly in the United States.
Though these stats demonstrate there are more ways than ever to connect digitally with others, the sheer volume of opportunities doesn’t mean people feel an increased sense of belonging. All too often, people still feel isolated, like they don’t have a voice. As a community builder, establishing your purpose is critical to ensure your members feel they belong and will be heard.
Your community’s vision may change over time, but having a clear purpose when you begin is vital to your success. In this chapter, I’ll outline the basics of online community building and explain the difference between an audience and a community.
What is an 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 essential elements of an online community:
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A place to meet digitally to be seen, heard, and valued.
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A routine, habit, or ritual that community members do together.
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A common challenge, goal, desire, or need.
Online communities can take congregate in many different places and ways. Here are a few examples:
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A single virtual call that offers members a space to connect.
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An email that is shared with more than three people.
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A forum, chat room, or group text that allows people to share photos, videos, audio, or other content.
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A platform that invites a specific group into a private online place for connection, collaboration, and conversations.
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A virtual event that allows attendees to meet, network, connect, and discuss topics related to the event’s focus, themes, or educational content.
Chapter 1: Learn the Community Building Basics
The platform is not the community; the people are.
The first question many new community builders ask me is, “What’s the best platform for my community?” My response is always that it’s not about the tools but how you intend to use them.
Before jumping into a launch plan and committing to a platform, put down your checklists and pause to think about what brought you to community building in the first place.
I’ve seen my community-building clients get stuck comparing the “latest and greatest” technology before considering the community’s purpose. Their focus is on generating revenue quickly, which leads them to buy into a platform’s claims about how easy community building can be.
As busy entrepreneurs juggling many things, it’s easy to think that finding the right system will kick things off fast. But by putting software first, many rookie community builders forget to consider their members.
A community is a group of humans with unpredictably busy and full lives. People aren’t transactions; they have thoughts, feelings, and needs. No matter where people gather, they are the community—the place is irrelevant. The key to building a thriving community is to focus on the right “P”: people, not profits or platform.
Chapter 1: Learn the Community Building Basics
Are you building an audience or an online community?
Chapter 1: Learn the Community Building Basics
In a world where “community” has become a buzzword applied to just about every nook and cranny of the internet, you may rightfully be confused about what this word means when applied to your business. To help shed light on this, I’ll be sharing examples of communities, ways to build them, and what makes them successful.
But before we get too far, I want to clarify that Building a community isn’t the same as building an audience.
I often say that you must build an audience before forming a community. The key difference is that you send one-way messages to your audience, but a community collaborates.
Look closely at how I’ve defined these terms here:
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Audience: People who follow or buy from a business that communicates with them through one-directional messages.
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Community: A group of people who can communicate with each other.
To build an audience, you create content advertised to your current customers or followers. You could use an email list, host a podcast, or run a YouTube channel. Either way, these are all examples of one-way communication. An email list, podcast audience, or group of YouTube viewers isn’t a community. Instead, think of a community as an intentional group meeting for a specific purpose.
Another critical point is that a social media platform is also not the same as a community platform. Social media platforms exist as a means for people to create and share content.
Content shared on social media is often created to serve a business’s needs (marketing, advertising), but a community helps its members meet their needs. When built and maintained intentionally, communities create calm. Consider the last time you logged onto Facebook, LinkedIn, or Twitter. If you’re anything like me, the experience usually brings distraction or comparison—not calm.
According to Hivebrite, a community software, social media isn’t ideal for community building. In fact, they say communities built off social media provide fewer distractions and less spam. When you choose a place to run your community that’s dedicated to your sole purpose, it “facilitates authentic self-expression and a feeling of belonging. Members are more likely to reach out to share ideas, opinions, and best practices, ask and answer questions, and take action.”
Another reason to avoid building a community on common social media platforms is that you have little control over the experience. When Facebook and Instagram fell for several hours in October 2021, some business owners were dealt a gut punch.
“While the Instagram outage was mildly stressful, it did reaffirm some of the concerns… Namely, that Instagram rarely rewards us for the time we invest and that relying on a 3rd party to mediate our relationships with customers is risky business,” said Rachel Jones, founder of Jonesey.
Of course, all online communities rely on tech to work effectively. But social media platforms can remove, delete, copy, or take ownership of any content created. This is why I encourage you to consider hosting a community on a platform other than social media.
The pursuit of passive income
Chapter 1: Learn the Community Building Basics
When I started this journey, I kept hearing about how easy it is to build an online community. These messages from community platforms and industry leaders pushed the ideas of passive income and how a community “runs itself.”
Reality check. Since working with—and interviewing—dozens of community builders, I’ve discovered that those who found quick and easy success already had a team and had built an audience over time, often up to a decade. It was no overnight victory!
In an enlightening conversation, author and business coach Pamela Slim shared two ways to think of your community as you build it. One way is to see it as “building an empire.”
This more hierarchical approach portrays a community’s leadership as an all-knowing authority. The other way—the perspective she and I prefer—is to see your community as an ecosystem. Like in nature, all the parts within your ecosystem play an important role. Each part helps the others grow.
In my early days, I based my online community launch on a model I’d seen work for others.
But these people had built their community with existing audiences I did not have. I didn’t have an email list, or a social media presence, or a podcast with thousands of listeners.
I didn’t have a business or client list, or any existing program, course, or guide for my potential members. They had no idea who I was, what the community was about, and how it could help them.
So, the first problem I encountered as a new community builder was that I had learned a “system” designed for individuals with an audience and planned to build a community with sales funnels, email marketing, and courses or workshops.
Instead of an audience, I built my network by leveraging other people’s audiences – asking them to promote this community for me, giving them a “partnership” with my new business from which they could benefit financially if they brought their audience to my community.
This ultimately failed because the partners I onboarded into the program already had their own businesses and struggled to get their clients, customers, or audience.
So, for six months, I promoted others, and by the end of the year, I was burnt out and exhausted. After spending almost $5,000 and hours of time, energy, and effort, I had nothing financial to show. The notion that anyone can quickly build an online community and make a living off it is unrealistic and, in my opinion, dangerous.
The power of community as an ecosystem
Chapter 1: Learn the Community Building Basics
In community building, an ecosystem model encourages community members to share and support each other, recognizing that we all have value. No authority figure has all the answers. Instead, a “facilitator” helps guide individuals during challenging times. This is the kind of community I want to be a part of, and it’s the kind I encourage you to build.
A community based on shared wisdom means that while a host provides the education, tools, and resources, the ultimate goal is for members to share how they implement what they’ve learned.
The challenge—and the joy—of building an ecosystem is that you’ll need to work extensively with ideal members from the beginning. You’ll need to seek out founding (or beta) members to hone in on a common problem they face.
From there, having gained firsthand information from your founding members, you can develop valuable content and experiences addressing the issue.
This could include books, courses, or coaching around a specific topic. When positioning this to members, it should be clear that the focus is to help them. If your concept isn’t well developed, your process may require serving the group for a low cost or even free until you figure out how best to meet their needs.
Showing the value of community is a complex challenge in the industry. So many companies understand the idea behind having a community but don’t know how to reap the financial benefits. Many new community builders I work with want to launch their community as a paid offer before they’ve validated their concept.
I spoke at a conference for podcasters in Orlando called Podfest to promote the Community Strategy Podcast and find new clients. During my 5-minute talk, I shared the benefits of talking to ideal community members before launching an online community.
Afterward, I was approached by a woman who wanted to speak with me about her community concept. She mentioned that she had an active Facebook community and planned to launch a paid daily motivational podcast as an offer to members. “Do you think I can convert members to this private daily motivational podcast?” she asked me.
I let that sink in and responded, “That sounds like a lot of work. Did they ask you for a daily motivational podcast?” She looked at me and said, “Deb, they didn’t. But I thought they’d want it.” I told her it’s more important to ask them and validate it before she starts building. She thanked me for saving her lots of time, energy, and money and preventing a situation that could make her feel like she’s failed just because she didn’t ask her members what they wanted.
So, if you’re considering building an online community, let’s talk about the elephant in the room. With so many options, where do you start?
What if you’re new to the digital world?
Whether you’re a founder or team member, this book will provide stories to inspire you, offer challenges you can relate to, and give you hope for finding a path that fits your needs while still honoring your members’ shared wisdom. Go to bonus.creator2communitybuilder.com for downloadable resources.
Community Strategist
Since 2020, as a community strategist, Deb has guided more than 60 entrepreneurs in building, launching, and growing an online community. She’s worked with companies and organizations in non-profit, wellness, healthcare, leadership, coaching, and business development.
Deb’s work spans the globe with business leaders in the United States, Mexico, Canada, Europe, Australia, New Zealand, Ireland, Spain, Brazil, and Norway.
Deb works with an organization’s leadership in 3 areas: discovery, strategy, and implementation of an online community. She also provides best practices to keep it simple for the user experience and the back-end operations.
Email: Deb@FindCalmHere.com
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