Chapter 8: Launch Your Community
Chapter 8: Launch Your Community
Chapter 8: Launch Your Community
In this episode of the Community Strategy Podcast, Deb Schell reads excerpts from her new book, Creator to Community Builder: Find Calm While Building an Online Community. In Chapter 8, Deb shares tips on launching an online community.
Chapter 8: Launch Your Community Takeaways:
A launch has three phases: pre-launch, launch, and post-launch.
Consider the number of hours you can dedicate to this project each week and block off the nonnegotiable hours in your calendar for community building. S
Technology tools help community builders organize, schedule, plan, and create content. There are also tools to manage your community’s daily, weekly, and monthly tasks.
As a business owner and host of this community, you must find a home for the content you create.
If you’re a new community host clarifying your community structure, your goal is to keep costs minimal until your community generates revenue.
If you’re a community host who’s opened the doors to a small group of people inside your network, you’ll want to grow your community by customizing a strategy to help you manage your network.
If you have a highly engaged community of members contributing content, beginning conversations, and inviting others to join, you’re in a great place! You need automation, email campaigns, content creation, and product development support.
Chapter 8: Launch Your Community
Chapter 8: Launch Your Community Choose your pod platform
Chapter 8: Launch Your Community The phases of a launch
Chapter 8: Launch Your Community
Selling a community idea is about convincing people to invest their time, money, and energy and asking them to do so for a set amount of time. I recommend asking five to ten of your ideal members to join a structured program that lasts thirty to ninety days. This will be a sufficient window to test your content and structure and gain insights into member experience.
When I revamped my community, I invited five community builders to a ninety-day mastermind program during which we met on Zoom every other Friday. I spoke with each participant individually and shared the structure I’d created for the group.
In return for free participation in this custom experience, which I dedicated my time to cultivating, they would provide me feedback. This would allow me to decide how to relaunch the community after my failed attempt the previous year.
The structure of the mastermind included weekly and monthly webinars on themes they would vote on.
After the program, each member would share their launch or relaunch plan during a growth seat to receive honest feedback and ideas. Because my outcome was the same as theirs, I also participated as the mastermind, and yes, their feedback helped me refine my launch plan.
The first steps I took:
I reached out to everyone who had ever booked a discovery call to let them know I was offering a community specifically for new community builders and wanted to share it with them.
I became more active in telling potential clients about the community and offering them a way to stay informed with an email newsletter.
I developed a content plan for the website that included information on how someone would benefit from joining the community. I also created a sales page to increase the number of views of my landing page.
A month after completing this mastermind, I opened the doors for real. Thanks to my outreach, I had a few members ready to go. I didn’t have any content inside except for some blog articles, but I did offer a call with each member when they joined to learn more about their needs.
Phase 1: Pre-launch
The pre-launch phase involves planning your events, preparing promotional materials, scheduling tasks, creating content, cultivating partnerships, building relationships, writing content for emails, engaging on social media, and securing conversations on podcasts, radio, television, and news outlets.
This is the most critical phase in your launch, and it’s the phase on which you want to spend the most time because it will streamline the rest of your launch. Set yourself up for success by creating a launch plan that fits your needs and let go of the expectation for everything to be perfect.
A few ways to build relationships with potential members include attending networking events, communicating updates with your email subscribers, and sharing your community-building journey with your followers.
Phase 2: Launch
You now have a waitlist, audience, beta members, or email list of people you’ve been talking to about the community for a while. Now begins the launch period when you promote your content, share your offer, and connect with your partners, members, and customers. This also includes onboarding new members by tagging and engaging with them. You will want to ensure you have an onboarding plan (in the next chapter) and that members understand your offering. If it is a twelve-week course, be clear about the expected outcomes.
When you provide a subscription-based membership, either month-to-month or annual, ensure you give your members the details of the benefits and features.
Monthly memberships require you to provide constant content or give members a transformational journey they can easily envision. I often help clients understand and communicate the differences between features and benefits.
Benefits are the outcomes the member experiences:
A community that offers a coaching program to help female founders lose weight can provide the benefits that members will feel more energetic, more comfortable in their bodies, and more confident in their ability to lead without fear of shame.
A community that offers a twelve-week course for new homeowners about the do’s and don’ts of home remodeling can provide the benefits that members will know how to select the right professionals, determine if the rates they charge are fair, and decide if a project is something they want to do themselves.
A community that offers monthly networking calls for busy technology executives offers improved communication with their peers in one place and a growth mindset.
Features are what the product or service provides to the members:
The community that offers a coaching program to help female founders lose weight might feature live calls, an interactive chat channel, or coaching group calls.
The community that offers a twelve-week course for new homeowners might feature weekly videos, live workshops, course webinars, worksheets, templates, or demonstrations.
The community that offers a monthly networking call for busy executives in technology might feature the ability to connect to peers who share the same challenges and struggles and offer solutions and resources.
Phase 3: Post Launch
The post-launch experience is all about making sure your members adopt the platform you’ve selected. Technology tools help community builders organize, schedule, plan, and create content. There are also tools to manage your community’s daily, weekly, and monthly tasks.
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Chapter 8: Launch Your Community Create a Vision for Your Launch
Chapter 8: Launch Your Community
Depending on the nature of your community, give yourself about two to three months from vision to launch to avoid feeling overwhelmed. It’s essential that you proceed with caution and put your health, family, and personal needs before your launch. Don’t sacrifice your self-care or self-esteem for anything or anyone.
Next, identify any personal commitments that might take up more time than your usual schedule allows. This may include trips you’ve planned. Do not plan a launch the same week you fly to Hawaii! Yes, I had a client tell me that was her plan, and she was stressed about it. No, she didn’t have a team. Also, check with family and friends to see if anything isn’t on your calendar yet but will be.
Consider the number of hours you can dedicate to this project each week and block off the nonnegotiable hours in your calendar for community building. Set yourself up for success by creating a unique process for managing each phase of your launch. This doesn’t mean you need to learn a lot of new technology. Keep it simple and make it easy to keep track of your progress.
Chapter 8: Launch Your Community Designate Your Tech Tools
Chapter 8: Launch Your Community
Technology tools help community builders organize, schedule, plan, and create content. There are also tools to manage your community’s daily, weekly, and monthly tasks.
Community-Building Tech Tools
Beginner: If you’re a new community host who is clarifying your community structure, your goal is to keep costs to a minimum until your community generates revenue.
You’ll need:
An email address to invite people to your community with the ability to organize contacts and set reminders.
Digital storage to organize and house online files.
Software to schedule virtual meetings, create forms and surveys, organize data, and manage your marketing campaigns.
A marketing and promotional tool or person to create branding and graphics for your community and share with social media.
Intermediate: If you’re a community host who’s opened the doors to a small group of people inside your network, you’ll want to grow your community by customizing a strategy to help you manage your network.
You’ll need:
A project and task management software to systematize your workflow.
A contact management system that tracks leads, paid members, billing, invoicing, and automating forms.
A scheduling application that allows you to share your calendar with others for collaborations, onboarding sessions, and networking meetings.
Video software to share recordings of live events and promote your live network, offerings, services, or products.
Advanced: If you have a highly engaged community full of members contributing content, creating conversations, and inviting others to join, you’re in a great place! You need automation, email campaigns, content creation, and product development support.
You’ll need:
A way to organize into a roadmap the many ideas you have for new features and benefits for your product and service releases.
Automation of tasks and communication between you and your members.
Email marketing, onboarding sequences, and a list-building strategy.
A few examples of tech tools include:
Google email lets you send invitations to your members, organize contacts, and create templates.
Trello, a project-management tool, allows you to manage your community launch plan by visually organizing, scheduling, and assigning tasks to yourself and, if applicable, your team.
Google Drive for data management allows you to store your content and share it with collaborators, partners, and support staff, so all your resources are in one place.
Google Docs for content creation permits your content to be shared with others and updated over time. It’s a “living document” that can be accessed anywhere and is backed up to Google Drive.
The above technology tools are for beginners, as I don’t see new community builders needing to be very technology savvy. As discussed in earlier chapters, it’s more about building connections than systems.
I would encourage you to research and find the best fit for your community before instructing members on how you’ll communicate with them. If you aren’t sure about what the members of your community want, ask them! It is always best to validate your tools and methods before diving too deep.
Ask this in the form of a poll:
How can my community best stay in conversation with you?
Send me an email to remind me of community updates and new features.
Send me text or mobile notifications from an app.
Send me direct messages through the community platform.
Send me a calendar invitation for any events or updates.
Post your updates on social media because that’s where I spend my time.
Chapter 8: Launch Your Community Plan Your Content and Experiences
Chapter 8: Launch Your Community
As you plan your experiences, don’t become caught up in thinking you need piles of content. It can be as simple as identifying the content your members consume the most. Start your content strategy by identifying the type of content (articles, links, videos, interactive events) they’ll need along their journey. Based on member feedback, determine how frequently they use each medium.
Many hosts believe they must post every day or several times a day. If you aren’t sure if your content is helpful, ask! I’ve found that it depends on your community members’ engagement and interaction on the platform. If members are interested in your content, they will ask for more. Let your idea juices start flowing by exploring the following three content examples.
Example 1 – Membership with a Course Structure: Let’s say you’ve identified that your members enjoy the biweekly office hours between your live program or on-demand video content. Create opportunities for members to engage with each other a total of three to five times per week, as follows:
First and third Mondays: Conduct office hours. This could be a one-hour “ask me anything” session.
Second and fourth Wednesdays: Ask a question about their progress and encourage them to post in the community forum. “How is this week’s challenge going for you? What have you learned? How are you implementing this?”
First and third Fridays: Post an article or resource to support members’ work.
Second and fourth Mondays: Host a coworking or networking session.
Example 2 – Membership with Cohort Structure: Assume you’ve identified that your members enjoy connecting with the larger community once per month during a workshop, then meeting weekly in smaller cohorts.
Monthly: Provide a workshop on a topic that can be helpful for all members.
Weekly: Post an article or resource. Provide a poll or other post to encourage habitual engagement.
Community Collaboration: Host an event where people can meet each other and welcome new members as a group. Make these fun and interactive; they don’t have to include learning.
Example 3 – Community Membership Structure: You have identified that your members are in different stages, so you want to offer them different tools, resources, and support. To do this, you will provide several ways for members to connect with you and each other.
Chapter 8: Launch Your Community
Weekly or biweekly: Host an “ask me anything” or office hours.
Weekly on Monday, Wednesday, or Friday: Ask members to share challenges or wins and offer feedback and support for each other.
Weekly on Tuesday: Offer pro tips to help members save time, money, or both. Consider creating a theme around the tips, such as “Tech Tuesday.”
Daily: If you have an active group or are trying to build habits together, offer a daily workout, yoga, or guided meditation to build accountability and connection.
Once you know the content you want to share, you can set aside time to put it all together. If possible, schedule a month in advance to build in time to develop the next month’s plan. If you find yourself behind, rethink your plan. Ask yourself which components aren’t necessary and simplify.
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