How do I launch an online community? What should I do for that?
This is a big topic that I dedicated a whole book to. I will try to cover briefly the basics.
Before launching a community
1. Define the mission of the community
The first step is to define the mission of your future community. The mission of a community is the central element. Any community begins with a mission statement and ends once the mission has been achieved. The mission is the unique value proposition of a community. It explains “what” a community does and “why” people should join it.
2. Select the software to facilitate your group
In order to achieve the mission the users should be able to build groups, moderate the groups and communicate with one to organize the collective actions. So you need to provide them with the means for that. Once you have the mission, you can choose the tools needed to accomplish it.
3. Set up the basic culture of your future community.
There are a lot of communities with similar missions that use the same forum software and they all have completely different performance. So the goals and the tools do not define the community completely. The third ingredient of the secret sauce is the social norms of the group. Social norms define the “rules of the game”, the culture of the community. The very first applied step one needs to take to define the culture is to create the essential help center articles that describe the basics of the moderation on the platform. These are the on-topic page, code of conduct, manifesto, and the core values of the community.
Once you define the mission, select the platform and prepare the foundation of the culture, you are ready to open the community for general public
During the launch
1. Seed initial content
The first thing to do right after you open your site for everyone is to start seeding the initial content. Without the content it is almost impossible to keep users on the site (there are a few reasons for that, which you can read about in the book).
2. Invite, onboard and educate users
The content will bring you users from search later in the journey but definitely not at the beginning of your community. In order to get first users, usually, you need to invite them personally. Those can be your friends, coworkers or people from the internet, but you need to be ready to go for them and ask them to join. When you have first visitors you need to onboard them and educate them on how your community works and then make them come to the site another time.
Besides inviting users yourself it is the perfect time to use paid ads, do partnerships and all other kinds of marketing activities to promote your community. At this stage the price of not acting is way higher than taking the wrong action. Do not be afraid and do as many things as you can imagine.
After the launch
This is where the real community management starts. When you are able to get to it, you will need to design community initiatives, host webcasts, facilitate offline events, write blog posts about your users and many more.