Community building for dummies (me)

Yesterday I gave y’all the lowdown on the rung in the Optimal ladder: community. 

Today I’ll show you what I’ve learned so far along with some of the points I need to iron out.

Audience vs. community

For starters, you might be asking, what is the difference between an audience and a community?

I know I was.

It turns out that a community is bigger than any 1 creator. 

It’s a culture. A religion almost. 

Greg Isensberg says: “A community is just another word for culture. To be a great community designer, you have to understand the culture. What language do they speak? Where do they hang out? What do they talk about? What visuals resonate with them?”

A community is when an audience goes beyond engaging, liking, or talking about your stuff and starts spending time forming connections with other people based on a shared vibe.

For instance, think about a meme account on IG. 

If the owner stops posting, his engagement will go to 0.

But if he was hosting an actual community and stopped posting, it wouldn't die.

Because a community is a mix of content, belonging, and branding that acts like gravity to bring people together.

You want the person to walk away saying "that was for me.”

Make it exclusive

If you want people to want something, tell them they can't have it.

Communities should be a "Dictatorship at the door, and a democracy on the dance floor." - Andy Warhol

There's a huge pent-up demand for community experiences.

People want to be aspirational and meet cool people.

But there is a negative network effect at a certain point. 

Too many people can degrade the experience.

For instance, SOHO house is going to stop accepting new members.

Why? Because letting EVERYONE in is making the experience worse at SOHO house.

You have to wait for close to hours to get in now. 

Nobody wants that.

Use rituals

Rituals build a shared identity.

They create a sense of belonging. 

E.g., people like us do things like this.

Some examples:

• Google has a tradition called TGIF (Thank God It's Friday) meetings where employees gather to discuss company news, celebrate achievements, and ask questions directly to top management, including the CEO.

• "Punch in the face" meetings from YC. This is where members have a meeting at 7 AM every Monday to hold you accountable: "Did you get done what you said last week??"

Don’t copy other communities

You want to be copied, not the other way around. 

How do you do this?

Build a culture of experimentation.

Try out crazy ideas all the time and don't play the commodities game.

See what works and double down.

With AI, there is going to be a flood of brand content that looks and feels the same (ie McDonalds).

The brands that stick out will be the purple cow, tribe-based communities.

Seed the starting round with amazing people

If you are building a community there should already be a great center of gravity with a cool group of people. 

Seed your community with those people. 

This will create momentum and pull the right people in.

Points to iron out

So, with all this in mind, what am I working on?

The main thing is who and what. 

See, a community can't be just for a certain group of people, there has to be an outcome: create a community for X with Y outcome. 

The questions I’m asking, then, is:

• Who am I building this for?

• What is the outcome I want them to reach?

• What are the milestones?

• How do I get them from point A to point B?

I keep you up to date as I get it figured out. And may get your feedback on some of the finer points.

Hope this was helpful!

Cheers,

Swanagan

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