Lately it seems like brands everywhere are building communities around what they do and for good reason ā it works.
As we’ve been running this community for 5 years now (where has the time gone?!) I wanted to share some of my top tips for building & scaling communities to work for you.
But before I get to that, I have an ask from you & a gift to thank you for reading this blogs…Ā
For 18 weeks now, I’ve been writing these newsletters, hoping to help at least one of you (but hopefully more) to do better at work or in your business by sharing some of the lessons I’ve learnt, failings I’ve had or simply thoughts that crop up.
Luckily a lot of you have enjoyed it so far and givingĀ amazingĀ feedback for my writing (and been forgiving of my grammatical errors haha).
However it takes time. This newsletter & blog is free. Our events are free. We run 100+ of those for 3,500 of you each year.Ā All for free.Ā
On the hope that our membership will grow organically as a result and luckily it has and continues to do so.
Contrary to popular belief though, we’re a tine team. Just 2 of at HQ in fact! And so, while organic growth is nice, we need about 100 more of you to be members to allow us to sustain & grow the work we do for you.
So as this email goes out to ~3,000 of you,Ā my askĀ is that just 3% of you consider becoming members. I guarantee you’ll find it beneficial and, if you don’t, I’ll personally refund you.
Are you going to be one of the 100?
Oh, andĀ here’s that gift I promised youĀ āĀ join now for just Ā£1.
Right… On to the good stuff!
Why build a community?Ā
If you’re in pre-launch, thinking about how to create an audience for your product or service there are few better ways of creating a lean lead funnel than building a community.
Not only will they be a pool of potential sales but treat them well and they’ll be brand advocates ā natural sales-people of your waresĀ andĀ a regular & reliable source of feedback for continuous improvement.
Honestly, I don’t know what everyone hasn’t built one yet!
Where do you start?!
Start small. Go where they are (easy). Bring them to you (harder but rewarding). Give them a compelling reason to connect. Treat them like gods. Show them you love them and engage with them often.
Facebook’s ‘groups’ set-up gives you a great way to keep people in one place, with notifications if activity happens. It helps create active communities and they’re evenĀ launchingĀ featuresĀ to let users charge membersĀ to save building membership e-commerce websites elsewhere!
Dos/Don’ts:Ā
DO ask them what they want.
DON’T try to add every feature/benefit they suggest.
DO overdeliver to your first community members
DON’T expect to be able to do that forever
DO expect people to leave –Ā they’ll have their own reasons
DON’T take it personally – it can often be nothing to do with you (we all have expensive months!).
DO think about how you’re going to monetise if that’s the eventual plan.
DON’T take too long before doing it – set a precident for how you’re going to run things
DO sell.
DON’T hard sell.
If you’re thinking of starting a community for your brand, then I recommend it but remember they do take a lot of looking after ā it’s why many people end up wanting/needing to monetise them.
Gamers, crafts people, artists, musicians, and ambitious likeminded peopleĀ like you. All with different approaches, all able to make something work. How are you going to build your community? I look forward to seeing them start & flourish.
If you need more advice on building a community for your brand I’m doing some official advisory work around this at the moment and would welcome more of your projects, orĀ become a Yena+ memberĀ and we can work on this together via our very own community benefits!
P.s. This will possibly be the last newsletter for 2 weeks as we’ll be in Sardinia next Thursday into the week after for our member retreat where we’ll be taking a bunch of awesome members sea kayaking in some of the more stunning waterĀ 😍 and then cheekily stopping off in Rome for some pizza on the way homeĀ 🍕
