Then, I’m going to share with you one of the best tweets I’ve ever seen about building community.

Last week, this week, and the near future

I want to start by apologizing for not sending out a new piece of content last week.

I live in Frisco, Texas, where we were hit pretty hard by last week’s winter storm. Unfortunately, between rolling power outages and white-knuckle drives on icy roads to my wife’s pregnancy check-ups, writing a new Primility piece was one of the items on my to-do list that didn’t get done.

Writing and sending these pieces to you each one is one of that activities I enjoy the most, so I really missed the opportunity to connect with you around a topic we’re both passionate about.

And I will miss it over the next few weeks as well … but for a much better reason.

Last night, my wife and I headed into the hospital to prepare for the birth of our second child, a son. For my wife’s sake, I’m hoping his arrival coincides with this post being published. We’ll see.

We still don’t have a name picked out yet, so we may need any extra time we get.

Regardless, this will be the last Primility email I’m going to send for a little while — at least a few weeks. I want to lighten my load for a little while to be fully present with the family and our new addition.

But as soon as we find some sense of new-normalcy around here, I’ll get back to thinking and writing about community. It’s what I do. I won’t be able to stay away for long.

So thank you for your understanding.

In the meantime, feel free to comment on this post with any questions you have or topics you’d like to see me address when I get back. I always love getting your feedback and learning how you think about building community.

But before I go, I want to leave you with one thought to ponder in my absence.

The power of helping people help each other

This is one of the best tweets about community I’ve seen come across my timeline.

It perfectly sums up the crucial difference between what it means to build an audience and what it means to build a community.

I know how easy it can be to confuse this difference. It’s subtle, but profound.

When you build an audience, you help people. But when you build a community, you help people help each other.

For example, right now I’m building an audience here at Primility. I’m trying to help you build better and more profitable communities. But someday I will turn this into a community, where we can all help each other build better and more profitable communities.

I was reminded of this difference last week in the Unemployable Initiative. A new member posted in our accountability thread, and one of our longtime members, Kelly, popped in to offer him thoughtful advice. A back-and-forth exchange ensued, and he got an important question answered.

I did nothing in that moment, but the community that I helped to build provided the infrastructure and scaffolding for community members to help each other.

I’m not sure I’ve ever been more proud as a community leader.

This is what we should strive for.

Helping people is awesome. It’s how you build an audience, which is a necessary precursor to any community building initiative. But please don’t make the mistake of believing you have a real community if you’re the only one helping members.

Real community blossoms when members care about one another, help each other, and become invested in each other’s success.

David Spinks’ tweet sums this idea up perfectly. And Kelly’s actions in the Unemployable Initiative provided a quintessential example of it happening in real life.

It’s a beautiful thing.

Almost as beautiful as a brand new baby boy.

So now, if you’ll excuse me, I’m off to dive head-first into my two most important roles on this earth: dad and husband. Two roles I’m so lucky to have!

Then I’ll be back soon to indulging in one of my other most important roles, being a community leader and builder.

Primility Point

You have to take pride in helping as many people as you can on your way to building the audience that will seed your community. It’s the only way.

But you also must have enough humility to realize that your community will only ever truly blossom when the helping transcends you.

Thank you for reading this issue of Primility.

Please consider forwarding it to a friend who wants to be a better servant leader and build a strong online community.

I’ll be back in a few weeks!

Photo by Annie Spratt on Unsplash

The post The Difference Between Audience and Community appeared first on Primility.

Good. That’s how it should be.

There isn’t anything better than being there for our members in an important way that helps them achieve a transformation they desire.

But there is one thing that’s pretty close …

When our community members step up and are there for us.

Which is exactly what happened to me this week.

Community members to the rescue!

Over at The Assembly Call, we’re in our tenth season of hosting live postgame shows immediately following Indiana University basketball games.

During that time, a tight community has formed around our show. We get hundreds of people in our YouTube live chats during our broadcasts, and our private community on Mighty Networks has exactly 1,000 members as I type this.

I’ve met many of these people in person when we’ve traveled to Bloomington for meetups. Some I’ve interacted with on Zoom. Others I only know through usernames and avatars.

And, as with any community, we have a bunch of inactive folks, some lurkers, a handful of really active participants, and then the superusers who are always there to add a thoughtful comment or even open up an interesting discussion thread.

Two of these superusers came to the rescue in a huge way earlier this week. Due to a bunch of scheduling conflicts, none of my regular co-hosts were available for our show on Super Bowl Sunday.

This caused a few moments of panic.

But then I remembered that I’d talked with Kathy about coming on the show before, because we wanted to add some female voices to the mix. And I remembered that Jeff (aka Coach Marlow) has been writing pregame scouting reports for a while, and often has insightful comments from a coach’s perspective during our community happy hours.

So I asked them if they wanted to come on the show with me. I’m not sure I’ve ever gotten a “Yes” to any question as quickly as they both agreed to co-host. It was a combination of being super-excited to have the chance to co-host, and knowing that I was in a real pickle and wanting to help out.

They were there for me in a moment of need.

And to add one last wrinkle to the story: I actually ended up having to postpone the Sunday show because something came up at home. But they didn’t flinch. We rescheduled it for Monday night, they showed up ready to go, and they did an incredible job helping me discuss Indiana’s 67-65 victory over Iowa. (See for yourself!)

And look, I know that it’s ultimately pretty silly to dedicate so much time, as we do, to discussing a college basketball team. But occurrences like these remind me that it’s really about so much more than the actual topic we’re discussing.

What real community feels like

This is what the best communities become: a place where the topic is really just the excuse for the community. We care about it, sure; but a lot of us now care as much or more about the camaraderie and togetherness.

As we hosted the show, I saw comment after comment in the live chat from fellow community members who were rooting Kathy and Jeff on. They wanted to see the two of them succeed. It was two of their own up there on the virtual stage.

This is going to sound cheesy, but …

It really felt like the community, at least the members who were there, shared a moment on Monday night. It felt like people grew a little closer together.

And we never would have had that chance if Kathy and Jeff hadn’t been willing to step out of their comfort zone and assume a different role, all because the community (in this case: me) called on them to do so.

Kathy and Jeff are the types of members around which loyal, sustaining communities are built. I feel so lucky that they are a part of our community.

I’m so glad I gave them the opportunity to step up. They did, in a big way.

And it’s a reminder that it’s up to us as community leaders to make sure we’re giving our most deserving members opportunities like this. They’ll come through more often than not, if we’re building our communities the right way,

Primility Point

This isn’t the first time this has happened to me — a community member stepping up in a time of need. It’s only the latest.

And every time it happens, it fills me with a sense of pride that I have a leadership role in a community with people this helpful and generous. It’s also a humbling reminder that just because I’m the “leader,” doesn’t mean I’m the only one willing and able to help.

In a real community, members care about one another, and are there to help one another in times of need. Otherwise, it’s just a discussion forum.

Now here is some additional reading …​

First, speaking of community members stepping up, hat tip to Kelly for sending this to me in an email yesterday. She got in a daily email from American Express called “The Business Class Daily Edit.”

Yep, I’d say this is right up our alley.

Don’t forget why people engage with communities in the first place!

Rich over FeverBee has an excellent post that any community leader would do well to revisit once every few months. It’s so easy to forget why people join and engage in communities, and get caught up in stuff that either doesn’t matter or is counter-productive. This post will set you straight.

Communities Create Emotional Value, Try Not To Destroy It | FeverBee

Thank you for reading this issue of Primility.

Please consider forwarding it to a friend who wants to be a better servant leader and build a strong online community.

The post Give Your Best Members The Chance to Shine appeared first on Primility.

Maybe they’re busy. Maybe they just haven’t made an effort yet. Maybe they’re not community-oriented people and simply consume on-demand content on their own time.

Whatever the reason, this inquisitor wanted to know if I work hard to get these people engaged. Or do I make peace with them being more passive members? Do I try to find other ways to support their learning that isn’t community focused?

Here’s how I responded ….

Pareto perspective

The first thing I do is remember to keep it in perspective.

Charles Vogl, the author of Art of Community, once explained to me that in a lot of mature communities as many as 90 percent of your members won’t be very active. Then another nine percent of users will be fairly active, with one percent being your superusers.

Remember those numbers. Don’t use the as an excuse to not do everything you can to engage as many members as possible; but use them to remind yourself that you aren’t necessarily doing something wrong if the majority of your members aren’t that active.

Personally, I aim a little higher.

Online communities, with their lower bar for activity, can beat those numbers.

I think 80/20 (the Pareto Principle) is a pretty good baseline — especially in education communities, where people can come and consume education without really interacting. Not everyone wants the interaction.

If I can get more than 20% of my long-term members being regularly active, with a nice chunk of superusers at the top, then I feel good about the top-line metrics.

Good, but not complacent.

• I know I still have to work hard to put together intuitive and helpful onboarding.
• I know I still have to do the daily/weekly/monthly work that creates continuous opportunities for education and engagement.
• I know I need to find ways to build personal connections with superusers and other active members.

But I also try to remember — crucially — that people’s lives and needs change.

Meet people where they are

An inactive member today can still become an active member down the road. A superuser today can become an inactive member in the snap of a finger.

So while someone may not want as much of the interaction right away when they join, that doesn’t mean they can’t be brought in down the line. (To be clear: it’s unlikely, but not impossible.) This is why your onboarding needs to be so good, so it’s helpful and accessible when needed.

And this is where email plays a key role.

You don’t want to lose touch with your inactive members. A regular digest of community activity, delivered via email, can be a recurring touch point for people who are on the fringes.

Even if these inactive members don’t open the emails, they serve as a reminder that the community is there for them when they need it.

Beyond that, you just have to make peace with the inactivity of a large swath of your membership.

Remember that your job as a community leader is not to cajole or coerce anyone to participate. It’s to make participation easy, inviting, and relevant, and then facilitate engagement and transformation for those who do show up.

Primility Point

You’re building a special community, so you should take pride in wanting every inactive member to become active.

But practicing humility in how you approach inactive members will serve you well. Remember how few members will probably make up your active user base. And remember that it takes two to tango.

So do your part, but focus on the people who show up without the lamenting those who do not.

Now here are some additional links on this topic …​

Stay in touch (but make it a light touch)

There is a fine line between maintaining an email touchpoint with inactive members, like I mentioned above, and notifying inactive members to the point of annoyance. This post does a nice job of laying out useful tips for how to avoid staying on the right side of that line.

How to Encourage Engagement without Nagging Your Members | The Membership Guys

Survey says?

Sending inactive members a short survey can be a good way to reopen the lines of communication and possibly even get some useful data. Here is an example that might help.

Reaching Out To Inactive Members | FeverBee

What do the numbers say?

From the annual report that Community Roundtable does, we learned that “in an average community, the average member gives 0.5 answers per year, while an active member gives 6 answers per year.” The post below offers more interesting numbers.

Online Communities in 2020: 28 Key Facts + Statistics to Know | Higher Logic

Thank you for reading this issue of Primility.

Please consider forwarding it to a friend who wants to be a better servant leader and build a strong online community.

The post The Best Way to Think About Inactive Members appeared first on Primility.

Upon joining, the community manager, Mathilde, asked me the following question: “Since you’re a serial community builder, I’d be curious to learn more from you, and I’m sure others too: what’s the one thing you wish you knew when you started building online communities? Your biggest lesson learned?”

Here’s how I answered her:

The one thing I wish I recognized earlier is that a community it not simply a collection of people around a particular topic (or set of topics). It’s a collection of people around a particular topic who share a genuine concern for one another.

That extra bit is what makes a gathering of people an actual community. And there is no great way to fast forward it or fake it. It takes time and care to build; but once you do, it’s incredibly special.

This is not a new concept. I’ve covered it before here and here.

But I appreciated Mathilde’s question for the opportunity it gave me to stop and reflect on this essential idea for community building. It came at a useful time.

I’m in the middle of migrating one of my communities from Mighty Networks to Circle [affiliate link]. During this process, it’s so easy to get caught up in the minutiae of what makes the community operate from a technical and feature perspective. And this minutiae is important. Your members deserve an online community space that is organized, intuitive, and feature-rich.

But I look at the technology minutiae as a mere cost of engaging in community commerce. It’s the buy-in to be at the table. It needs to be there, but it’s not a long-term differentiator.

What really matters are the connections you create between yourself and your members, and the connections you facilitate between members.

I didn’t fully realize this early in my career as a community builder. Now I do, and it drives every decision and action.

I’m curious what your answer to Mathilde’s question is. What is the one thing you wish you knew when you started building online communities? Please drop a comment below and let me know.

On a somewhat related note …

A tiny feature that makes a big difference

When you migrate a community from one platform to another, you spend a lot of time hyperfocusing on the differences between the platforms. Inevitably you will find yourself wishing the new platform had some previously overlooked or taken-for-granted features you liked about the original platform.

One such feature is Mighty Networks’ [affiliate link] member tagging.

In Mighty Networks, you tag a member as you would anywhere else: using the @ sign, typing their name, and then choosing from a list that autopopulates as you type. By default, the resulting tag includes the member’s first and last name.

Here’s what’s cool: Once the first and last name have appeared, you can backspace and the last name will delete itself, leaving just the tagged first name.

In Circle, and in other social/community platforms, you’re stuck leaving the full first and last name if you want the member tag to remain when the post or comment is published.

What’s the big deal?

Mighty Networks’ tagging allows your reference to the member to fit how you would actually refer to someone who is more than an acquaintance.

Think about it: if you and I have gotten to know each other inside of a community for a year, I’m not going to refer to you by your first and last name. That would be way too formal, to the point of being awkward.

In this way, it’s a tiny feature that makes a big difference in enabling our online interactions to more closely resemble what our offline interactions would be.

No, this feature alone isn’t going to make or break a community. But the little things do add up over time. And now that we’re losing it in the community I’m migrating to Circle, I know that we’ll miss it. A couple of beta testers have already pointed it out!

Looks like I’ll be putting in a feature request with Circle.

Primility Point

Take pride in building the best online temple you can build for your members. But always maintain the humility to remember that community is not about the technology or the bells and whistles; community is all about the people.

Now here are some additional links on community building I found useful this week …​

Resources to help you build better communities

Carrie Melissa Jones, one of the authors of Building Brand Communities, announced a generous giveaway this week. You should enter. (I did.) Even if you aren’t the winner, there is still value to be gained from seeing the resources she included in her strategy kit. You may find something you hadn’t seen before — like the Freedom app.

The Ultimate Community Strategy Giveaway | Carrie Mellisa Jones

Do you know why your members are leaving?

Admittedly, an exit survey is not something I’ve done in any communities I’ve run. It seems silly to me now, given how valuable the feedback can be and how relatively simple it is to set up. I’ll be doing these in the future, and this post will serve as a useful roadmap.

How to Create an Effective Membership Exit Survey | The Membership Guys

How do we maintain intimacy as our communities grow?

Focus in on the first bullet point in this newsletter, On digital micro-communities. “We talk about digital communities being the next big thing, but rarely about how the community software options we have today make it impossible to retain the feeling of closeness and empathy at scale. Over and over I’ve seen the signal-to-noise ratios of these communities suffer as more people join. It’s network effects moving in the opposite direction — as more people join, the experience worsens.”

Check your Pulse #57 | Check Your Pulse

Thank you for reading this issue of Primility.

Please consider forwarding it to a friend who wants to be a better servant leader and build a strong online community.

Photo by Hannah Busing on Unsplash

The post The One Thing I Wish I Learned Sooner appeared first on Primility.

It will have to wait.

Ever since the conclusion of today’s U.S. Presidential inauguration, I have been unable to focus on anything but the stirring poem recited by Amanda Gorman.

If you missed it, watch it here.

(You can read the transcript here, but it’s much better to hear it performed first.)

While Gorman’s message of national unity is not explicitly germane to our discussion of servant leadership and community commerce, there are a few sections of her poem that do stand out as being applicable to the work we’re doing as community builders and leaders.

A good community brings harmony to the lives of its members.

One section of the poem deals with the imperfections of the American experiment. While we will never have a perfect union, Gorman says we can strive to “forge a union with purpose.”

This is, of course, what we’re trying to do with our communities: be purposeful in bringing people together into a union that is beneficial for all members.

Gorman goes on to say:

And so we lift our gazes not to what stands between us
but what stands before us
We close the divide because we know, to put our future first,
we must first put our differences aside
We lay down our arms
so we can reach out our arms
to one another
We seek harm to none and harmony for all

Amanda Gorman, “The Hill We Climb”

These words offer a reminder of the incredible opportunity and responsibility we have as community leaders.

There is so much in the world that divides people and causes harm. But folks like you and I who are dedicated to bringing people together in communities can help close the divide.

We do this by focusing on what unites people and by delivering online spaces that bring harmony and a brighter future to all members.

A community leader’s success is determined by the number of bridges they build

There are many ways to assess the success of your community.

• Authority built.
• Revenue generated.
• Competitors defeated.

But only one criteria really matters: how many connections did you facilitate?

That’s ultimately what matters, along with helping your members achieve whatever personal transformation they’re striving for.

Just remember that those two ideas that go hand in hand, because meaningful transformations are oftentimes only possible with the influence and interaction of other people.

I thought about this as I listened to Gorman read these lines:

If we’re to live up to our own time
Then victory won’t lie in the blade
But in all the bridges we’ve made

Amanda Gorman, “The Hill We Climb”

Building bridges between people and their goals, and between people and other people, is the essence of what we do as community leaders.

If we stay focused on the bridge building, the other stuff will come. If we don’t, we might end up with something that isn’t really a community after all.

Primility Point

And finally, a note about balancing pride and humility, straight from the text of the poem:

It’s because being American is more than a pride we inherit,
it’s the past we step into
and how we repair it

Amanda Gorman, “The Hill We Climb”

In other words: having pride in being something is one thing, but having the humility to actually be a part of something is quite another.

I’ll let you decide how this might apply to your own personal journey as a community builder.

For me, it’s all about remembering that my work as a community leader is never complete. No matter how pleased I may be with the present status of a community, there is always more to be learned and more to be done.

And that’s a hill I remain so very enthusiastic about climbing.

My thanks for Amanda Gorman for her beautiful, profound words. Any my thanks to you for reading this week’s edition of Primility..

Please consider forwarding it to a friend who wants to be a better servant leader and build a strong online community.

The post Bring Harmony and Build Bridges appeared first on Primility.

There are so many options! So many features! Bells! Whistles!

But this is the wrong way to approach your platform choice. Your search should never start in a platform-first or feature-first direction.

Your initial mindset when choosing a community platform needs to be all about the behaviors you want to establish with your members, and choosing the best platform to facilitate those behaviors.

Why you need to think behaviors first

Thinking in terms of behaviors first is more effective because it forces you to drill into how you want to engage your members, and how you want your members to engage with each other.

It approaches the question from a strategic mindset, rather than a tactical mindset. And strategy always needs to come before tactics.

So rather than getting caught up in what features a platform has, you need to translate those features into the behaviors they’ll help you facilitate.

This focus on behaviors needs to persist throughout the life of your community.

Let’s look at a few examples.

One behavior you might want for your community is for people to show up for live webinars. If that’s the case, then some features you might look for include: an Events section, integration with webinar software, easy ways to send notifications, the ability to pin posts, etc.

How will you know to give these features extra weight unless you have a clear idea of the behaviors you want to establish?

A particular platform might not be disqualified if it isn’t perfect in this area, but it does mean you should have a vision for how you’ll work around any shortcomings. You also need to be able to adjust midstream if you’re not seeing the desired behaviors occurring as the weeks and months pass.

Another behavior you might want is for people to be able to help each other with accountability. In that case, an important feature would be the ability to create separate Groups or sections where cohorts of people can communicate in small groups.

Do you want gamification to be a part of what motivates your members to participate? Then you need to identify it as a priority and choose a platform that facilitates gamification.

The key here is to start with the behaviors first so that you’re clear on the essential features you need, rather than just browsing to see what looks cool or having a soft checklist of features that sound nice or that you’ve seen in other communities.

If you embark on your shopping expedition with a completely open mind, you run the risk of falling prey to each platform’s spiffy website and professionally written copy, all of which is geared toward making their platform sound irresistible. Don’t do that.

Be clear about the community you are building before you start searching, and the hold each platform to that standard. It will help you narrow down your choices much quicker, and set you on the path toward making the best choice in the end.

Primility Point

Choosing the right community platform requires having enough humility to deeply understand your members and to put in the research necessary to know what works for community engagement. Your job is to find the intersection between the two.

Once you find it, take pride in being the visionary for your community. Don’t outsource this responsibility to the platform feature lists.

In other words: find the platform that works for you and your members, not the other way around.

Now here are some additional links on this topic …​

The right choice starts with strategy

I outlined my essay above, and then came across this article by Rich at FeverBee … and knew I was on the right track! Not being clear-eyed about what you need from a community platform is a sign that you aren’t clear-eyed about your community strategy.

The Wrong Way To Pick A Community Platform | FeverBee

A case study in choosing a platform

I’ve shared Jay’s epic post before, but it’s worth sharing again here. It’s a good example of how to think through your community and then come out on the other side with a firm understanding of what you need in a platform.

How to build an online community | Jay Clouse

Put in the work to make the right choice

This post provides a detailed model for how to approach your community platform choice. In the section “Behaviors, Not Features,” the author provides examples of non-negotiable features they want in a community platform.

The Ultimate Guide to Choosing the Right Platform For Your Community | CMX

Here’s an example of how not to do it

This post does provide some good basic information if you’re a beginner, but I want to highlight its list of steps to take when launching an online community. Number one is choosing a platform; number two is determine your goals. No. It needs to be the inverse of that.

Community Platforms: A Complete Guide | Disciple

Thank you for reading this issue of Primility.

Please consider forwarding it to a friend who wants to be a better servant leader and build a strong online community.

The post Choosing a Community Platform? Focus on Behaviors, Not Features appeared first on Primility.

I wasn’t intending to pick three words, but my New Year’s Day journal entry just went in that direction … so I followed it through.

It’s something I’ve seen a lot of people do, most notably Chris Brogan.

The idea is to choose three action-oriented words that will help guide your mindset and activity throughout the new year. You then review the words regularly to keep the ideas they represent top of mind and, in turn, keep you on track.

I chose these three words:

• Gratitude
• Mindfulness
• Investment

I won’t go into all of the personal and work reasons why I chose each word, and why they are already helping me get off to a good start in 2021, but I do want to focus on the community-specific contexts for each one.

Gratitude is essential for true servant leadership

The best kind of community leadership is servant leadership.

And servant leadership isn’t possible without a healthy dose of genuine gratitude for the people who have chosen to be members of your community.

When you feel grateful for the time, attention, and money your members invest in your community, you are motivated to give them a great experience and help them achieve a worthwhile transformation.

In the absence of gratitude, it’s far too easy for your mindset to shift toward the inverse. You can develop an inflated sense of your own impact and stature, and forget that what really matters is how you’ll serve your members next … not how you served them in the past.

Do be careful with the concept of “genuine gratitude” though. Don’t make the mistake of thinking that intentional gratitude is somehow disingenuous, or that if you don’t wake up every morning overwhelmed with thoughts of gratitude that you somehow aren’t grateful enough.

Gratitude works best when it is a practice — which means being intentional about making space in your regular schedule to reflect on it and express it.

My goal this year is to be more intentional reflecting on and expressing my feelings of gratitude for the members of my communities. I don’t want my genuine appreciation for them to go unconsidered by me or unexpressed to them.

And on that note …

Thank you for reading Primility! Your presence reading these words gives meaning to the effort I put into writing them. I’m incredibly grateful for that.

The Appreciation Paradigm of Grateful Leadership | Greenleaf

Mindfulness helps you connect better in a virtual world

The current state of our COVID-cautious world does not allow for much in-person community interaction. (And with good reason.)

As a result, most communities have been forced into a state of online-only communication. This isn’t ideal, but the reality is that community interaction has been moving online in increasingly higher proportions anyway. The pandemic simply accelerated well-established trends.

Without the energy of face-to-face interactions, it can be more difficult to truly develop connections with people. And while no current technology platform can replace the power of being in-person, being more mindful during our community interactions can help us remember more and connect better.

It’s easy to view the recurring work of community engagement — replying to emails, contributing to comment threads, reading about new members, even participating in live webinars and chats, etc. — as busy work to check off a to-do list.

But if you think you can engage your community effectively while on autopilot or multi-tasking, I think you’re wrong.

Look, maybe your brain can handle that kind of cognitive load and still be present, and still remember important information about your members, but I sure know mine cannot.

So my goal this year is to be more focused and more present while doing my community engagement work. I wouldn’t be checking my phone, tweeting, or watching TV if I was at an in-person event with my members, so I’m going to get better about not doing it when I’m with them online either.

What Does Great Engagement Look Like? | FeverBee

Make short-term sacrifices to invest in the long-term durability of your community

We’re all busy. We’re all cognitively overloaded.

So it’s easy, in individual moments, to seek the easiest path to a finish line and take it.

The problem is that those individual moments add up, and the ultimate finish line may not end up being the one we initially planned to reach. This is why it’s so important to resist the urge for the easy and instead focus on what’s right or what’s best.

When you make these kinds of short-term sacrifices with an eye toward the bigger picture, you are investing in yourself and in the future of your community.

So …

• Instead of creating an another recurring post from scratch, take the extra time now to build a template that will save you time later.
• Instead of rifling through your accountability check-ins with easy platitudes so you can finish in five minutes, take the extra ten minutes to really read and write something meaningful.
• Instead of sticking with a platform that isn’t serving your members well, work over a weekend to migrate onto a new platform that will serve current and future members better.

You get the idea.

Community commerce is not a quick-hit revenue generator. You better be in it to win it over the long haul, or you’re eventually going to cost yourself money and authority.

So adopting a mindset of investment and patience, instead of one focused on ruthless efficiency, will set you up for more success in the long run.

Patience in Building an Online Community | Randy Ksar

Primility Point

Gratitude, mindfulness, and investment, as I’ve described them here, are all natural antidotes to the feelings of pride that can get any community member leaning a bit too far out over their skis.

Stay grateful, stay mindful, and stay focused on the big picture, and you’ll have the humility necessary to be the best online community leader you can be.

Thank you for reading this issue of Primility.

Please consider forwarding it to a friend who wants to be a better servant leader and build a strong online community.

The post 3 Words to Guide Community Leaders in 2021 appeared first on Primility.

And it comes right at the beginning of the entire process.

When is the right time to launch a community?

There are four fundamental factors that need to be in place for you to have a chance at a successful community launch.

Factor #1: You have a Minimum Viable Audience (MVA)

The first factor you need is a minimum viable audience, and you need to have spent enough time serving that audience to have gained a deep understanding of your audience members’ hopes, dreams, desires, problems, and questions.

The size here can vary, though I’d suggest that at an absolute minimum you need to have at least 100 engaged email subscribers to even consider it. 

Here’s how I arrived at that number:

Chances are good that even if you start out with a free launch to seed your community, you won’t get more than 10% of your email subscribers to take you up on the offer to try it out. At 100 engaged subscribers, that’s 10 community members. If they’re all super engaged, you can get something going at that level. It’s much harder, but it’s potentially doable if everything else is in place.

But even if the audience number is small, it’s important that the number be growing because when you have a true minimum viable audience, not only is the audience engaged but it’s starting to grow itself through people are sharing and recommending your work to others. If you’re not seeing any of that, then you probably don’t have an MVA yet.

More than likely, to be ready to launch a community, you’ll want to have at least several hundred engaged subscribers — meaning people who actually open and click on your emails. If you can get into the thousands, even better. 

What if you don’t have an email list? Say your audience is primarily subscribed to your podcast or YouTube channel, or maybe it’s all social media. You can certainly build a strong audience this way, but it’s going to be tougher to convert it into a formal community. To compensate, you’ll need to have much bigger numbers as compared to what you’d need on an email list. 

If you are serious about a community commerce strategy, then I highly suggest working email into your context mix. At a minimum, you should be getting people onto an email list for updates. Ideally, you are providing additional ongoing value via email — like a curated email newsletter or a free course — and using less intimate channels like a podcast or blog to get people subscribed.

The reason why email is so important is because it remains the highest-converting sales channel. So if you have moderate to high engagement on your email list, you will convert a much higher percentage of your subscribers on any call to action compared to simply mentioning it on a podcast or blog post. You can, and should, do both — but just know that the podcast or blog post mention may help to build awareness, but the email will do the majority of the actual converting. 

Bottom line: you need a minimum viable audience to launch a community, and you’ll be in the best position for success if your audience is organized through an email list.

Factor #2: You’re seeing community occur organically

You should be seeing signs of community already. This gives you an indication that you are already bringing people together who are seeking some sort of connection and have shared experiences or problems they can help each other work through.

What are some examples of signs of community?

• Comment threads on blog posts, especially if you see the same people over and over again.
• Twitter discussions — again, especially if you see the same people over and over again.
• People showing up and participating in chats during live events.
• Multiple people replying to emails you send or to simple calls to action to make on podcasts.

Basically, if you see people congregating around your content, especially if a recurring group of people are congregating together around your content, then your audience may be ready for more formal organization.

So if you have a minimum viable audience, and you’re seeing signs of this congregating together around your content, you should dive right in, right?

Hold up.

Factor #3: You’re really committed to building community

Before you take the leap, you need to make sure that you’re committed to doing community right. 

This means being committed to a community commerce strategy for the long-term — because it could do more damage than good to your reputation and your relationship with your audience if you launch a community, get people excited about connecting together … and the preside over it fizzling out.

All this is going to do is disappoint the people who were the most enthusiastic about your work! Not good.

So you should make sure that you have the time and the resources to stick with it, especially if you’re not seeing big revenue right off the bat — which often happens with new communities. 

You also should make sure what, exactly, you’re committed to. 

I’ve written about the difference between an online community and a discussion forum or education library.

If you’re committed to creating a forum or education library, but don’t have much interest in creating a long-term sense of belonging among members, that’s fine. But you should know that going in — and then make sure that you adjust your expectations, and the way you describe what you’re building, accordingly. 

Factor #4: You have a business plan for your community

The fourth factor may seem obvious but too often goes overlooked. 

You have to understand what your business model will be, and make sure it’s a business model that can work over the long-term. 

• Is your community going to support a course? Great! But will the course sell enough long-term to give you the revenue you need to support the community? Do you need to charge a recurring fee for the community part, or are you going to price the course high enough so that lifetime community access is included?
• Alternatively, is your community its own standalone revenue center? Great! Can you get the right combination of price and volume of users to make it sustainable? Do you need to plan content or course upsells within the community to make it viable?

Without context, there are no right or wrong answers to these questions. But these are the types of questions you need to be asking yourself and mapping out, even in the beginning. 

Now let me share an example of a community I launched that didn’t have all four of these factors … and failed because of it.

The saga of the Showrunner community

The Showrunner was a podcast about podcasting that I co-hosted with Jonny Nastor. It was a successful show by any metric: we had 100+ episodes, we’d built an email list of nearly  1,000 people, and we’d even executed a successful 6-figure launch of a course.

As Jonny and I started discussing launching a community, we had factors 1, 2, and 3 well in place. The issue was #4 — the business plan.

While we did have a successful course, we had pretty much tapped out our existing list. The community we were launching was mainly to people who had already taken the course, meaning we weren’t going to generate any new revenue from them without something new. But we also didn’t want to charge for the community right off the bat, since we were just getting it rolling. 

So we launched the community — with a free window for anyone who signed up right away. And we had hundreds of people join. And the early momentum was great! We had a consistent content calendar, there was lots of conversation, and we were highly motivated. 

But then reality hit: we were putting in a lot of time to engage the community, but we needed to start making money from it. Unfortunately, there weren’t any clear, quick paths to monetization. There were several reasons for this: 

• Our audience was tapped, so we needed to grow it to find more course buyers.
• The course and community were presented separately, and we’d let a lot of our course buyers into the community for free — something that can be difficult to reverse.
• And, frankly, we just didn’t understand community commerce well enough at that time to have a smart, methodical plan in place from the beginning.

So … the momentum slowed. Eventually, I had other opportunities come up that I couldn’t say no too, and the same happened for Jonny. And a really engaged, enthusiastic Showrunner community fizzled and fell by the wayside because it just didn’t have the right leadership.

We had an MVA, there were definitely signs of community … but ultimately we didn’t have the business plan, and that led to us being unable to maintain our commitments to leading the community the right way.

I still have a lot of regrets about the Showrunner community to this day. There was a profitable, sustainable community commerce strategy there; but we just didn’t figure it out in time. And that sucks. But it also taught me some really important lessons that have made me a better community leader since.

And the most important lesson is this:

It’s okay — in fact, it’s necessary — for the money to matter

It’s not selfish to put your business plan, and your need to make a certain amount of money from your community, front and center in your thinking.

It’s not selfish at all. It’s actually silly and amateurish not to think this way.

The money has to matter.

Because if your community cannot sustain itself, and can’t support the work you’re doing to build it and engage it, then it’s ultimately going to go away when you reach a fork in the road in your life or career.

And this is why there is nothing more fundamental to your leadership of an online community than your willingness and ability to devise and stick to a smart community commerce plan. That’s why commerce is right there in the name.

All of the belonging and campfire events and connections ultimately won’t matter if the community eventually just fizzles and goes away.

So make sure you have all four of these factors in place before you launch. Of course your business plan can change and evolve over time. But have a plan … or you’re just planning to fail.

Primility Point

The pride you feel in your plan to build a community will almost always manifest itself in enthusiasm, and possibly even impatience, to launch. But you should avoid a premature launch at all costs. It can sink your community before it ever has a chance to leave the dock.

Maintain a sense of humility toward the process, and be sure that all four factors described here are in place before you launch. That way you give yourself, and your future community members, the best chance of experiencing long-term success and connection together.

Thank you for reading this issue of Primility.

Please consider forwarding it to a friend who wants to be a better servant leader and build a strong online community.

Photo by SpaceX on Unsplash

The post The 4 Factors You Need in Place to Launch an Online Community the Right Way appeared first on Primility.

I’m going to assume that these two statements sum them up:

1. Go deeper with the people you serve to help them achieve real transformations.
2. Develop a durable, sustainable recurring revenue model for our businesses.

The linchpin to achieving these two goals is belonging.

You might be able to do #1 — say, help people someone achieve a skill-based transformation through an online course — without belonging playing much of a role.

But if you want to achieve #2, and create an online community that keeps people around paying a recurring free for the long-term, then a community that provides belonging has to be part of the equation.

That’s why belonging is so important for us to think about as online community leaders. It’s not a bonus. It’s not a nice-to-have feature of your community if you want your community to be built for the long-term.

Belonging is foundational for a profitable, sustainable online community.

What is belonging and why is it so important?

Here is a good definition of belonging:

Belonging is a sense of fitting in or feeling like you are an important member of a group. A feeling of belonging describes this sense of truly fitting or meshing, especially with friends, family members, or other sympathetic folks.

vocabulary.com

The only change I would make is substituting empathetic for sympathetic. There is certainly room for sympathy in a community, but people are more often seeking empathy — a place where other people care about them and understand what they’re going through.

An even better definition is what I wrote about two weeks ago: the Cheers theme song.

A sense of belonging is going someplace where, yes, people know your name. But even more important than that, it’s going someplace where your presence is valued and where you’re among people who really get you. That’s why the line “our troubles are all the same” is so perfect. 

And the thing about belonging is that it’s something human beings crave.

In fact, after having our physiological and safety needs met, it’s the next-most important need we have as humans. As we all learned from studying Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs, the need for belonging and love comes before our needs for esteem and self-actualization.

In other words, before we can become the best versions of ourselves, we have to have our needs for love and belonging met.

Now, we shouldn’t overstate what an online community can do here. An online community cannot replace intimate family relationships and deep, lasting friendships. But it can complement them, and it can even be a useful supplement during times in our lives when we’re struggling to find a sense of belonging elsewhere.

And this is why I’m so bullish on the future of online communities. 

Why online communities matter now more than ever

We’re living through an age of loneliness and isolation. This trend was already strong and persistent even before the pandemic came and exacerbated it. 

Read this, from a recent article in The Guardian:

Earlier this year, research by Professor John Cacioppo at the University of Chicago found loneliness to be twice as bad for older people’s health as obesity and almost as great a cause of death as poverty. But shocking as this is, such studies overlook the loneliness epidemic among younger adults. The Mental Health Foundation found loneliness to be a greater concern among young people than the elderly. The 18 to 34-year-olds surveyed were more likely to feel lonely often, to worry about feeling alone, and to feel depressed because of loneliness than the over-55s.

The Guardian

Did I say recent article? I meant that this article was from all the way back in 2014. Clearly this epidemic has been growing for a while, and it’s only growing stronger. 

We’re not going to solve loneliness with our online communities, but we can give people something they really value and need. In return, we’ll become such a valued part of their online existence, that it’s a no-brainer for them to keep paying whatever the recurring fee is because the value they get so far exceeds the cost.

This is why community commerce is the future for those who can go beyond education and actually provide real community, which means providing a place where real belonging can develop.

How do you create belonging in an online community?

If you want to create belonging in an online community, you first need to recognize that the fundamentals for creating belonging in an online community are no different than the fundamentals for creating belonging in an offline community. Only the context is different.

What are these fundamentals? I’m so glad you asked, because I recently completed a seven-post series breaking down each one.

Primility Point

This increasingly fractured and lonely world of ours needs more belonging, which means that it needs more genuine communities. And this means that the world needs more community leaders.

It needs more people with enough pride to stand up and do what it takes to bring people together, but also enough humility to see, listen to, and really care about helping and connecting with those people.

That is the essence of servant leadership, and servant leaders make the best community leaders.

Thank you for reading this issue of Primility.

Please consider forwarding it to a friend who wants to be a better servant leader and build a strong online community.

The post A Crisis of Belonging: Why Online Communities Have Never Been More Important appeared first on Primility.

This is a good thing. If it were easy, then everyone would do it.

And if everyone were willing and able to do it, then you and I wouldn’t have the opportunity we do to perform the hard but rewarding work of leading communities.

One of the most difficult elements of leading a community is to remember that your role is to lead the community, not be its dictator.

The biggest difference between community leaders and community dictators

There are many differences between leaders and dictators. In this post, I want to zero in on the biggest difference: How do you approach major community changes?

Dictators will believe that they know best, deliberate and decide in private, and are more likely weigh short-term personal concerns more heavily than what is in the best interest of the biggest number of members.

Leaders, on the other hand, will recognize the limitations of their own assumptions and seek out feedback and wisdom from community members. Leaders are also more likely to understand that the long-term health of the community may require decisions that are not in their personal best interest in the short term.

I’ve been thinking about this distinction a lot recently as I prepare to make a major change in one of the communities I lead.

We are switching platforms, so it is going to cause a lot of upheaval for everyone in the community. It will also create a ton of extra work for me personally during a time when I am already stretched thin both personally and professionally.

But I’m also confident that it’s the right long-term decision for the community — both because of the research I’ve done on my own, and because of the “Virtual Town Hall” I hosted last week.

The value of a “virtual town hall”

I’m so glad we hosted this event, which was essentially an open Zoom meeting for all community members who wanted to attend. It was helpful on a number of levels.

The live event, as well as several private conversations thereafter, gave our members an opportunity to provide their feedback and insight to me directly. Everyone so far has been on board with the move, and I was also able to add several intriguing ideas to my community spreadsheet.

But most importantly, taking the time to host this event and really listen to member feedback gives a clear signal to the community that I view my role as leader, not dictator.

Yes, it’s my role to chart the strategic course for the community, implement new ideas, and make the big final decisions that will affect everyone … but by sharing and conversing along the way, members understand I’m willing to listen and value their input.

Plus, my decisions become better because the people who will be directly affected by those decisions, and who pay to keep the community alive in the first place, are able to provide feedback and bring up points I might have overlooked.

This last point is important, and it highlights another difference between leaders and dictators.

Even a dictator might go through the motions of having open discussions and seeking feedback around major decisions because it looks good. But are they actually listening? Do they really value the feedback of members?

Leaders do.

For community leaders, it’s not about going through the motions; it’s about taking an important opportunity to learn more about the people you serve so you can serve them better.

Be a leader, not a dictator.

Primility Point

Being a leader requires a certain of pride in your ability to host important conversations and make important decisions for the people you lead. But dictators are leaders whose pride goes unchecked.

The only way for those conversations to matter, and for your decisions to have a positive impact on the people you lead, is to have enough humility to care about and really listen to your members.

Now here are some additional links on this topic …​

Follow best practices

Pay attention to the list of Dos and Don’ts in this post. I’ll highlight keeping it simple and not asking for feedback you don’t intent to use.

How to Collect Member Feedback the Right Way | Wild Apricot

Always be collecting feedback

Doing a survey of members once or twice a year is a good rule of thumb to formalize your process for getting member feedback.

Constant Feedback | FeverBee

Identify potential superusers and advocates

Opening up forums for feedback — whether public or private — helps you to identify who your most engaged, thoughtful, and passionate members are. These might be able who are interested in taking on a more senior role in the community.

Why Feedback is Crucial for Online Community Success | Khoros

Thank you for reading this issue of Primility.

Please consider forwarding it to a friend who wants to be a better servant leader and build a strong online community.

Photo by Javier Allegue Barros on Unsplash

The post Be a Leader, Not a Dictator appeared first on Primility.