What is one tip to remember when creating an online community?

As an online community manager, you have the responsibility to create a safe space for your members where they can share their opinions and engage with others. However, it’s essential to set the rules you want your members to follow. Online community guidelines help manage users who have access to your platform and ensure that people treat each other with respect. When writing them, think of the standards that define an expected user behavior. For example, if you don’t want any self-promotional or commercial content, include in your guidelines that posting any spam, self-promotion, and misleading content on your platform is prohibited. Also, it’s important to make it clear to the users the consequences of failing to follow your rules. If people know the penalties, there is a higher chance that they will think twice before posting any inappropriate content in your online community.

Define the goal and purpose: This is the first step in creating an online community, and without it, you cannot proceed. People will not comprehend why they should join your community if it lacks a purpose. Your community provides something to its members; the question is, what experience does it provide to its customers? For example, your community may be for people who are backpacking through Europe and want to hear tips, methods, and recommendations from other backpackers who have visited the same destinations. Your goal is to provide them with firsthand information that would otherwise be difficult to find online. Your members will ask each other for hostel and hotel recommendations, where walking tours begin, and whether it was worthwhile to visit a distant site.

Give your community support and love if they’re helping you feature, review, or refer your product. We feature user-generated content on our Instagram and Tiktok to share reach with our community who help our business with their spotlights, video content, and reviews. Sharing UGC is a number one rule for engagement too. Users love seeing their homemade content featured on our account and commenting on the stars (and our end-users), the adorable pups featured in almost all of our content. "Scratch my back and I’ll scratch yours" is a good business strategy for nurturing and retaining online communities–except maybe for us it’s more like “scratch my tummy and I’ll scratch yours.”

Online communities can be powerful assets but they also take a lot of time and energy. Because of the required investment, man organizations try to monetize them too aggressively, too soon, or both. It’s essential that these benefits to you are secondary and your primary focus should be on making your community useful to its members. Spend your time trying to figure out ways to keep engagement strong without you having to constantly have to check up on or actively participate in every discussion.

While your activities as the community owner matter, online communities ultimately thrive when the members themselves sustain the majority of the activity. This requires cultivating a core group of super-engagers who drive engagement in the group. Four to five percent of your members will suffice if they are actively posting and engaging with other people who post. It takes work to cultivate these ambassadors, but focusing your early efforts on finding and rewarding these super-engagers is well worth your time. Once you have ambassadors in place, you'll find the community will start to function largely on its own.

One of the easiest ways to build an engaged online community is to recognize and celebrate your community leaders and newest members. Recognition goes a long way in life, especially if the person offers their time, knowledge, resources, etc. Create time and space to acknowledge certain people in your community in a public manner–either in a Facebook post, an email, on your website, at an event, etc. Or better yet, give away some cool, branded swag like a t-shirt. People love free stuff, and you'll benefit from free advertising too.

When creating an online community, you need to design it with the audience in mind. Your audience are the ones that will be consuming the content, and it needs to resonate with them. Ask the questions and incorporate their suggestions because they will participate when they feel a part of the group. They will also refer people to the group, creating buzz and growth. So make sure that they are involved in creating and changing the community along the way because it is for them, so let them take the journey with you.

There are many factors to consider when creating an online community, but one key tip is to focus on creating a welcoming and inclusive environment. This means making sure that everyone feels comfortable participating and that they feel like they belong. To do this, it's important to have clear guidelines and moderate the community to make sure that trolls and bullies don't take over. It's also important to create stimulating content and discussions that will keep people coming back. By focusing on these things, you can create a successful online community that people will love being a part of.

Your online community can exist across multiple platforms and it’s important that each community be treated as a unique entity. Each social media platform you use requires different methods of engagement. For example, Facebook has an older audience and allows for a larger amount of text than platforms like Instagram. Find a way to share info about your brand that caters to each individual community. Don’t repost the same material across different platforms.

After your start your community around a singular purpose/niche/commonality or mission, the real effort is in your patience and consistency. Consistency should be multi-faceted. Ensure you have Daily easy engagements for your community to chime in on. On a weekly basis, there should be a theme, or overarching problem, that you're trying to address and generate insights for / from. And, on a monthly basis, you should have some sort of literal or knowledge based sweepstakes. Challenge your users to engage the content that other users can vote on as the best for a particular purpose. Or the funniest content. Or the most useful insight. The community can only grow if you're patient and consistent in how you foster it. It is not as simple as buying eye-balls with advertising - you need to foster action, reaction, engagement, and growth from the users themselves. Conversions aren't as simple as "joined the community"

Once you have created this community, make sure to manage it. Do not just create it and then assume people will come up with topics to discuss. Certainly they may, but you have to pay attention to what is going on and act accordingly. For example, if no one has made any comments in a while, you can post a question or topic for people to elaborate on. If this community is abandoned for too long, people may not be as likely to come back.

It takes time. Online communities can sprout quickly but it takes a few months to take root and get some traction. People sometimes will wait to join because they want to see if there is value in it. Maybe it's not getting a lot of social media attention or ranking. Sometimes, people are afraid it's a scam. Posting consistently and providing valuable content will override all these concerns. You will be found in time, especially if you link your community to all your social media pages.

Remember that there are real people at the other end of every online communication. All too often, people behave differently towards online acquaintances than they do towards people “IRL”, whether it’s being more casual or being overly critical. Even online, the Golden Rule still applies: Treat others how you would like to be treated. Just because you’re looking at a computer screen, doesn’t mean you are the only flesh-and-blood human in the interaction. Behave accordingly.

When building an online community, the most important thing is for it to have its goal and purpose. Building a community just because you think you should have one and everyone else does, is a great way to lose the loyalty of your audience. Make sure you have clear goals and that every member of the community knows what to expect there and the value the community will bring to his life, business, or else. This will also help you know what you need to do as a company, what type of content you need to produce and what activities you need to create for your members.

In order for your online community to facilitate the right kind of environment for fruitful interactions, you'll need to ensure that all members adhere to a realistic set of rules of what's expected and what's not. These should ideally highlight the purpose of the online community, non-tolerance of hate speech or profanity, guidelines for new members to find their way around the platform, and can even include FAQs and resources that members can turn to if they can't find the right support they need.

When I first begin the process of creating an active online community, one of the first things I do is examine the groups that already exist in that arena. Joining 5-10 Facebook groups, Meetups, LinkedIn networks, SubReddits, and other support groups relating to your topic is a good idea. Take notes on the trends as you read through people's posts and see what resonates with them. Pro tip: Once you've gotten a good grasp of the situation, jump in on the discussion and acknowledge your peers. When the time comes to start your own online community, you can contact others and let them know about it.

When creating the online community, remember the downsides so you are not blindsided. For instance, creating an online community is extremely time-consuming. I interviewed people who made subreddits on Reddit (https://www.mostlyblogging.com/r-nsfw-gif-hot-subreddits/) and they reported some problems such as how time-consuming this is. First, you need to generate interest to get members. Then, you need to keep promoting so your members don't feel that there is no one new to network with. I've known admins who abandoned their groups due to not having this time. Also, you need to be alert for spam. Self-serving members spoil the experience for everyone. If you can remember these two disadvantages, you'll enjoy the experience and not get discouraged.

Creating an online community could be easier than you think. Step one should be to find a common interest to focus on for your community. Once you have established what you would like your community to focus on, it'll be easier to stay on track and create guidelines for that community. For example, if it is an online community centered around a certain political or lifestyle choice, it could be helpful to not prohibit speech centered around something that might be an issue. That said, define what your community will focus on.

Remember that your online community should be supplying its members with some sort of value. Value could mean monetary perks (like discounts) or informational (like resources). If you’re sharing content, it should be unique and exclusive. An online community that manages to keep offering value to its members will have a longer life and will periodically attract more members.

People love to share what they love. Finding a brand through an online forum, or news feed is one thing, but when someone tells you to check out a brand that they just found and love, that's a whole other deal… and you’re going to go check it out! When you’re building an online community, don’t forget the power of personal connection and referral. Asking your audience to share your brand with their loved ones is a great way to create a strong, organic, and healthy online community.