Questions regarding how you build a robust community

1. What are key roles of a community in successful projects?
2. How do you attract new community members?
3. How do you create engadgement among community members?
4. How do you create opportunities for people to become more engaged in the community?
5. How do organize online and offline communities?
6. How is your core team part of the larger community?

What are key roles of a community in successful projects?

Generating traffic / recruiting more community

Retweets, facebook likes, youtube shares, etc. Advocate your project to their networks

Generating content

Often very project specific. It could be forum posts and other communication. Commenting on your platform or social posts. Cycles closely with generating traffic. help moderate

Discovering new uses

Creative users can help you define future milestones by identifying uses or needs you had never seen. Be sure you have the channels to find these.

Work towards community goals

Encouraging inter-community collaboration.

Donations and support

Self exp.

Open source

For some projects, code itself can be generated by open source developers/organizations.

How do you attract new community members?

Targetted outreach

Online, on the ground. Often can be some of your first users that will generate your content to help build further members.

Partnerships

Going to other organizations with built in communities. Later in the cycle, cross promotion can be helpful

General outreach

Have a well planned, timely, media strategy. Google ads, Guest blogs, etc Let people know about the incentives for getting involved

How do you create engadgement among community members?

Forums

Allow your users to drive conversation. Ownership over components of the project. See OldWeather

Incentives

Determine how you can reward or incentivize interaction on your project. Everything from badges to highlighting the work of your members on you site or in your project.

Find ways to surface personal relevance for your members. Sentiment, nostalgia, see (six ways to make stories viral)[http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/elements/2014/01/the-six-things-that-make-stories-go-viral-will-amaze-and-maybe-infuriate-you.html]

Online to offline transition

User meetings, Google hangouts, phone calls. Often hearing someone’s voice helps you feel engaged and participatory in a project

Connect users with like interests

Forums, meeting etc all help achieve this, but getting users together who want to work toward shared goals within your mission is a win.

How do you create opportunities for people to become more engaged in the community?

Campaigns

Create specific incentives to connect people with similar interests. Also gives you the opportunity to promote new content.

Find ways for them to lead others (often offline)

Give them the tool recruit or educate others. Toolkits etc

Accessible education tools

Give your users easy ways to learn more or do what they are doing better/more efficiently. See Creator playbook for a good example of a step-by-step educational tool.

How do organize online and offline communities?

Determine the interaction between your online and offline communities

Do you have both? Are they both doing coordinated actions? Are they supporting seperate missions? Are they the same people or different?

Give ways for online communities to become offline communties

Often this can be as simple as helping your members organize an offline event. Can also be helping them find other local or regional members.

Give ways for offline communities to become online communities

Training events if your offline community needs to know how to use the tools. Maybe just outreach, showing your offline users where to go to tap into online resources

Determine who facilitates communication between communities

Is it a trained facilitator? If so, you’ll need a way for people to find that trained person. You’ll need a playbook to help people become a facilitator.

Is it done by any community member? You’ll need ways for them to find other members and give them the tools or ways to interact.

#How is your core team part of the larger community?

TODO