Pill-Sized Tips: How NOT to Build a Community in 3 Steps
About failing at building communities and starting over. Based on a true story I am not proud of: my own.
You know when you start something, then something else happens and you lose it. You lose touch, motivation, or simply don’t find the time to make it a priority. Well, that is the #1 dangerous thing when building a community: “losing it”.
Losing it is challenging, especially when your community is at a too-early stage. When it has not even started, it still needs you to feed it purpose, bring people around it and - finally - let them grow it as it should.
While I’m not here to talk excuses, I can share this happened to me more than once. For good or bad reasons. Last time, for both reasons. Bad first: I had one of those major life crisis which brought me from living in Malaysia to leaving everything for Bali, then San Francisco, Lisbon and now, finally, I am back in countryside of Brazil in what seems to be a timely resolution for the aforementioned crisis. The good reason, I started working more than full-time on exciting stuff, like consulting on economic development through innovation ecosystems for 70+ governments around the world. It was fun, but I couldn’t keep up with writing this book.
The thing is, losing touch is the #1 way to kill a relationship. And a community is a relationship (with a lot of people). Losing touch kills.
It is like meeting someone new at a coffee shop and giving them your number after a promising conversation, but never hearing back again. You might forget about it. Or you might wonder what happened to them, maybe you worry. But, most likely, you’ll soon forget about that fleeting moment when you thought someone was cool. Cutting to the chase, here you are! 3 steps to kill your own community, from scratch:
Give People Something to Believe
Get Them to Sign Up!
Disappear
The 3 Steps can be simplified as one: “Break Their Expectations”. And the 3rd Step (Disappear) can be broken down as various steps, potentially turning into a “vicious cycle” which might include one or many of the following steps:
Do not reach out (ever)
Feel bad about not reaching out
Reach out once
Stop reaching out
Reach out inconsistently
Don’t stay in touch
Say nothing
Do nothing
Fake dead
In a nutshell. In building communities, cadence is fundamental (this I learned from Startup Grind’s Founder and CEO, Derek Andersen): keeping encounters certain, consistent, keeping up with the conversation, empowering people to continue it and so on.
Just don’t do not do things. I mean, do something. Feed it. Take care. Stay in touch.
And if you ever miss it, lose it because of anything, you maybe killed it forever, but… Forgive yourself. Start over. Learn from it. Move on. And remember: if there is one thing that can save your relationship, if anything, it is vulnerability. People often know when you f* up - it looks better when you own it.
Moving on, let’s do better.
Next Article: How to (Actually) Build a Community in 9 Steps
The only purpose to attract people is to engage them. The only reason to engage people is for them to stay.
But as in a relationship, you don’t simply meet a random person at a bar and, without any references, invite them to come live with you. Unless, of course, a) you’ve been searching for flat mates after months paying rent alone in San Francisco or b) or you are that adventurous. I don’t judge, but don’t advise either.
Enduring relationships are built over time, getting to know each other and sharing trust, from one to another.
Here’s a quick list on what to do, but this will require its own article… And, of course, a whole book on it.
9 Steps to Build a Community from Scratch
Start from Why
Reach Out, Make Friends
Respect Your Elders
Add Value First
Stay in Touch (aka Don’t Disappear)
Create Safe Spaces (Bring Them Together)
Engineer Serendipity (Make Magic Happen)
Grow Closer Ties (Closeness Levels)
Let it Grow
More detail on each step coming soon (like, within a week).
Pinky promise, this time.
Love,
Laís
PS: here’s a 2.30min video about the difference between Community Building and Traditional Marketing.