Has anybody build a community?
Has any of you guys build a community similar to Indiehackers (obviously in a different niche)?
Do you have any good reads and resources on how to do it? E.g. what platforms to use, how to encourage continious discussions, etc.
2 experiences :
I guess the most important thing about building a community is long-term work. You need to "nurture" this community, feed the community with content, encourage people to exchange and communicate on a regular basis. That's a long-term commitment in my opinion.
People often think you only need to launch and the community itself will selfsustain in a short while. That's not true in my experience. Participation is often driven by a really small numbers of hardcore users. These guys are the core of your community and participate for 90% of all contributions. If your audience grows, this number will decrease, but really slowly, hardcore users will always have a major role in your community.
Thanks for your reply! Seem like you did exactly what I am looking for.
That's actually the part I am wondering about. How would you actually exactly facilitate that?
Do you have any recommendation for ready-to-use community solutions (discourse.org). Preferably with a free tier?
I guess the answer depends on what your community is based on, but it would be providing content people could discuss about and discuss it yourself. You have to eat your own dog food from the start, or something is obviously wrong.
I built an offline community (Seattle Unity User Group https://www.meetup.com/seattle-unity3d/). We started out with 10 people in a bar, and grew to a few thousand developers, doing monthly events with up to 120 people at EA, Bungie, Amazon offices, (and hosted a super fun massive pre-Unite (Unity conference) party in 2014 before I left Seattle. 😃https://www.eventbrite.com/e/unite14-kick-off-mixer-registration-12171628669 )
Key Takaways:
Probably not the suggestions you are looking for for online communities but I couldn't help but chime in - I had great fun running the community and I am sure you will too! 😄
Wow that's actually pretty impressive! Thank's a lot for your input!
I've built two in the past both ~15 years ago. One was a social media site focused on live music fans the other was a social network based roughly around the modelling industry and fans. The second one grew much more quickly. The social aspect was bootstrapped by my business partners friends participating. The platforms for both were custom developed by myself.
They both died for different but equally stupid reasons.