3 months of building my community, and this is what I have learnt so far...

It's been just over 3 months that I have created my community, Creator Mindset Pro, to help build content creators create better content and to make money to do what they love online.

I created a free community before this a while back on Facebook, and that was short-lived, but this time around wanted to stick to my guns and create something really cool, and fortunately, Circle (came in at the right time for me) has given me the tools to actually turn my imagination of a 'perfect' community into a reality.

Right now, I currently have in total 24 (including myself) members. It's been an interesting ride where most of our members have been past that "honeymoon phase" of being super active to be so comfortable and not participating or worse, inactive.

We can only do so much on our end. As long as we do our job as community builders to push them (within reason), the content provided is more than enough.

With that all being said, here's what I have learnt about building my community. And maybe from what I have learnt it could be an "ah-ha" moment for you or just a spark of inspiration to add to your own community.

👉 What category does your member fall into?
I grouped each member into 3 categories 1. Contributor 2. Passively-active 3. Inactive

1 - This is pretty self-explanatory. Out of the 20+ members, we have one contributor that would comment on all the threads. And we have another member who does the complete opposite but joins in our calls and barely posts.

2 - We have a handful of these people who won't interact (as in post in thread) but will either like and/or lurk hard within our community. In my eyes, I see this as engagement.

For example, we just recently opened up our first content creation challenge. We knew who would participate, and out of know where one of the members we thought was inactive was participating and won the challenge.

3 - I based this on a 30-day sprint. I look at the community analytic and see who hasn't actually logged in. I tend to assume those who aren't logging aren't getting my weekly digests too. So what I have been doing is find out who hasn't logged in within 30 days. I then send them a friendly nudge to say hey and what I can do to serve them. And the majority of the time, they would reply.

👉 Creating weekly rituals
These help to stay consistent and let people know in your community that you're making an effort even if you think they aren't posting in there but just showing up. I think of it as like a corner shop. You walk past the corner shop every day after finishing work, but you don't go in, though you know it's there and open every time you go past. But one afternoon, you decide to go in and have a look - voila, you like something you see.

👉 Creating smaller groups within a community
This is something we are about to test out. My partner and I have divided the group into smaller groups to do mini-challenges. This will be more of an intimate setting. Usually (even for me), I tend to be more active when the group is smaller than being in a group of 50+ people. Fortunately for us, Circle has released the group chat! Which was perfect timing. As I always say, everything is perfect, divine and right on time!

👉 Tagging people directly
When you're creating content, tagging the person directly helps! It creates that sense of importance when someone tags you in a post. So with the content you create if it's something you think a member would enjoy and gain value, tag'em!

👉 Get your members involved
We created this challenge so that the person that does the challenge will benefit a lot from it. Whatever niche you are in, the same principles apply! With ours, it was a content creation challenge. There are two things good with this is that...

1. They get to create/learn how to make (better) content
2. It's not a fill-in worksheet then create extra work to apply to your own thing. It's already then and there, it's a win-win situation for them.
   
   👉 Message EVERYONE
   Whether they are active or not, sync up with everyone to see how they are going. This has helped develop that sense of leadership and intimate connection (bonus points for video messages) use Loom!

👉 Reach out to people
I've proactively been finding and connecting with people outside my community who I think would benefit from what I do. So finding a place where 'your people' hang out and add a ton of value there.

For example, I've used BuyMeCoffee to generate an evergreen post that I tend to get random DMs weekly about as I have positioned myself as an authority of what I built.

When they do reach out, I shower them with a ton of value through a video format. Creating the personal connection using Loom and showing your face increases your response rate to a point where you can even get them to be a paying customer and vouch for you (and this has happened to us!)

👉 Planting the seed of curiosity
It's wise to create an established connection with people letting them know what you do and how to find you. Even though people might not be able to pay now, planting the seed days, months or even years to the person you connected with can make a huge impact! (showing your work really helps too! aka building in public)

👉 Speed is king
A good plan is better executed today than a great plan executed next week. When I think of an idea that might be good for my community, I implement same-day delivery - to see how the community reacts and if it doesn't do too hot, we scrap it, well actually not scrap it but put it on the back burner and try again with more people. This is what I did with an idea I thought and executed on. Our "content creation break down" became a weekly ritual thing for us now.

👉 Have your member pass go first! (monopoly reference)
(Thanks to Coach Patrick for this idea)
Every time your member goes on to your community they are greeted to the home page first. An opportunity to present them with information before they explore your community or keep them up to date with something coming up.

👉 Video Testimonials
Find members that have received a ton of value from you and ask them if they could create a 2-3 minute testimonial. And add it to your landing page! They are better received than just text testimonials (good to balance the two formats!)

That's it for now!

I'll continually be adding to this list where I see fit so that new people can see this! 👏