Nine tips for starting and building online communities for small business owners
If you want to create communities – vibrant, engaged peer-to-peer networks – then precision and effort is required. There is no “right” way, of course. It can be in-person or the more modern incarnation of a Discord group.
No matter how you do it, building a community around your product, service or mission and making those connections can be incredibly powerful. Strong, engaged communities lead to improved products and services, learning and innovation and, for you, company growth.
Inkwell supports several small business communities. You can read about our work on UK Business Forums’ blog, which led to a 250% increase in traffic, and creating content to drive new membership sign-ups for Enterprise Nation. We’ve also built a community around The Pitch (our small business competition) over the last four years.
We wanted to share what we’ve learnt helping build these communities and being involved ourselves.
1. Platform choice is a question of complexity – but make sure you own the data
If an online community is what you’re after, there is no one-size-fits-all platform or mechanism, you’ve got choices.
Platforms like LinkedIn, Facebook, Discord and WhatsApp offer free or low-cost options for setting up communities. Paid-for providers like XenForo and Disciple offer fully customisable options too, although are more complicated to set up.
Platform choice often comes down to functionality and where your target audience hangs out. If you’re unsure, WhatsApp and Facebook are good catch-alls to try out first since they are so widely used.
Depending on what you’d like to use your community for, it’s worth thinking about who owns the data and how easy it is to add features in the long term.
2. Be clear about your USP and who you’re trying to attract
Without getting too philosophical, I have to ask: Why are you doing this? Your “why” is an important part of creating a meaningful community. You cannot be everything to everyone.
Do you want to empower entrepreneurs? Is the aim to create a forum around one big idea or cultural staple? The internet and peoples’ calendars are crowded. Without a focused mission, your community won’t blossom.
I don’t necessarily mean your community has to be niche. But having an overarching umbrella, some sort of guiding ethos, makes community building so much easier.
3. Onboarding is everything
There’s a term in internet parlance that describes passive membership of a forum or community: “lurking”. Lurkers are users who observe but, crucially, don’t participate.
The challenge when building communities is not just getting people signed up, it’s getting them engaged. In other words, you want to “de-lurk'' them.
People lurk for all sorts of reasons. One of the main factors is that they are trying to learn the norms and language used by existing members. You can help users along in this journey and transition more people from passive to active members through your onboarding process.
Onboarding new members is a critical part of the user journey. Communities invest a lot of effort in marketing to potential members; the key is to make sure that they feel welcome and equipped from the start. This is what Adobe’s chief product officer Scott Belsky terms “the first mile” of a product.
Start simple and introduce concepts and vocabulary that might be useful. And be context-sensitive – if your users are subject matter experts, you can expect a greater degree of understanding. On the other hand, the person might be a novice. Tailor your onboarding appropriately and try to segment your audience where possible.
4. Communities need seeds to grow
I can’t stress how much work goes into seeding communities in the early days. The team behind the community needs to be posting daily to drive engagement and make sure people returning to the platform see fresh content.
These posts can be planned, but make sure you’re interacting and tackling topical issues too. In that regard, building a community is similar to building your social media presence.
Prompting people you know to respond can make a big difference. If a team member posts and one or two people respond immediately it encourages other people to pick up the discussion.
In the beginning, it can feel like you’re shouting into the void. It gets easier over time, just make sure you remain consistent. It does eventually add up.
5. The power of events that connect members
After the Zoom boom of 2020 and 2021, the in-person event is back. And in many ways even better than before since people are reinvigorated about meeting in person.
In the event space, we learned a lot from those two lean years. Now that in-person gatherings are possible, it’s worth retaining some digital elements to further your reach.
Hybrid events combine physical and digital participation experiences. At Inkwell, for example, we host both online and in-person events for The Pitch. The recent finale of our The Pitch Side Hustle Final event was online only, with nearly 4,000 people watching. And, we live-streamed The Pitch 2021 Final (which was in-person) on YouTube.
Adding a digital edge to our events expanded our reach and we’ll likely retain it. But, for us, the in-person element is a cornerstone of community building.
One of the things I love most about The Pitch is the hubbub that consumes the room between events and seminars. Letting people meet organically and make connections in person is so powerful.
6. Create easy options for people to post
Ideally, you want new people to break their posting hoodoo quickly. My philosophy is to give members easy subjects to comment on. This is a great way to boost engagement and helps nurture new members who are hesitant.
Here are four suggestions of subjects community members can post about easily:
Encourage new members to create a simple introduction post. Make sure your team or community members respond quickly to make them feel welcome.
Have a weekly job listing or an “I need a…” thread.
Invite members to post about something lighthearted that isn’t related to the forum’s core offering, such as sharing their favourite book or film.
Post polls on key issues or topics that are particularly germane to your users.
7. Free is great, but people value things they pay for
If you have a freemium model, where non-paying members are encouraged to upgrade, it’s important to think carefully about what new features they get. People don’t mind paying but, when money is involved, you need to ensure users experience value quickly.
The key question is “What do my users get in return?”. Offer something tangible and effective, and you’ll find folks are happy to part with their cash.
Unsure of what to offer? Try asking. Emailing community members and asking them what they’d be interested in will provide lots of advice. Or, if you have face-to-face events, use those as a sounding board.
On the flip side, a somewhat uncommon (but not unheard of) paid model is that people simply pay if they value a community. This stems from creating that community spirit that people enjoy.
Paid membership needn’t be a cold economic calculus. Wikipedia, for example, runs entirely on passionate supporters giving with no incentive (other than the website remaining online).
8. Base community personas on engagement levels
It can often be insightful to break communities (whether online or in-person) into levels of engagement. This analysis is useful since it helps you focus your efforts.
What you’ll inevitably find is that a big majority are the aforementioned lurkers. That’s fine and can be rectified with tactics like seeding engagement (more on that below). But the rest are more nuanced, split between those who contribute sporadically, those who chime in frequently and people who take ownership.
Don’t expend all your effort chasing lurkers. What you may find powerful is encouraging people who are partially engaged to post more regularly and become advocates. Things like in-person events or perks can be ways to foster greater involvement.
9. Content marketing is a great way to build communities
A tried and tested way to create and sustain communities is through content marketing.
The first step is to get your copywriting process on point. Craft consistent messaging, set up an informative about us page and hone your sign-up page, so that they convert visitors effectively. Create something that people will enjoy reading and using.
Content (or I should say good content) keeps people interested. It cuts through the noise of the online environment.
In our work at Inkwell, we always advocate for audience-led content strategies. That is, use the issues the community care about or need help with to inspire great content. Helpful content fosters a community and becomes a self-sustaining cycle – and Google's recent Helpful Content update shows how powerful this technique is.
Your content and your community will become symbiotic. The one sustaining the other, with ideas and engagement. This total experience of community creates something that will last long into the future.
Not sure where to start? Let Inkwell help you. We are community engagement and content experts. Get in touch here to talk about content creation.