Your biggest community building problems — and how to solve them
Everyone loves to talk about building community, but what about discussions on solving problems faced by communities?
So you’re building a community and you want to do it right. The most important things to know and do when it comes to community building are:
Connecting people together
Providing direction
Being communicative and transparent
Understanding culture is king
Being incredibly welcoming
But sometimes getting to this point in a community can be difficult and that’s what we’re going to talk about.
Everyone loves to talk about building community, but what about discussions on solving problems faced by communities? Most communities experience one or all of the following problems at some point during their life:
Your community isn’t as active as you would like them to be.
It’s hard to find the right balance between information control and transparency.
It’s difficult to recruit new members.
Trust and safety within your community is a growing concern.
You’re having trouble working together to achieve community goals and objectives.
While building communities is a fun, rewarding process it requires a lot of work. From the organizing to the setup to the onboarding and welcoming all the way to dealing with trust and safety within the community itself. There is just so much that goes into it. I’ve built countless communities online over the years and boy have I learned a lot.
The problems I outline above are all things that I’ve experienced while building communities online. If you’re experiencing them too you may be making some community building mistakes. Here are five solutions to bring your community back on track.
Community building solutions
Be a dot connector. While it may seem painfully obvious–you need to introduce people to each other. A lack of interconnectedness in a community is detrimental. It’s your job as the community builder to connect the people within your community together. This can be one of the most difficult things to facilitate in a community. However, doing it means a more vibrant community where people feed off each other’s energy and knowledge. Otherwise you just have a bunch of people in a group chat with no real direction or incentive to participate. It would be like a tree without roots–not only would it be easy for it to fall over, it wouldn’t be able to feed itself either.
Be the North Star of your community. Direction keeps things moving forward. Communities need it to thrive. You need a plan. You need to set objectives. You need to be the voice encouraging and rewarding people. It’s always better to be working towards a goal as a collective — it helps with accountability and will usually result in reaching the goal much faster. And obviously direction can change or be adjusted as necessary.
Even if you’re building a community of friends, direction is still a useful thing to have. Understanding the point of the community and where you want it to go (or not go for that matter) will leave you with less headaches down the road.
Be communicative and transparent. For example: when you decide to make a change (of any kind — change to the roadmap, having to remove a member, change in leadership, etc) provide a generalized synopsis of what’s changing and why. That doesn’t, however, mean you need to give every single detail (though I encourage giving as many details as you feel comfortable with).
Communicate with your community through general updates throughout the week–not everything requires an announcement. Let them know what you, the team, and the rest of the community is up to through chat and/or voice! When it comes to announcements, they can be shared at least once a week. I think it’s a good cadence that isn’t too overwhelming for people.
Culture makes or breaks your community. Oftentimes weak community culture is the result of lack of clear rules and consistent enforcement. Some communities thrive on chaos, most do not. Your community needs structure. Rules are important. Not to be overbearing, but to serve as a guide to members and to set expectations. Your rules can evolve too. You can always add new ones, remove old ones, or even modify existing ones. What’s most important is that you have some kind of rules before opening the doors.
Here’s an example from my NFT project’s (crypto cackles) Discord:
1) Be respectful and kind to others. No personal attacks against other members, no unsolicited nude pictures in DM, no toxicity, no sexual harassment. Failure to abide by any of these will result in an immediate ban.
2) No pornographic/adult/other NSFW content. This is a community server and not meant to share this kind of content.
3) No spamming or advertisements. Do not spam or advertise other projects or communities outside of the 🚀alpha channel. Additionally, do not DM spam or advertise to other members of the community.
4) Have fun! Laugh! A lot.
As you can see it doesn’t have to be too crazy. The purpose is to set expectations and have something you can use to lean on for any potential actions you need to take. It’s also good to include a “how to be” guideline–don’t just tell people what they can’t do, tell them what you encourage them to do as well.
When it comes to enforcement, the most important thing is to be fair and compassionate when dealing with issues between fellow members. If it’s necessary for you or another member on the community team to get involved, the most successful outcomes come when taking the time to listen and work with all the members involved to find a solution. I’m not going to lie, this is easier said than done and sometimes you’re not able to come to a resolution that everyone is happy with–and that’s okay.
WELCOME EVERYONE: in the earliest days of building community it can’t be stressed enough how important it is that you are present and actively welcoming new members in. Not only are you building relationships with new members, you’re also setting the tone for all the other members of what happens when someone new joins the community. This is incredibly important.
I welcome every person who joins my Discord with an enthusiastic greeting, brief conversation, and then point them in the right direction of any relevant community information (e.g. upcoming events, our website, mint info, etc). It’s a simple welcome, but it works. It’s surprising to me how many new communities I join where new members just aren’t welcomed or in some cases acknowledged.
If you’re making any of these mistakes–don’t worry you can fix them! The best place to start is by talking to your community leaders and proposing a change. From there you can figure out what steps to take next. If you are looking for help with web3 PR and/or community building, I love connecting with web3 businesses who are building cool stuff. Let’s chat!