Build Your Community: Turn your connections into a powerful online community

Begin reaching out to your first members and introducing them to one another.

Decide the rewards they will get. What special access, status, influence, connections, or challenges will they get or be able to participate in?

Decide your criteria for superusers. How will you find people and how will you recruit them?

Give your superusers the tools and rewards they need and let them lead the way.

Decide what you need superusers to do – this should match your goals.

The success of your community hangs upon your ability to identify, nurture, and motivate a tiny group of superusers who generate the majority of the value your community produces.

The cardinal rule at this phase is to remove any ambiguity about what the programme is and how it works. This means documentation – a lot of documentation!

you start to formalise the processes for joining the community, the benefits members get, and how the programme is run.

designing a programme ‘with them’ and not ‘for them’.