The Secret Ingredient to Community Building
Everybody overthinks community building.
It’s not about creating shareable memes, or funny GIFS, or whatever other gimmick you can come up with. And it’s not about the platform where you build it (Slack, Facebook, LinkedIn, Discord, your own website, etc).
No. The real secret ingredient to community building is expertise.
There’s so much information online today about any product or industry. Anyone can write anything about any topic, and it’s hard to filter through all the noise.
Part of the reason why so many brands get lost in the shuffle is that they try to play the same game everyone else is playing. They want to be the cool kids, the fun ones. Their content has to be edgy and timely and capitalize on all the social media trends.
And that’s fine as a PART of your strategy. There’s nothing wrong with being entertaining. But that’s not how you’re going to build a community. You can go to every corner of the internet and find funny. Every other post on my LI feed these days is some marketing meme or Tik Tok.
If you want to stand out, you need to demonstrate expertise in your field. Why? Because ultimately, people want to get answers and information from a source they believe is credible. And with all due respect to Drizzy, no one is going to view you as a credible source if this is all you post:
Credibility comes when people know, like, and trust you. And it takes time to build up your reputation as a trustworthy source of information. So when you first set out to build your community, do it with expertise.
Post real world of examples of a tactic you tried that worked. Or one that didn’t work, and what you did to fix it. Have your founder share their story starting X company and what they learned from that experience that inspired their current company. Or just talk about something that you did that day that you think people will find interesting.
It doesn’t need to be a novel or a thoroughly researched, statistic-laden post. It can be as simple as a stream of consciousness on something you’ve learned in your career and want to impart on others. Take this example from Eddie Shleyner, Founder of VeryGoodCopy.com.
That’s all you have to do. Just a top of your head tip that can help younger people trying to make it in your field.
Credibility comes when people have seen you do the thing they are trying to do. And when you demonstrate your expertise consistently over time, you not only build a community, but you become the de facto thought leader in your space.
So in summation:
- Find a niche where you have unique expertise / industry knowledge.
- Use that expertise to attract like minded people.
- Focus on helping others with your expertise.
That’s the best way to start a community today.
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