Developing a Community Building Strategy for Web3 Communities
There are several talks about having a strategy for building vibrant communities. But what exactly goes into a community strategy?🤔
In this article, I'll take you on a journey about what community building strategy is and how you can develop one, even if you've never done one before.
I'll cover:
🔹What is a community building strategy?
🔹Why do you need one as community manager in web3?
🔹What to include in your strategy
🔹Finally thoughts
Let's dive in.
Web3, as we know, is a fairly new industry and roles such as community management are yet to be clearly defined. But community is a vital aspect of web3 and I'm yet to see a project that thrives without one.
It is therefore important as a community manager (CM) in the web3 space to have an idea of what a community building strategy is and how to develop one that suits the nature of the community you are or will be working with.
So what's a community building strategy all about?
You'll probably find different definitions to this concept.
But I simply like to view it as a personal road map to onboarding, nurturing, growing and maintaining a healthy community, in this case, Web3 communities.
The need to create a community building strategy cannot be overemphasised if you intend to build with your community.
Although it's advisable to have a general strategy for building online communities as a CM, (especially a demo to showcase during an interview), it's even more necessary to tailor it to the specific community you're working with once you get off the discovery call with the founder.
This will help you create content and activities as well as set up structures that are specific to the needs of the said community.
Now that you know what a community building strategy is, how do you create one and what do you include in them?
Great! Cos that's what we're about to do.
Some key points I focus my strategy around are
🔹Onboarding
🔹Education
🔹Engagement
🔹Retention
But all of the key points above begin from one primary point - research.
It's important to conduct a thorough research about the project and potential members of the community you're about to build.
Things to look out for include but not limited to
🔹Who they are (devs? Crypto natives? Traders? Investors? Crypto enthusiast?)
🔹Where they hangout (discord? Telegram? Reddit?)
🔹What content do they vibe to the most? (text? Video? Memes? Infographics? Audio?)
🔹How knowledgeable are they about the product? (beginner? Intermediate? Badass OGs?
🔹What's the value proposition the project is offering the community? (knowledge? Utility...what kind?)
Now that you know what to research on, let's continue with the strategy development.
Onboarding
The onboarding strategy basically spells out how members get to navigate and settle into your community.
This include
👉Right choice of platform appropriate for the project (assuming the project is yet to launch)
👉Set up of relevant structures like a reliable verification system, appropriate channels of communication, guide etc
👉Creating a seamless flow from when they first join your community to when they make their first comment in your community.
In essence, your onboarding structure should help new users navigate your community with ease.
⚠️Warning: It however shouldn't be too difficult that they get confused in the process nor too simple that it gets easily exploited.
Education
It's important that members get to know what your community is about. Only then will they appreciate and key into the goals of your project.
To know what educational contents to put out, ask yourself questions such as:
❓What makes this community thick
❓What problems are they solving and HOW are they solving them
❓Is this problem something that has affected a lot of users
❓What do members stand to gain by using the solution or even being a part of the community
This will help you know what aspect of the project's website or whitepaper or other resources to look out for.
Engagement
This is one glue that binds the community.
Having a healthy engagement rate helps members get to know themselves, interact more with other community members, with the team and the project itself.
Your task now is to come up with activities (suited for that community) that will achieve this purpose.
Some ideas to incorporate include but not limited to;
🔹Office hours
🔹Community roundtable
🔹Games
🔹Quizzes
🔹In-house contests
🔹Quests
🔹Daily rituals, etc.
Just get creative with this.
⚠️Warning: do not flood the community with activities lest it becomes overwhelming. Begin with few activities (at most 3) then gradually introduce more as the need arises.
Retention
The joy of any community manager is to build a community that is self-sustaining - one that members are eager to come back to and even refer friends to. So your strategy should include a retention mechanism.
How do you get members to be deeply involved with the community?
This brings us to the value proposition of your community.
What do you offer members apart from the solution you're building?
A clue here will be to get involved in members' growth as well.
One of the communities I see doing this is in the crypto space is Zen Academy.
Among the many interesting activities they have is one I love so much. A twitter space centred around mental health which is very important given the nature of the space we're in (it can get really wild on the streets of crypto #IYKYK)
Other ideas you could explore include, but not limited to:
💡Bringing relevant opportunities to members
💡Having a support system in place. This could be in form of group calls
💡Forging collaborations with complementing projects that your community can have exclusive access to.
Basically, they should be potent enough to grasp the attention of members given how noisy the space is and the increasing short attention span of people.
Final thoughts
These are some of the vital things I incorporate to my community building strategies.
They vary from project to project and also the immediate needs of the project.
They'll equally help you know what content form to utilise (video, audio, text, infographics etc), although this largely depends on what members mostly vibe to.
So while on a discovery call with a project owner, ensure to ask vital questions that'll help you understand their needs so as to develop a super specific community strategy.
Once you're done making a draft of all the tools and resources you'll need for that community, simply organise this in your Google sheet or Notion site to have one big picture.
Always make reference to this at every point in time to know what needs to be done next, what's working and what's not.
And that's it!
If you found this piece helpful, be kind enough to share it to a wider audience.
Meanwhile, I'm curious to know, what approach do you employ in developing a community building strategy?
Hi! I'm Obee, a community success specialist in the Web3 space. I help you make sense of your community. Every week I publish articles right here that will help in your your journey as a moderator or community manager in web3.
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