{"id":2558,"date":"2013-09-03T13:28:40","date_gmt":"2013-09-03T20:28:40","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/107.21.221.225\/ning3help\/?page_id=2558"},"modified":"2014-05-09T12:37:31","modified_gmt":"2014-05-09T19:37:31","slug":"how-to-grow-your-community","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/www.ning.com\/ning3help\/how-to-grow-your-community\/","title":{"rendered":"How to Grow your Community"},"content":{"rendered":"<h3>Finding your first members<\/h3>\n<ul>\n<li><b>Build your list of prospective members <\/b>&#8211;<b> <\/b>This begins with building your list. You want a list of 50 &#8211; 150 prospective members of your audience. This audience needs to pass a\u00a0<i>two-qualifier rule:\u00a0<\/i>a community for X who Y (a community for bicyclists who live in Chicago, or a community of backpackers who want the lightest possible backpack).<\/li>\n<li><b>Twitter<\/b> &#8211; provides you with a clear list of members you can reach out to. You don&#8217;t get their e-mail address, but you can still add and engage these people online.<\/li>\n<li><b>Facebook<\/b> &#8211; it isn&#8217;t always a terrific tool, and it can be hard to identify the people that have liked a page, but it\u00a0<i>is\u00a0<\/i>useful for finding people who actively participate.<\/li>\n<li><b>LinkedIn<\/b> &#8211; is excellent for professionals and has terrific search functionality. You can use LinkedIn to identify not only prospective founders, but also some of the most connected people in your industry.<\/li>\n<li><b>Conferences\/Meetups <\/b>&#8211; Conference attendees and meetup groups can also be an excellent source of founding members. Many publish their attendees online. It is easy to find channels to contact members.<\/li>\n<li><b>Commenters<\/b> &#8211; Those that comment on relevant blogs and news articles are also a good source of contacts. You may not be able to find a direct channel to contact them, but with a little effort you can engage this audience in a conversation.<\/li>\n<li><b>Taggers<\/b> &#8211; You can also use sites such as StumbleUpon, Delicious, and Digg to identify those that have tagged popular contact.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>In the early stages of community, you grow the community through direct channels. This means you have to individually reach out to those you have existing relationships with.<\/p>\n<p>If you don\u2019t have these existing relationships, you need to build relationships with potential members of the target audience and invite them to join the community.<\/p>\n<p>As the community grows, you expand to use promotional and word-of-mouth\/referral tactics to grow the community.<\/p>\n<h3>Direct growth<\/h3>\n<p>Direct growth means individually reaching out to the audiences you can find through existing channels or through your current mailing lists.<\/p>\n<p>You can find potential members through a variety of channels. These include:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Social media platforms (search for relevant keywords on Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Google+).<\/li>\n<li>Blog authors and commenters (look on <a href=\"http:\/\/www.alltop.com\">www.alltop.com<\/a>) for relevant blog posts. You can also look at those that review relevant books on Amazon and other sites.<\/li>\n<li>Event attendees. Those that attend events have an above average level of interest in the topic.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>Direct growth tactics include:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<ul>\n<li><b>Individual outreach<\/b>. This means individually reaching out to people you know and inviting them to join the community.<\/li>\n<li><b>Automatic invitations<\/b>. You can set up a system so people that buy your product or register for your service automatically receive an invite to join the community in the confirmation e-mail.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/ul>\n<p><center><img loading=\"lazy\" alt=\"How to Grow your Community\" class=\"aligncenter\" title=\"Best Practices Home\" src=\"https:\/\/www.ning.com\/ning3help\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/03\/bp_logo.png\" width=\"150\" height=\"145\" \/><\/center><\/p>\n<h3 style=\"text-align: center;\">Best Practices Home<\/h3>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\">\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Finding your first members<\/p>\n<p>Build your list of prospective members &#8211; This begins with building your list. You want a list of 50 &#8211; 150 prospective members of your audience. This audience needs to pass a\u00a0two-qualifier rule:\u00a0a community for X who Y (a community for bicyclists who live in Chicago, or a community of backpackers who want the lightest possible backpack).<br \/>\nTwitter &#8211; provides you with a clear list of members you can reach out to. You don&#8217;t get their e-mail address, but you can still add and engage these people online.<br \/>\nFacebook &#8211; it isn&#8217;t always a terrific tool, and it can be hard to identify the people that have liked a page, but it\u00a0is\u00a0useful for finding people who actively participate.<br \/>\nLinkedIn &#8211; is excellent for professionals and has terrific search functionality. You can use LinkedIn to identify not only prospective founders, but also some of the most connected people in your industry.<br \/>\nConferences\/Meetups &#8211; Conference attendees and meetup groups can also be an excellent source of founding members. Many publish their attendees online. It is easy to find channels to contact members.<br \/>\nCommenters &#8211; Those that comment on relevant blogs and news articles are also a good source of contacts. You may not be &#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":6,"featured_media":0,"parent":0,"menu_order":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":[],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v16.6 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"How to Grow your Community - Ning 3 Help. 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