July 10, 2023
How Do I Grow My Community Fast?
Dominic
You might even have the opportunity to pay (or not) for promotion of your community within this community.
3 - Create adverts for podcasts and newsletters
Charlie also suggests running ads on podcasts or newsletters in these communities. It’s one thing participating in the Slack workspace but the most dedicated community members are consuming content across multiple channels.
These are the people you need to target.
Reach out to the community founder or manager and request a media pack or rates for sponsoring their podcast or newsletter.
Every community will have different requirements. Be ready to record a high-quality audio advert or write some neat copy to accommodate an attention-grabbing image.
For the audio, you might need to invest in a high-quality mic. The prices for these can be daunting. If you plan on creating podcasts or videos in the long term, we recommend the Shure MV7.
This practice was mirrored by Araminta Robertson who posted an ad on her own podcast. This reinforces how close to home your first users might be.
If you have existing assets like a newsletter or you plan on starting your own podcast, use these to spread the word of your new community.
Why your first 100 members are the most important
Your first 100 members are those who will do several things throughout the lifetime of your community:
Refer their friends and peers.
Remain loyal for the longest time.
Take part from the beginning and become super users.
If you plan to grow your community fast, pay special attention to these people. Looking after them is the easiest hack to starting genuine cadence in your community.
How to build cadence when growing a community
Participation is the name of the game when it comes to growing a community.
Your participation and your member’s participation. And in the early days, yours drives theirs.
Think about the very first thing you want a new member to see. Which of these options sounds better?
Automated onboarding sequence
Personalised video tour
Assuming you picked the second option (🤞), it may seem like a big ask to create a personalised video every time a new member joins.
And you’d be right.
Rather than creating a new video every time, use Tella to create the basic onboarding clip you want everyone to see. This could be 30 seconds or 10 minutes.
Then, instead of creating that every time you have a new member, re-use that clip and record a quick personalised introduction.
With Tella, you can merge clips together to create one powerful and personalised onboarding video.
If you run a technical community, you can re-use this tactic to create a video knowledge base for new and existing members to reference.
Once you’ve kick-started your community and your early members are referring their peers, you could leave it at that.
In fact, when we interviewed Slack founders on how they grew their communities, they all mentioned natural organic growth because they created a high-quality experience.
One thing you can do to encourage the chance of a referral is…ask!
Sometimes, it really is that simple. There are a few ways you can do this.
1 - Ask by messaging people directly
The most straightforward way to grow a community is by asking members if they know someone else who’d like to join.
Your message can be as simple as:
“Hey Grant, you’ve been participating in this community for a while now. Are there any friends you think would benefit from this too? Invite them using this special link.”
(The link doesn’t have to be special but you might choose to reward them through an affiliate system.)
2 - Ask the entire group
If you run a Slack community, you could @ mention an entire channel every week/month/when the time feels right with a similar message.
This removes the personal outreach feel but is useful when you’ve already got a lot of members.
“@channel I hope you’re all loving this community. To help us spread the word, invite your friends using this special link.”
(Special link once again optional.)
3 - Create automations to do the hard work for you
You could go a step further and create a trigger to send automated messages when members reach milestone dates in your community.
Check out this example where a message was triggered after being a member for a week. At this stage, the message suggests you can upgrade your free membership to unlock more perks.
You could use this to invite new members or introduce a rewards program.
Do consider rewarding members for referring friends and colleagues if you run a paid membership program.
Members may love your community but an incentive to invite others is stronger than pure enjoyment. You can reward members with a % of the new member’s sign-up fee.
Ready to grow your community?
Now it’s time to put these suggestions into action.
To recap, here’s your five-step plan:
Write a community mission statement.
Spend time creating a quality environment.
Target your first 100 users within your personal connections.
Set aside a dedicated launch day (on Product Hunt and social media).
Create a regular growth cadence through other communities, sponsorships, and referrals.
Don’t forget you can use Tella to create personalised onboarding videos (that don’t take forever).
