If You Want To Start A Community, What Is The First Thing You Should Do?

Talk to the people you want to be in your community.

If you can’t find the people you want to reach, if you can't get them to respond when you message them, if you can't engage them in a sustained conversation – what chance do you have of building a community from these people?

I've seen dozens of online communities launch without ever having spoken to the people they're trying to reach. That's a lot of time and money to lose because you didn't take a few hours to talk to potential members.

Communities wont work if the prospective members are closed to new things, uninterested in talking to each other or too busy to even acknowledge something new.

The first thing you should do, when you want to start a new community, is try to have conversations with the people you want to reach.

Comments

[Barbara Gavin]

I think you need to be able to articulate, in maybe two sentences, precisely *who* should be in your community and *why* -- what are you going to offer them, what tangible benefits will accrue to them for participating.

[Caleb Galaraga]

Good point! My issue is my niche is very diversified and is compost of industry people and consumers at the same time. How do you properly segment? Do you suggest we take time to concentrate on one or do we do all segments of our market simultaneously?

[Agosthina Louis]

Great Advice and easy to follow steps. I wish I had found your site 5 months ago!

Thank you so much, you are great.