The From 100 to 1,000

Once your community has launched and you’ve gotten your first 100 members, it’s time to shift your focus in a few areas.

This typically means:

• Sustainable source of newcomers. Developing a sustainable source of newcomers is a critical factor. If members only join when you run a promotion or send out an email, that’s not sustainable. You need to make it easy for members to naturally find the community with better placement on the website, in the product/service, and in other channels, they will see it.

• Nurturing 1 to 3 top members. Reach out to them with a direct email, schedule a call, and ask them if they would like to be more involved, see if they have an asset they can contribute to the community.

• Making sure every possible question gets a ‘best response’ or ‘accepted solution’. Make sure it’s clear that if members post a question they will get a good, quick, response.

• Initiating and sustaining conversations. This should be happening naturally pretty fast. But if it doesn’t, you need to be initiating questions and guiding members to answer questions. Tagging in relevant people also helps (but not on every question).

You can do more beyond that, but get these basics in place before expanding beyond this level.