Building community flywheels
Let's take a dive into learning what flywheels are and how to make them, eventually using them to build better communities.
- Every community builder out there has felt like this at some point -- finding that initial traction with ongoing discussions can be hard.
- Start with easy discussions, like introduction posts.
- Experiment with writing posts
- Creating a regular or ritual post
- The point with all of these mini flywheels is you can’t write stuff and expect magic to happen, you need to find actions to elevate your content.
- Great communities are built on great ethics, kindness, and human behavior.
- Build all that ⬆️ into your community, one small flywheel at a time.
- Community guidelines do not make a great culture, actions do.
Having a flywheel that encourages great community culture not only encourages others to copy your ‘good actions, but featuring selected community activities also indicates things you want to see within the community.
- Giving and helping are at the heart of great communities.
- Community culture does not happen overnight.
- Flywheels take practice, lots and lots of practice. Failing is a part of the process.
- Flywheels are the things you do, the process, the daily tasks.
- The main challenge faced by a community builder -- trying to achieve a constant flow of activity.
- A thriving community is one that feels like there is the right balance of activity.
- more discussions
- more members
- creating more value
- events that matter
- more connection
- Consider funnels in terms of flywheels.
- Effective flywheel creates energy
- Energy leads to growth 📈
- Instead of funnels, we are using flywheels
- An effective flywheel creates energy or traction, which then naturally leads to growth.
- The key is to figure out a set of actions that support each other and keep doing them
- bring energy and traction, usually in the form of more or higher quality activity
- add value to the community
- align with your goals and vision
- A flywheel or multiple connected flywheels have grown and evolved there will be a time it comes to a natural end.
- What worked 5 or 10 years ago most certainly won’t work today.
- flywheel actions like this will help you get where you want to be
- people will naturally gravitate towards you when you come to launch a blog, a newsletter, podcast or a community.
- when you have that gravity = people join your community!
- Knowing your people
- Conversing with them
- Creating something of value
“I want more members” flywheels
- Think about what it is members need
- How you can align that to your community vision
- Start by getting to know your people.
- Instead of subscribing to their newsletter, you follow them. Bonus points for building trust by participating in the conversation.
- The above are a few examples of creating flywheels and how it evolves further using Twitter as a real-life example can be seen below.
