Building an online business or establishing an online presence for your business can be a lonely road. There are countless unknowns, and each journey is entirely unique, leading to frequent confusion.

Don't do this alone. By joining an online community centered around a shared purpose, you gain support, guidance, and feedback. It can help you improve your skills, fill in knowledge gaps, stay accountable, and effectively work towards your goals.

We at SPI Media know a thing or two about virtual business communities — we're the founders of two of them! Through the experience of hundreds of members and the incredible success stories we've heard (like this one), we've discovered how to build healthy communities that contribute to real, meaningful results for our members.

Pat Flynn (our founder) shared his experience and the social-driven reasons for joining an online business community in this article. Below, we’ll share why joining an entrepreneur community is the best move for your journey, plus the unique ways our communities are designed to help you on your way.

Support for Every Part of Your Business Journey

A creator community isn't just for YouTubers with billions of views, and an entrepreneur community isn't just for folks with an idea scratched on the back of a napkin. Regardless of your stage of business growth, there's a business community out there for you.

Many communities cater to new entrepreneurs — groups of people with great ideas who want to achieve structural progress like building a website or starting a podcast.

Others are designed for people who have an established presence, with a certain amount of recurring revenue or a volume of monthly customers.

Still, others are designed intentionally around a common interest in a niche — folks with brick-and-mortar stores or fitness coaches who primarily teach via the Internet.

Regardless of where you are in your journey, an online entrepreneurial community offers incomparable opportunities for support. Questions can be posted and responded to by people worldwide, and because that post is visible to all, everyone learns from the answers. Or, questions can be explored in real-time during community events via video conferencing.

Virtual Communities Combat Loneliness

New online communities — business-related or otherwise — are springing up constantly. The popularity of online communities as a response to the loneliness epidemic has never been as prevalent or critical as it is now. A 2023 report from the U.S. Surgeon General found that loneliness affected half of adults before the pandemic, linking loneliness with risks like heart disease, stroke, and dementia.

Combine those risks with the inherent solitude of entrepreneurship, and it's clear that online creators and business owners are particularly affected by this.

An online entrepreneur community offers an antidote to this: peer connection, giving and receiving feedback in mastermind groups, and real-time events for networking.

Ready to find join your people and level up?

Like you, we're online entrepreneurs who crave connection, direction, and support from people like us.

Join the SPI Community Today

Learning Entrepreneurship: Together

When entrepreneurs come together in a virtual community environment, there are lessons everywhere. These lessons happen organically simply because of the nature of being in an environment of peers. The opportunity to share findings, experiences, successes, and failures is unparalleled.

But some communities go a step further, like our own All-Access Pass community. We built this particular community with early-stage entrepreneurs in mind and designed it as a community-based learning experience for our members. 

Through the All-Access Pass, members get access to our entire course library, covering everything from YouTube mastery to launching a podcast, building a community, affiliate marketing, and more.

But rather than just offering courses as a perk, the community is designed to facilitate cohort-based learning. One of the ways we do this is through accelerators, allowing students to go through a course as a “class” alongside support and guidance from our team. We also created pathways, which act as suggested navigational tracts through multiple courses, built around a specific aim — such as creating, growing, and profiting from a podcast.

These features, as well as community programming like fireside chats, ask-me-anything (AMA) sessions with Pat Flynn (our founder), networking events, and live teaching opportunities, create a community experience where learning is at the forefront.  This robust and active community component supports and enhances growth and progress.

Expert Advice at Your Fingertips

Online business communities are most often built by people with a stake in the game, and it follows that many of these communities — if reputable and built by the right people — attract experts in their fields as members. Often, these communities offer opportunities to network and have questions answered by experts as a perk of membership, enhancing the experience for members.

Our SPI Pro community — designed for established entrepreneurs looking to scale their business to new levels of success — is full of professionals, many of whom are experts in their niche or business. 

We also boast a robust Experts in Residence Program that takes expert access a step further. This program consists of a network of renowned professionals who interact directly with our community members, offering opportunities for deep learning and next-level business advice. Much of our community programming is built with the help of these experts, including workshops, roundtable discussions, and more.

Connection and Networking

Our community members have started podcasts together, collaborated deeply on marketing plans and cross-promotional efforts, formed lifelong friendships, and helped each other achieve new heights of success in their businesses. We wouldn't dream of taking the credit, but the ability to provide a vibrant space for connecting people and facilitating learning opportunities is the very reason we exist.

Another huge benefit to online business communities like ours is the opportunity to form masterminds. These are groups that meet regularly to provide feedback, hold each other accountable, and align on next steps — all while working independently on their own businesses. The structure of masterminds can vary considerably — some take turns putting each other in the weekly “hot seat” for example — but they all have supportive growth at their core. As a perk of an SPI Pro membership, we offer to match members with existing mastermind groups, but we also love seeing folks forming new ones on the fly.

What All Communities Have in Common

The right people, of course!

The best online entrepreneurship communities aren't free-for-alls. Adding new members is kind of like fiddling with the ingredients of a complicated recipe — it can't be done ad hoc.

That's why we built an application process into our communities. For our SPI Pro community in particular, its important that we bring entrepreneurs together at the appropriate stage of their business's growth. Including an application stage also helps us ensure that the folks coming in are serious about growing together and are aware of the community guidelines.

Many business communities exist. But with our combination of community-centered learning, access to experts, and robust events, we believe ours is the best one out there. Visit our Community page to learn more.

No matter which community you end up joining, get connected! Learning entrepreneurship is one of the most challenging things you can do in life, and also the most rewarding. Don't make it harder than it has to be — find your people!

Ready to find join your people and level up?

Like you, we're online entrepreneurs who crave connection, direction, and support from people like us.

Join the SPI Community Today

The post Why an Online Entrepreneur Community Is Your Next Best Move appeared first on Smart Passive Income.

In this blog post, we’re going to compare two membership platforms: Mighty Networks and Circle. One has been around for years. The other launched more recently.

Both are amazing platforms, but as you’ll see, there are some key differences, and they have different strengths and benefits. Which one could be right for you?

Disclosure: This post contains our unbiased review and recommendations to help you decide between Mighty Networks and Circle.so for your membership community platform. However, Circle.so is the platform SPI uses for its membership community, SPI Pro, and this post contains affiliate links for Circle.so. Read our full affiliate disclaimer here.

Mighty Networks Review: An All-In-One Tool

I've interviewed the founders of both platforms on my podcast, but let's start with Mighty Networks first.

The platform has been around for a few years. Here's some background on how this platform came about.

How Did Mighty Networks Start?

Mighty Networks was founded by Gina Bianchini, who was cofounder of Ning.com, an online social media network platform for people and organizations to create custom social networks. Gina left Ning in 2010 and started Mighty Networks. 

She and her team wanted to build something that was mobile-fast and creator-led.

Pat interviewed Gina in session 405 of the SPI Podcast, where she talks about her vision with Mighty Networks: “… to create something that allowed you to bring your people together in one place, do more with them, run online courses, have virtual workshops or even organize in-person events because of some of the features we have related to people near me.”

“What's powerful about a Mighty Network,” says Gina, is that “you're not just bringing your community and courses together in the same place. You are in fact creating and taking advantage of the same underlying dynamics that have built some of the most successful companies in the history of companies [Facebook, Twitter, etc.] The difference is that you as a creator can take advantage of the same underlying dynamics that built those platforms by having your own network effect that is creator-sized, that is for your people that built your business.”

Gina Bianchini, founder, Mighty Networks

Gina wanted to create a place for “brands and businesses to come together via online courses, paid memberships, events, content, and community—all under your brand, instantly available natively on every platform.” Mighty Networks serves the growing world of “creators with a purpose” in a category they term the “passion economy.”

Mighty Networks is one of the oldest and most established platforms to host membership communities, and it’s filled with tons of features.

Recently, it has started marketing itself as a “website builder” rather than just a community platform. This is an interesting move, because it offers online businesses a way to build their entire infrastructure on one platform. 

What are the Features of Mighty Networks?

The platform has a ton of functionality you’d want as a creator, including:

• Website builder
• Online courses
• Memberships
• Subscriptions
• Community

Mighty Networks has the ability to produce articles, online courses, and organized events. The company wants each creator to be in control of their own Mighty Network and to be able to bring their content, courses, and community together in one place.

Mighty Networks discovered through customer feedback that their customers didn’t want to have to go to other platforms to create online courses, so they built a way for creators to create and sell online courses right on the Mighty Networks platform. Today, over 65 percent of their paying customers (premium plan), take advantage of the ability to host their online courses on Mighty Networks. 

How Much Does Mighty Networks Cost?

The platform offers two main plans to choose from, based on your needs.

Mighty Networks Community Plan ($33/month paid annually):

• Native Livestreaming & Video
• Chat & Messaging
• Events & Zoom Integration
• Paid Memberships

Mighty Networks Business Plan ($99/month paid annually):

• Online Course and Cohort Course Creation
• 2,000 + Zapier integrations
• Premium analytics
• Featured Pages & Events

You can see the full list of plans and features here. There’s also a Mighty Pro plan (price not provided on the website), which includes white label capabilities and your own iOS & Android apps. 

Why You Might Consider Using Mighty Networks

We've identified three key reasons why Mighty Networks might be your platform of choice for your membership community.

It allows you to build your entire online business infrastructure on one platform

As mentioned above, Mighty Networks was originally created as a community platform, but has since transitioned into positioning itself as a “website builder”—which allows people to start with their website and build everything out from there. This allows people to have their community, course sales, and content creation all in one place, rather than having to figure out different platforms for each.

It has been around for a while and has developed a ton of features 

Since Mighty Networks is several years old, it has more capabilities than other membership platforms. For now, the built-in events functionality seems a lot better than Circle and other platforms, and their member profiles are more robust. In addition, it has a tool for payments so you don’t have to integrate an outside platform when selling courses or your membership community. 

Having everything in one place helps to encourage audience engagement

If your fans have to log in to several different platforms to engage with you and your other fans, then engagement might suffer. If they’ve just finished a course and then have to go to Facebook to connect with others who took the course, it may be too much work. 

Gina believes that entrepreneurs want everything in one place: “They’re saying, ‘You know what? I'm sick of having a static website. The fact that I can have my website and my community and my courses and my payments and my marketing pages all in one place is what I want because I want to move from having something that's static to dynamic.’”

It’s also outside of the noise and distraction of Facebook—it’s a dedicated space so you have people coming to the community intentionally, not just when they’re scrolling through Facebook. So you won’t have to work as hard to keep your community members' attention. 

You might not need so many features

Some established creators don’t need this many features. If you already have your courses housed somewhere else, you don’t need the “courses” feature. If you’re a more established entrepreneur and creator, you may not want to move your payments, courses, and website all over to Mighty Networks. 

It’s not very intuitive

While it’s very feature rich, Mighty Networks isn't as intuitive as other platforms, like Circle. Some users have found it hard to navigate. Sometimes you have to click through one or two levels before you find the conversation. Also, the platform isn’t “white label” unless you pay for the Pro membership, which isn’t priced on its website. 

Bottom Line: This platform could be perfect for you if you need an all-in-one platform to build your business infrastructure, but it seems less intuitive and harder to navigate than Circle.

Circle.so Review: A Tool That Turns a Passive Audience into Passionate Superfans  

Circle is a much newer platform than Mighty Networks, but it's powerfully intuitive, and that's why here at SPI we chose it for our membership platform. We host both SPI Pro, and our SPI All Access Pass on Circle.

How Did Circle Start?

Circle was started by three colleagues who left Teachable around the same time. Sid Yadav was Teachable’s first designer and worked there for five years. He teamed up with Andrew Guttormsen, the former VP of growth at Teachable, and Rudy Santino, the former head of design.

According to the Circle.so website, Circle promotes itself as the “modern community platform for creators” that “brings together your discussions, memberships, and content” and enables you to “integrate a thriving community wherever your audience is, all under your own brand.”

The biggest difference between Circle and Mighty Networks is that Circle isn’t trying to do everything. Its main focus is on membership communities, and then providing seamless integration with other platforms you may be using.

As Circle cofounder Sid Yadav says, “We’re not trying to do all of it. Our approach is a little more modular: we’re trying to nail the community piece, and specifically the engagement piece. Our approach is to integrate with everyone else, so we have a partnership with Teachable, with Memberstack, with Memberspace, Memberfull.” 

Circle also doesn’t currently have its own payment option, but it does integrate well with payment platforms like Stripe.
The other big difference between Circle and Mighty Networks is that Circle offers a white-label community experience, where you can choose your own brand colors, add a custom domain, etc.

As we wrote in this blog post about the launch of SPI Pro, we've been all-in on Circle since it launched last winter. 

Matt, our co-CEO, had a vision for SPI Pro, and then went looking for a platform that could do everything we wanted. Circle seemed like the perfect fit. Matt and Pat have since become advisors for the company.

What Features Does Circle Have?

Circle includes a 14-day free trial here, but here is a list of the features included on the platform.

• Online courses
• Live video streaming
• Custom domain
• Private spaces (similar to Slack channels)
• Bulk import/export
• Zapier Integration
• Embed Widgets
• In-app notifications
• Member profiles and directory
• Basic moderation
• Direct messaging 
• Group messaging
• Weekly digest email
• iOS app
• Updated price structure

Complete white labeling (for the Professional and Enterprise plans)

To see a full list of Circle's features, go here.

How Much Does Circle Cost?

Circle offers three main plans.

Circle.so Basic Plan ($39/month paid annually):

• Engaging discussions
• Rich member profiles
• Unlimited events
• Group chats
• Private messaging
• Moderation
• iOS & Android
• Easily accept payments
• Custom domain

Circle.so Professional Plan ($89/month paid annually):

Everything in Basic, plus:

• Courses
• Live stream video experiences
• Fully White Labeled
• Advanced analytics
• Custom CSS

Circle.so Enterprise Plan ($360/month paid annually):

Everything in Professional, plus:

• Dedicated CSM (Annual Plan Only)
• API Access
• Customizable profile fields
• Priority Email Support
• Custom Single Sign-on
• Concierge onboarding (Annual Plan Only)

Why You Might Want to Consider Circle.so

There are three key reasons to consider Circle for your membership community.

Seamless integration with your existing tech stack

If you already have a website or online courses, and if you’re already using multiple tech platforms, Circle integrates very nicely with your existing tech stack. 

It’s very customizable, so you can build your community space from the ground up

When you create spaces, you can customize who has access to each of those, change whether they’re displayed in “post,” “list,” or “card” view, control whether members can create new topics, change the way the topics are ordered, and pin topics to the top or sidebar. 

You can also have a blend of a free community on Circle that has private spaces that someone would need to pay to have access to, or a completely free platform on Circle. Every part of the platform is modular so that you can do with it whatever you want.

Circle also lets you choose your colors, add your logo, and use your own custom subdomain so that the experience on the platform feels native to your brand and your products.

It’s intuitive, and combines the best of platforms like Slack and Facebook

Circle feels a bit like Slack with “spaces” you can customize similar to Slack Channels. As an admin, you can choose who is in what space, and it’s easy to make spaces public or private. 

It’s not just one long newsfeed, so conversations are easier to join and respond to, without having to be on the platform constantly or having to click through several layers to find the conversation.

Circle has a clean, simple interface that will be very familiar for people who have been a part of a Facebook or Slack group. It’s also more user-friendly than Mighty Networks.

Why Circle.so Might Not Be Right for You

While Circle is a great option, there are a couple of reasons why it may not be the best fit for you.

It doesn’t have as many features as Mighty Networks

One important thing to consider is that Circle does not include a tool to collect payments for your membership community, so you will need to integrate another platform like Stripe in order to process user payments on your own. 

It also doesn’t have group messaging (although the Circle team working on including that in the future), or a mobile app (also coming soon). 

Circle is new on the scene, and it will take time to develop these features. And some features may ultimately not be a part of Circle’s vision. Instead of adding features like a payment tool, the platform may focus more on community and integration instead.

You’ll need other platforms to build out your business infrastructure

If you’re a new entrepreneur and don’t already have a website, courses, or a payment platform, you’ll need to set those up separately from Circle. Depending on where you want to go with your business, that may not be a bad thing. But just keep in mind that Circle is laser focused on building a membership community platform that will be more user friendly, and keep your fans engaged. 

Bottom Line: Circle might be perfect for you if you need a community platform that is flexible and customizable, and you don’t need an all-in-one tool. It’s still new and developing its tools, but the team at Circle is incorporating feedback from its users.

Why We Chose Circle.so for SPI Pro

So far, Circle has been an amazing home for SPI Pro. We didn’t need an all-in-one tool like Mighty Networks, and we liked the fact that we could build our community space exactly how we wanted it, and didn’t have to try to shoe-horn it into an existing template. 

We have found that our community members are highly engaged—a recent monthly challenge event generated over 500 comments! That said, we are noticing that some of the spaces aren't being used very much, and so it’s easy to delete them when necessary, or add new spaces based on the needs and interests of our community. 

Seeing the spaces (similar to Slack channels) on the left side of the page keeps topics and conversations easy to access which leads to more engagement. 

The Circle team has been amazing in responding to our feedback and requests, and we’re excited to see how this new tool can evolve within the next year.

If you’re starting your own membership community, be sure to do your research and find the best fit for your business. If you think Circle might be the right solution for your business, you can get a free 14-day trial to put it through its paces [affiliate link].

The post Review: Mighty Networks vs. Circle (in 2023) appeared first on Smart Passive Income.

If you don’t know me, I’m the director of community experience at SPI Media.  

Since the beginning of 2022, I’ve been focused on creating a new type of community experience that I’ve never actually seen before. It started when I was tasked to create a subscription model for our course catalog, but quickly evolved into something much more unique. 

Throughout this project, my team has been looking to solve a problem we see in the online course space. Or perhaps a set of problems:

1. Oversaturation. The online course space is oversaturated. There is a course (or ten) for any and every subject you could possibly want to learn about. 
2. Completion rates. Online course completion rates hover between 5-15% (depending on the source). This tells us that people like buying courses a whole lot more than they like doing the work (no shade, I too am guilty of this).
3. Time commitment. Cohort-based courses provide a better experience than evergreen courses but require a more significant time commitment.
4. Outdated curricula. Cohort-based courses provide the opportunity to answer questions in real time, but the answers or solutions likely don't make it back into the main course curriculum. Similarly, evergreen course content risks becoming quickly outdated.
5. Time-consuming programming. Having a community component to an evergreen course will not solve low participation or completion without programming baked in, which can be time-consuming for community managers.

Ultimately I tasked my team with creating something more supportive than an evergreen course, different than a course community, and less time intensive than a cohort-based course. A comprehensive learning experience that anyone at any level of digital entrepreneurship would find valuable, whether they had purchased every course we have ever made or never heard of us. No big deal, right?  

After A LOT of coffee and contemplation, the All-Access Pass was born, which is SPI’s version of community-powered courses. Keep reading to get a breakdown of the key takeaways from our findings.

Let’s get unstuck, community edition.

All Roads Lead to …

When it comes to community or courses, there is one universal truth:

All roads lead to the customer outcome.

Prioritize it above all else. If your customer can’t visualize the outcome they will get, they will not convert. This is why we took the concept of a course catalog and morphed it into a multi-dimensional experience that is measurable. 

For us, the customer outcome is mastering the skills they set out to learn with a first-class support system that prioritizes accountability. 

We measure the success of this goal through metrics (like engagement and course progress) while incentivizing success through accountability checkpoints and certificates of completion.

Two Ways to Focus on Customer Outcome 

Take (calculated) risks.  

We are making some significant changes and were intentionally thoughtful about how these changes may impact our incredibly supportive existing customers. This is why we aren’t just launching a course catalog.  

The hill I will die on is that I want a person who has purchased every single course we sell to see the value of joining All-Access Pass. They already own all the courses, why would they join? Because it isn’t a course catalog. It‘s an immersive experience.

We have designed accountability programming, curated curriculum pathways, additional resources and materials, and ongoing learning opportunities with supplemental workshops. Oh, and a thriving community where it all happens (of course). There is so much value baked into the experience that the course content almost takes a back seat.

Do it your way.

It can be easy to get caught up in what everyone else is doing and feel like you need to follow suit. Member communities and newsletters are two prime examples of recent trends that everyone seems obligated to launch because everyone else is doing it.  

It can be hard to avoid getting caught up in the trends, so go back to who your customer is and what outcome they want to get. Use your expertise and skill set to deliver that in the way that makes sense for you and for your customer. At SPI, we’ve seen a lot of creators leaning into cohort-based courses while we’ve chosen to prioritize a different route (the All-Access Pass) that better serves our customers.  

Don’t be afraid to try new things. You have to be willing to adapt to a changing market, and what worked a few years ago may not be relevant today. This work is not set it and forget it. As Charles Darwin used to say: evolve or die (okay I might be paraphrasing).

Your Call to Action

Put your customer outcome into words if you haven’t already. Write it on a post-it and stick it to your monitor or the wall so you see it every day.

Need inspiration?  Check out our All-Access Pass to discover firsthand what we’ve built for the next generation of course communities.

The post And Now for Something Completely Different: SPI’s Next Big Thing appeared first on Smart Passive Income.

After leaving the corporate world, the one thing I missed most was the connection I had with the people I worked with. From water-cooler talk to focused group work, that sense of camaraderie can disappear when you start to do business on your own.

With 14 years of solo entrepreneurial experience behind me, I can tell you this: I wouldn’t be where I’m at today if it wasn’t for the people that I’ve connected with along the way. 

I didn’t just associate with random people though, I specifically put myself into communities where other like-minded entrepreneurs exist, and I owe most of my success to those communities. 

Here are 5 reasons why a professional, entrepreneur-specific community will help you grow, and how to maximize your results within the community. 

1. You'll Be Around People Who Understand

When I started my business, I felt like everyone else around me thought I was crazy.

“Go get a real job,” they’d say. 

Oh, and my favorite: “So you’re just going to turn your back on everything you’ve worked so hard for?”

That one always got me.

If you’ve been there, remember that the people who say those things aren’t starting a business of their own, so they can’t truly understand your “why.” And in many cases, those especially aggressive responses come from people who are externalizing their own insecurities.

When you link up with other entrepreneurs though, it truly feels like you’ve found your people. They just get it, because they’re doing it along with you. They understand your “why.” 

When I joined my first community, this was the most valuable part for me. Just knowing there were other people out there who were just like me (and yeah, maybe a little crazy) felt good. It made me realize I wasn’t alone and gave me the courage to keep pushing ahead. 

2. You'll Find Potential Partners and People to Collaborate With

In addition to being around the right people, the community itself acts as a filter to help you find perfect prospects for potential partnerships and collaborations. 

The best online groups all have a give-and-then-take attitude, and when everyone comes from a place of serving first (knowing well that it’ll come back in return), that's when the magic happens. 

For example, in our SPI Community, two of our founding members actually created a product together. Now, they are business partners and doing incredible things. And we have more examples just like this, all because of our communities. 

On a smaller scale, guest swaps are something that happen quite often in our groups, and other groups around the world. If you have a podcast or a YouTube channel, or even a blog, it’s so much easier to find the right person to pitch a swap with when you're part of a community. 

Here’s an episode of the Amplify podcast featuring two of our members together: Bob Gentle and Junaid Ahmed. Now they’re benefiting from the reach of each other’s audiences and growing together!

If you’re interested in learning more about our entrepreneurial communities, click here to find the best fit for you! 

3. You'll Get All the Inspiration and Information You Could Ever Ask For

In a professional community, two things are likely to happen:

1. People will share their progress and wins.

2. People will detail how they did it.

As a business owner, there’s no better form of inspiration than witnessing another entrepreneur’s success.

And for the most part, community members are VERY happy to share what has worked for them and how they’ve overcome obstacles. That’s because they’re also learning from the lessons of others. It’s reciprocal. 

A Pro Tip from Pat:

One of my favorite things to do when joining a new community is to create a post and share a specific strategy or tactic in my business that has recently worked very well and that I know will help others, too. I’ll go into great detail, provide step-by-step instructions, and ask for nothing in return. 

When you do this, it makes a great first impression because you’re giving first, not taking. In many cases, it’ll capture the attention of the members. I’ve seen it time and time again — you can quickly become an authority in these spaces and gain access to more people, places, and events. It takes time, but participate, overdeliver, and great things will happen.

4. You Get Accountability

Just like going to the gym, it’s SO much more difficult to get up and go when it’s just you. But when you have other people to go with, you’re SO much more likely to get it done. 

Just sharing what you’re doing can help, but when you declare your goals and band together with others, it holds you accountable and keeps you moving forward.  

In some communities, you might find there’s a specific structure to accountability. In the SPI Community, within the Accelerate and Thrive tiers, this includes course accelerators. An accelerator is a structured program designed to help members progress through a course alongside fellow students and multiple instructors over a specific timeline, typically lasting 6 to 10 weeks. In this format, members complete weekly lessons at their own pace, participate in regular check-ins, and join live weekly calls featuring special guests like Pat Flynn! Replays are conveniently available for those who cannot join live, providing an opportunity to get questions answered asynchronously. This approach keeps members on track while offering valuable support and accountability from the community and Team SPI.

It’s become one of my favorite things about the SPI Community, and the results from students have been outstanding! Nothing like a little accountability to push you forward.  

5. You Get To See What Community Building Is Like Firsthand

At SPI, we’ve seen firsthand how community has become an essential part of growing a business. We believe this so strongly, in fact, that community has become the center of our business! 

Niche communities are where things are headed. We’ll close with a few important questions to contemplate if you're considering joining a community:

What do you like? What do you not like? What motivates you, and what motivates you to stay?

The goal is no longer about gaining the most fans and millions of subscribers. Long-term business success comes from forming a core group of amazing people, a community who become superfans of you and your work and support your business in the long term.

If you’d like to get a first-hand view of what our communities are like, check out our community page and learn about the various communities we have available. There’s a community for you — wherever you are in your entrepreneurial journey — to help you launch, grow, or exponentially accelerate your business!

The post Top 5 Reasons to Join an Entrepreneurial Community appeared first on Smart Passive Income.

Want to move your community off of Facebook Groups, whether it’s to a Circle community, Discord, or another platform?

These are the 9 important steps we followed during our own migration off of Facebook Groups. They’ll help you maximize the number of people who convert to your community's new home, and ensure that everybody is happy—yourself included.

The 9 Keys to Successfully Moving Your Community Away from Facebook

Pro tip: These steps apply whether you're trying to leave Facebook or any other platform as your community's home.

1. Give your community time.

Give them time to know that this will be happening. Give it a couple months, or at least a few weeks notice, if possible. Anything less, people won’t have time to process the change, and a lot of them will be upset. This helps the rest of the steps go smoothly.

2. Nail the benefits of the migration.

Know why you’re doing this, and communicate it. You have to understand and share the benefits. You almost have to sell the migration process with your community. Nobody likes change, so make sure they know why it’ll be good for them.

3. Address the pain points.

Don’t hide from the downsides. Tell your people that you know that this move will be a big pain. (Yes, they will have to create a new login and password.) Be upfront about these pains—and make sure to contrast them with the benefits from the previous step.

4. Rally your superfans.

There are likely people in your community who are super active, who would follow you anywhere. Find those people (you probably know them already), and give them an early heads-up. They’ll feel even more special, and they’ll want to help you sell the change to the rest of the community.

5. Bring your superfans into the new space first.

Your most dedicated members will probably be okay with things not being fully fleshed out yet. In fact, they’ll appreciate that you’re building and testing the new space with their help and with them in mind. And once the regulars are ready to join, there will be activity happening in the new space already.

6. Set a firm date.

Pick a day that you’ll make the change, and stick to it. If you don’t, you run the risk of people not feeling urgency about the migration. A lot of people will wait right until the last minute to move over, so give them a clear deadline.

7. Have an overlap period.

Set aside some time when you’re helping people get set up in the new space while the old community space is still open. This will give the stragglers a little extra time (up to the firm date in step 6) to make the move. Give it at least two weeks, up to a month.

8. Give clear instructions.

Make it super clear how to make the shift to the new community platform. Show pictures, share a video if it’s helpful. And be prepared to share those instructions many times.

9. Make onboarding easy.

Onboarding your members into the new space is super crucial. give people clear steps to take once they’re there. They should always have an answer to the question, “What do I do next?” Nail the onboarding process, and your members will have a great experience in their new, unfamiliar environs.

A final word of wisdom: You will lose some people in the process of moving your community off of Facebook Groups. The steps above are designed to minimize the number of people who don't make the leap with you. And once people hear how awesome the new community experience is, hopefully they'll want to return!

For more detail, watch Pat’s 8-minute video on the Community Experience by SPI YouTube channel.

Our Chosen Facebook Groups Alternative: Circle.so

If you’re wondering how we know so much about migrating your community away from Facebook, it’s because we successfully moved all of our Facebook groups over to Circle.so [affiliate link]. We love Circle for its customizability and intuitive design, and it’s also been the platform of choice for our highly engaged community of entrepreneurs, SPI Pro, since its inception.

Want to Become an SPI Pro Member? Apply Before Prices Go Up!

Speaking of SPI Pro, you have just a couple of weeks to take advantage of our original pricing ($49/month or $490/year), before it doubles. This community will still be well worth it even at twice the price, but head over to SPIPro.com and apply before they go up on May 16.

The post How to Quit Facebook Groups as Your Community’s Home (9 Tips) appeared first on Smart Passive Income.

Your community is like a garden; it needs to be tended—and you might even be surprised what grows in it!

But before you start planting, you need to have a strategy—and that’s what SPI’s CX Director Jillian Benbow covered in the third and final session of our March 23 CX Day event.

She outlined the five steps to creating and executing a strategy that will help your community succeed in the first 30 days and the long run:

1. Start with Your Purpose
2. Design Your CX Strategy
3. Onboard with Care
4. Measure Success
5. Fine-tune!

We’ll run through them today—but if you really want to dig in (get it, gardening?), then catch the replay of Jillian’s session over on our YouTube channel.

This is the third in our three-part series recapping the sessions at our March 23 CX Day event. Read part 1 (“Audience Building vs. Community Building” with Pat Flynn and Matt Gartland) and part 2 (“How to Make Your Community More Valuable” with Andy Guttormsen and Alexis Teichmiller of Circle).

Step 1: Start with Your Purpose

Your purpose is what makes your community worth belonging to. If you don’t define your community’s purpose, then you don't really have a community.

There are three questions you need to answer:

1. What purpose does your community serve?
2. What value does your community offer?
3. Who would benefit from participating in your community?

Let’s take a stab at answering these three questions using simple statements that will guide the direction of your community.

It may feel daunting to come up with the perfect statements—but don’t fret about that right now. Your community’s purpose will likely evolve anyway! (Community moves fast.) 

Your Community's Purpose Statement

First, come up with a purpose statement that defines the aim of the community:

The purpose of my community is _________.

Here are a few examples of how to fill that in:

• … to help bloggers build their photography skills.
• … for local parents to support each other.
• … to allow calico cat lovers to share pictures of their pets.

Now let's build on the purpose statement with…

Your Community's Value Statement

Your value statement that gets a little more specific and explains what someone will gain by joining:

The value my community offers is ______________. 

Here’s our value statement for SPI Pro:

The value my community offers is networking and relationship-building opportunities with like-minded entrepreneurs in similar stages of business.

Your Community's Benefit Statement

For the third statement—who will benefit—you can reference your purpose and value statements. But get specific!

In the case of SPI Pro, our target audience isn’t “entrepreneurs” broadly, but those with intermediate or advanced businesses—so, not beginners. 

So our statement might look something like:

The people who will benefit from our community are entrepreneurs with established businesses who need support to help them get to the next level.

Once you've defined your benefit statement, you can think about the specific needs and interests of your target audience and how you could serve those needs in your community.

Which brings us to…

Step 2: Design Your CX Strategy

Now you need to design a community strategy that will help your community deliver on its purpose! This is where the rubber meets the road.

And when it comes to community, you want to be thinking about designing for engagement—getting people to post more often, attending events, that sort of thing.

It’s all about participation. And driving participation means having great programming.

How do you figure out what kind of programming will provide the value your members seek and get them to engage? 

Start by thinking of three benefits your ideal member would value the most. When we did this exercise for SPI Pro, we landed on networking, relationship building, and business growth.

Then think about how you can provide your members with those benefits. These are the offerings we came up with to support our three benefits:

• Networking: host networking events
• Relationship building: offer masterminds or focus groups
• Business growth: provide spaces dedicated to business growth topics

Next, create a content and activity plan that will support your strategy and drive participation. Here's what that might look like:

All this stuff—the strategy design—is the meaty middle of things when it comes to building a community, and it may sound like a lot!

The key is to not bite off more than you can chew, especially in your first 30 days.

Do a few things really well, and when you’re ready you can ask your members what else they’d like to see.

Step 3: Onboard with Care

Whether you’re just launching a community, or trying to grow one, you want to get your new members to log in, participate, and return.

This means having a solid plan for how you’ll onboard new members so they feel welcomed and comfortable as soon as they join.

To get them to log in, create an email onboarding sequence highlighting the best parts of your community, with clear CTAs. This will build excitement and a sense of possibility.

To spark participation, offer programming specifically for new members to introduce and acclimate them to the community. Hold their hands and anticipate their questions so they know they’re in the right place off the bat.

And the key to inspiring people to return is to help them build relationships, so provide early opportunities to connect your members with each other.

Step 4: Measure Success

Why bother creating an engagement strategy if you don’t plan to monitor the results?

You’ll only know whether your community strategy is paying off if you track and measure the right metrics.

So… what should you track and measure? 

For most communities, things like posts, comments, and active users (all on a monthly basis), as well as event RSVPs and attendance numbers, are important to track.

How should you track these metrics? It’s simpler than you might think:

1. Benchmark the metrics you want to track (e.g., for the first month).
2. Track them monthly, and compare the changes.

Here’s what that could look like, in a simple spreadsheet:

Read more: The Most Important Metrics for Your Membership Community

Step 5: Fine-tune!

You’ve defined your community’s purpose and value, created a strategy, defined your programming, set up your onboarding, and even started tracking the important metrics.

And now you are done keep moving forward! 

Community building is constant, so just keep swimming.

Edit and adjust as you grow, and work with your members to launch new programming as it makes sense.

And above all, enjoy it, because community should be fun!

The post Community Strategy for Your First 30 Days (CX Day, Part 3) appeared first on Smart Passive Income.

How can you create a community where members feel like they truly belong? A place where they can find their people and get the resources and guidance to create real transformation?

In the second session of March 23’s CX Day, Circle‘s Andy Guttormsen and Alexis Teichmiller took us through dozens of real-life examples of successful communities, to provide inspiration for creating our own.

They also shared 12 practical ideas you can use to make your community more valuable and create that sense of belonging—and we’re going to run through them today.

12 Ideas to Create a Sense of Belonging in Your Community

As you’ll notice, most of these ideas are about creating a sense of belonging for your community members, because that’s key to a great community.

There are 12 ideas here—that’s a lot!—but the point is not to overwhelm you with options. If even just one or two spark something, that’s great. Run with it! (We don't even use all 12 of these ideas in our community, SPI Pro.)

The most important thing is to keep in mind the folks you want to serve and how these ideas might be applicable to them.

1. Monthly introduction calls. Invite all new members to a monthly call to introduce themselves and their goals, and what they’re looking for from the community.
2. Group coaching calls. Help multiple people at once with a group Q&A session where you help people identify their problems and suggest solutions.
3. Weekly or monthly “hot seats.” Similar to the group coaching calls, one person talks about a problem they’re trying to solve, and the rest of the group helps them with it. Rotate who’s in the hot seat each time.
4. Continued education. Host a book club, watch the same movie, or listen to the same podcast episode. Then create a shared space where people can connect over what they've learned.
5. Expert guest interviews. Lend your platform to someone else. Bring in someone who has the heart of a teacher, and run a video- or text-based interview. Bonus points: get the community to vote on specific guest speakers they’d be excited about, then book them.
6. Weekly or monthly office hours. This gives your community dedicated time to ask questions and dive deeper into your content and expertise. 
7. Accountability groups. Host a weekly or monthly check-in with your community to identify what they need accountability for and then challenge them to pick an accountability partner.
8. Panel discussions. Bring two or three people from your community together and host a panel discussion that's relevant to that month’s content or topic.
9. Live workshops or trainings. Run training workshops focused on teaching your community. Invite participants to engage with the live chat during the workshop!
10. Challenges. Run a monthly challenge, and at the end of each month host a live video announcing the challenge winner and talking about their experience.
11. Community champion program. Invite three to five members from your community to be community champions. Ask them to commit to posting a new question in the group weekly to inspire community engagement.
12. Show and tell. Invite a member to join you live in showcasing their business, personal growth, or new idea.

If you want to dive into these 12 ideas in more depth, check out the replay of Andy and Alexis’s session from CX Day.

And these 12 tips are just the tip of the iceberg of what Andy and Alexis covered in this session. Here's what else they talked about:

1️⃣  They covered the most common ways to structure your community—so your community home is designed for connection and your members are encouraged to build relationships and engage.

2️⃣  They even built a brand new community from scratch, in real-time, to show how quick it is to get up and running.

3️⃣  And they walked through 20 real examples of different communities, to show the breadth of what's possible.

Bonus Insight: The 2 Big Myths That Can Hold Back Your Community-Building Efforts

Oh, and they also debunked two of the biggest myths that can prevent you from starting a community or membership experience for your business.

Myth 1: I need to have a large following to create a community or membership experience for my business.

Reality: It can be a major advantage to start with a smaller, tight-knit community before growing larger. You can give people more attention, and have a tight feedback loop as they get acclimated. It’s easier to nail down who you are and who you serve when you’re smaller.

In fact, the great majority of the most successful, beloved communities on Circle have fewer than 100 members!

Myth 2: I need to offer a lot of stuff for my community to be really valuable to my members.

Reality: It’s much better to overdeliver on one or two big promises you make to your members. Remember, people aren't joining your community to get “stuff” from you—they want the transformation that stuff can provide.

For more on these myths, and the 12 practical ideas you can use to create a more valuable community for your members, check out Andy and Alexis's CX Day session at SPI’s Community Experience YouTube channel.

And ICYMI, check out last week's post, where I covered Pat and Matt's CX Day session on the differences between audience building and community building.

The post How to Make Your Community More Valuable (12 Ideas from CX Day) appeared first on Smart Passive Income.

At SPI, we’ve been all-in on community since the launch of our private membership community, SPI Pro. The growth of Pro has validated our sense that community isn’t just an exciting new piece of the business puzzle—it’s central to the future of business.

The COVID pandemic created a lot of isolation, and as we (hopefully) come out of it, we’re seeing a massive shift toward building and rebuilding community—including community-based businesses.

So what does it mean to build a community? Is it the same thing as building an audience? Not quite.

The two differ in a few important ways, and that’s what Pat Flynn and Matt Gartland covered in the first session of CX Day, a joint streaming event hosted by SPI and Circle.so on March 23.

In this post, the first of three covering the sessions at CX Day (find part 2 here), I’ll share the key differences between building an audience and building a community.

The 4 Key Differences Between Audience Building and Community Building

There are four major differences between a business geared toward audience building and one centered around community.

1. The objectives are different.

When you’re trying to build an audience, people come to find content (blogs, podcasts, videos, books, courses). They’re looking for information and answers.

But in a community model, people come with different objectives. They’re looking for human connection and belonging. They may come for the content, but they stay for the community.

In SPI’s case, we’re quickly moving toward a model where community is the center of our business, and our content leads people to the community.

2. The business models are different.

In an audience-based business model, your efforts are geared around getting people’s attention. And the tactics, tools, and strategies you’ll use to grab that attention are probably familiar: search engine optimization (SEO), affiliate marketing, paid ads, and sponsorships.

In a community-based model, though, the focus is not as much on gaining people’s attention, but on retention—keeping people around. The techniques used in an audience-building model may still apply, but for a different purpose. They’re geared toward bringing people into the fold and “holding onto them” with subscriptions, memberships, coaching, events, and masterminds.

3. The user experiences are different.

The user “avatar” also differs in an audience-based model compared to a community-based one.

In the audience model, the user’s point of view skews toward that of a consumer. They come to you on their own to find and consume your content. They may learn something new, then move on once they’ve gotten what they needed. If you do things well, they might subscribe to your email list to continue hearing from you.

In a community-based model, your users are more like members. They come to you to learn something new, but they stick around because you’re providing them with a place where they can belong. You’re giving them an opportunity to feel more connected, to find accountability and support, to build relationships with others on similar paths.

4. The operating conditions are different.

The conditions for operating an audience-based business versus one focused on community are also different—in significant ways.

How you staff—you need people who know how to build and cultivate a community!—the culture you create, your cost structure… will all vary depending on whether you’re building an audience or a community.

There’s a lot to think about, and I won’t dig too deep into those differences in this post.

Instead, I encourage you to tune in to the replay of Matt and Pat’s conversation from CX Day!

They go through the differences between audience and community building in detail, answer community-related questions from the CX Day audience, and share more about where SPI is headed in the future.

(Spoiler: Community is a big part of it!)

Here are a few pieces of feedback just from that first session.

Ready to Launch Your Community? We Want to Help

You could even make a case that people took community for granted before the pandemic pushed us all apart, and there’s now a desire to be more intentional about belonging.

We launched SPI Pro in July 2020 because we saw that desire in our space. People want to belong again. Someone needs to step up and offer that space in your niche. Will it be you?

Not to put too fine a point on it, but if you’re not at least thinking about building community, you’re playing a dangerous game.

And if you are thinking of building a community? It’s going to need a home. Circle [affiliate link] is far and away our favorite community platform, and it’s what we use for SPI Pro.

Also check out our April 4 post, where I dive into the second session from our March 23 CX Day event on how to make your community more valuable, with Andy Guttormsen and Alexis Teichmiller of Circle.

And don’t forget to subscribe to the Smart Passive Income YouTube channel, where we’ll be providing a lot more great community-focused content in the weeks and months to come. It’s where we host all our event replays, including last year’s Open Circle sessions on building and managing successful, engaged communities.

The post Audience Building vs. Community Building: What We Learned at CX Day, Part 1 appeared first on Smart Passive Income.

SPI Pro is a paid membership community for entrepreneurs looking for a safe place to grow their businesses through the support of a network of like-minded people. We launched SPI Pro in July 2020 and have since had thousands of people apply to join, so we naturally get a lot of questions. Keep reading to learn more about SPI Pro and whether it might be a fit for you!

Here are the top five questions we get about SPI Pro:

1. Why do I need to apply?
2. Am I a good fit for SPI Pro?
3. Can I join SPI Pro anytime?
4. Is Pat active in Pro?
5. What is the most valuable part of SPI Pro?

Why do I need to apply?

A lot of people ask us why we have an application process, and why they can’t just sign up and join the community, like they might join a Facebook group. Here’s why.

SPI Pro is for individuals who have an established business and are interested in establishing relationships with other business owners on similar paths. This results in a safe and dynamic environment where everyone feels free to have real conversations. There is no selling or soliciting to each other, and there are no spam posts.

Our application process helps us identify potential members who are ready for the level of participation offered in Pro. You don’t need to have a million followers or a six-figure business to be invited to Pro, but you should have a side hustle or full-time business that offers services or goods to an existing audience. 

Because this is a paid membership, we want to make sure the financial investment to join is in your best interest. If we don’t think you are a good fit, we don’t want to take your money. We’d rather you invest it where you will get the best return.

Am I a good fit for SPI Pro?

As mentioned above, you need to have an established business before applying to join SPI Pro. 

Beyond that, you are a good fit for Pro if you are excited to put yourself out there and to show up. We have live events, mastermind groups, challenges, forum-based conversations, and so much more, but you have to dedicate time to interacting with our team and our members to truly feel a part of it.

Do you enjoy helping other people who have questions about podcast equipment or email marketing segments (or any other topic related to running a business that you have figured out)? Are you eager to collaborate with other entrepreneurs and help each other out? Do you want to talk shop and feel less alone in the digital entrepreneur space? This is what the SPI Pro community is all about!

If you are hoping that joining will result in being handed a guidebook on success, you will be disappointed. Just like your business, you get what you put into your membership.

Another important distinction to note is where you are with your business. If you are eager to join and interact, but your business is not fully launched or you want SPI Pro members to teach you how to launch, then consider investing in a course or boot camp instead. Our paid courses and boot camps all give you access to our course community, SPI Academy, which is a better fit for someone just getting started. This is absolutely a better ROI for people with a very early-stage business or concept.

And when you are ready for it, SPI Pro will be there!

Can I join SPI Pro anytime?

We have four enrollment periods a year, which allows us to create dedicated programming and onboarding for each of our four cohorts. We’ve found this really helps new members to feel a part of the larger community more quickly. However, we know that some people are eager to join before the next enrollment begins and are okay with having less guided support when they join, so we offer a “skip the line” opportunity for accepted applicants who are ready to fully commit with an annual membership.

Is Pat active in Pro?

I'll be blunt: If your motivation to join SPI Pro is because you want more access to Pat, you are missing the point of the community. SPI Pro is about fostering relationships with other entrepreneurs on a similar journey.

That said, the SPI Pro community is wholly aligned with the practices Pat is known for, like being of service and providing great value.

So who's in charge? SPI Pro is run by our Community Experience (CX) team, and that's who you will see most frequently hosting events and sparking discussions. Pat is not in the community on a regular basis, but he does host a monthly Ask Me Anything and our Challenge of the Month and he will occasionally pop in to contribute his thoughts in an active discussion.

What is the most valuable part of SPI Pro?

The members! SPI Pro is a collective of experts on a variety of topics. You can skip the days of googling to figure out why your automations aren’t working, because someone in Pro likely knows the solution. You can ask for feedback on your sales copy from people who understand digital sales rather than rely on well-meaning friends and family who don’t understand SEO. And you can join a mastermind group to take your growth further with regular meetings and accountability check-ins. 

Entrepreneurship can be lonely, but with the right community it doesn’t have to be. If you are considering launching your own community, or just want to know more about why and how we launched Pro, you can check out our free Making of a Membership Community workshop. All our paid courses and boot camps offer lifetime access to our SPI Academy community.

And if you want to learn more about SPI Pro, then go here. We can't wait to meet you!

The post The Top 5 Questions We Get about SPI Pro appeared first on Smart Passive Income.

Nurturing an online community takes patience and dedication. But if you spend too much time focused on launching new programs for your members rather than engaging with your members, you may find your community is less than thriving.

Relationship development is one of the best ways to spend your time in your community. The thing is, individual members engage in online communities in a variety of ways, and may therefore prefer a certain type of relationship. It helps to know each of the member types you'll find in your online community, so you can best serve all of your members and ensure a thriving community.

In this post, I’ll talk about how to identify and work with these five online community member types:

1. The Lurker
2. The Social Butterfly
3. The Critic
4. The Troublemaker
5. The Tech Challenged

Note: These types are not mutually exclusive, and each member is likely to fall into several categories. The point is not to wedge each of your members into one group, but to get an idea of common behaviors and how best to interact with those behaviors. Really interesting communities have a variety of personalities and viewpoints. It's your job to celebrate these differences and provide several ways for your members to engage with each other.

#1: The Lurker

You may mistake a lurker for an inactive member, because on the surface they don’t seem to be participating. Some people prefer to observe the public interactions and participate through one-on-one interactions like direct messages, or in smaller private groups. This is different from inactive members who do not visit your community regularly. 

There is often only one way to differentiate between a lurker and an inactive member, and that’s to reach out directly. Lurkers will likely respond if you ask them questions, so check in and see if they need anything. Inactive members are unlikely to respond, but your message may inspire them to come back or communicate why they aren’t around.

TL;DR: Some people are perfectly happy observing conversations, but the only way to know for sure is to ask them. Check in with your lurkers on occasion, and make sure they know how to reach out to you should they ever need to.

#2: The Social Butterfly

Social butterflies need no introduction—they love being a part of things. They respond to the majority of posts, they are comfortable reaching out to everyone, and they are seemingly always around. These are great members to have, as they can help keep your online community lively. It can be tempting to rely on them to keep your community going, but don’t lean on them too much. If they start to feel like an unpaid intern or like they’re being pressured to post a lot, you run the risk of losing them as an active member altogether. 

TL;DR: Prioritize a relationship with your most active members. Appreciate the time they dedicate to your community, ask them for feedback on your ideas, and engage in the content they create to show them that you see them.

#3: The Critic

Every typo, every change will be dissected and evaluated by the critic. They will notice even the slightest inconsistencies in the information you communicate. It is easy to generalize the critic into a know-it-all or annoyance, but most online community members who do this are friends, not foes. Taking the time to communicate errors and missteps means they are invested in your community. 

Other community members will either love or hate a critic’s behavior, and will watch how you interact with their public feedback. A good rule of thumb is to show gratitude when the critic points out a mistake: “Oh, nice catch. Fixed! Thank you!” and move on. Feedback from a critic about policies or administrative decisions should be heard, acknowledged, and even considered. But it should not necessarily dictate what you do.

Dealing with the Critic: A Common Scenario

Here is a common example I’ve experienced in several online communities: merging topics. On many occasions, community members or an administrative team may want to create a new topic space. Before you know, it there are several topic spaces with much less engagement than anticipated.

As a result, the admin team opts to consolidate spaces. This is likely met with a range of reactions, and it is likely that regardless of the critic’s personal opinion they will point out the original decision to create the spaces and challenge the admin team's decision-making abilities. Probably publicly.

These situations can feel … frustrating. Annoying, even. After all, you’ve likely already invested some time in problem solving to get to the decision. But the critic is only saying what others are likely feeling, and their feedback warrants a conversation beyond an announcement post. Why? Because your community members should be a part of the steering committee. They are the ones invested enough to care what happens. Have an open conversation about the proposed change, with the caveat that you can stick to your decisions if that still makes the most sense.

TL;DR: Give the critic the space to be heard, and be transparent about your decision making, but don’t let their opinions dictate every choice you make. 

#4: The Troublemaker

Loki has entered the chat

Every community will experience disagreements now and then, but true troublemakers take chaos to an entirely different level. These members repeatedly test boundaries to see what they can get away with. Whether they have ulterior motives (like soliciting and spamming), are true trolls, or just lack basic online etiquette and awareness, you initially deal with them all in a similar manner. 

You should have community guidelines and a moderation policy in place to help you redirect their behavior. Be clear and consistent with your moderation, and give them the opportunity to participate within your community's parameters. If they continue to stir the pot or dance the line, then continue with your moderation policy until they’ve earned removal entirely. 

TL;DR: Make your guidelines and moderation policy clear, and be consistent with their enforcement. This will let your troublemakers know that you will not tolerate those behaviors, and make the rest of the community feel safe.

#5: The Tech Challenged

Most of us interested in digital communities are pretty tech savvy. We know how to get around and problem solve, especially on a community platform we use every day in our business. But this is not the case for all our members. Some do not find learning a new platform as intuitive as the rest of us do.

As a result, the tech-challenged member may look like a lurker, when in reality they are just unsure how to use the platform. Without intervention, they may give up entirely and miss out on the community you’ve built. When reaching out to potential lurkers, you may find they just don't know where to start or how to engage. 

TL;DR: Pay attention to the questions and issues your members have, and let them guide the creation of tutorials and help documents. Revisit your existing support documentation regularly to ensure relevance. And check in with tech-challenged members after big changes to ensure they feel comfortable with how to proceed.

Effective Community Management Requires Versatility

Running a community takes constant work, and it helps to have an idea of what type of members you have so you can best serve them. Most of your members will behave like more than one of these mentioned types, so don’t be too quick to categorize them. Instead, continually ask for feedback and give your community a few ways to communicate with you. A lurker may not respond to a public post asking for feedback, but if that post mentions the option to email you privately they may take you up on that. Be kind with your responses, both public and private, to ensure they feel comfortable reaching out to you in the future.  

One of the best ways to serve your greater community is to model kind interactions, even during tense situations. This will undoubtedly help to protect the sense of safety and community you’ve spent so much time creating for all your member types.

The post The 5 Types of Online Community Members appeared first on Smart Passive Income.