People are the foundation of and the reason for the community, so how better to grow yours than by reaching out to new people and strengthening involvement with members you already have? Capitalizing on both well-established and new relationships lays a strong foundation for future growth.
Incorporating the following six important “R’s” into your growth strategy sets your community firmly on that foundation.
1. Reach Out
Reaching out to new people adds numbers to your community, but more than that, it brings in fresh ideas and energy. Purposeful networking, casual conversations, and specially planned outreach events are all good ways to reach out and boost numbers.
2. Reconnect
Once attracted to your community, new recruits need grounding and intentional contacts. Setting up specific mentoring opportunities connects new members with well-established members, ensuring continued interest for both and improving retention.
3. Respect
From the quietest to the most vocal, each voice deserves an attentive audience. Community members who see their ideas consistently considered and incorporated feel respected, keeping them engaged and motivated.
4. Respond
How better to include people and improve than to elicit feedback from the community and take action based on their ideas and experience? Not every idea is a good idea, but every member is an important member and putting as many ideas into practice as possible shows that.
5. Revise
Mentoring and involvement looking good? Keep going. Thinking you have arrived is the quickest way to demise while continually looking for ways to change things up, improve, and expand maintains interest, attracts attention, and demonstrates vitality.
6. Risk
From new project ideas to new outreach tactics, taking educated risks involves new people and attracts even more. Not every new endeavor yields profitable or positive results, but avoiding risks will certainly result in stagnation, halting growth and contributing to the deterioration of the foundation you so painstakingly laid.
Conclusion
This brings us full circle to the first step: out-reach. Community growth will always include both bringing in new people and ensuring the continued engagement of those already a part. Constantly taking risks to accomplish both aspects leads to growth, both in numbers, depth, and strength.
Hope you found this informative! As always, if you are feeling ready to build your own community, we encourage you to check out SocialEngine. We’d love to help you build something great!
