The book "Get Together" is written by the legends behind the community building efforts of e-bay, Facebook and Instagram.
The authors (with really cool hobbies): Bailey Richardson, Kevin Huynh and Kai Sotto’s company “People and Company” was acquired by Substack in 2021.
It is THE book for community building.
I summarised the 7 steps to community building in this 8 minute read.
1. Build the community with people, not for them
Identify WHO and WHY?
WHO do I want to get together with?
Who do I want to help?
Who do I care most deeply about?
Why are we coming together?
What do people need more of?
What’s the change we desire as a community?
What’s the problem only we can solve together?
➡️ Aim to select a few members to build a community with them, not for them.
➡️ It might not be simple to get this right in the first go, don’t be afraid to go back to this step as you progress in building your community.
Our community brings together
(Who) _____________
So that we can
(why) _______________
➡️ A statement like this acts as the perfect reminder as you build your community.
2. Do something together
What is something your audience craves that would be better performed or experienced as a group?
➡️ What is THE activity your community could do together? Eg. running every morning at a specified time for a running community. It could be done similarly for activities like meditation, therapy etc.
👉 Designing your first activity
Principles any community activity should integrate:
Purpose:
Tie the activity back to why your community teamed up in the first place.
What goal or outcome becomes possible only when this specific group gets together?
Eg. Weight watchers' shared purpose was losing weight.
➡️ What is the shared purpose of your community?
Make it participatory
Give people a chance to contribute to the purpose you share.
Eg. Weight watchers had people come and share their story of losing weight.
➡️ What could members of the community share as a story to inspire others to participate?
Make it repeatable
Design the first activity with the intent to repeat it with people over and over.
WeightWatchers meetings had people coming and sharing their weekly stories of success and failures.
➡️ What could members share which could be repeated? In my view, repeatability of the activity is crucial.
Encourage people to participate from the start
Make the shared purpose of the community very clear and accessible.
Ryan who founded “Hello Mr.” worked with contributors to create 30% of the magazine.
He then launched a kickstarter campaign for funding to finish the rest.
He received 100,000 words from hopeful writers before the funding campaign even wrapped up.
Treat the community like collaborators.
Carve out ways for others to participate. People are showing up to realize a shared purpose, not to watch you realize it for them.
➡️ Encouraging people to participate requires builders to recognise the passionate users.
➡️ Numerous startups build their audience with this approach, eg. Peloton, Sweetgreen etc.
3. Get people together
People show up for the Meet-up but they come back for the people. - Scott Heiferman
The richer the connection between members, the stronger the community.
➡️ The significance of human connections outweighs a digital product.
👉 To get your community talking:
Space
Where could members can find each other and continue the conversation?
Prompts
How do I give people an excuse to connect for the first time?
Craft regular prompts and make introductions for newbies.
➡️ Indie hackers does this beautifully → prompting newbies to write an introduction.
Structure
What structure would make communication more meaningful?
Ground rules and moderation.
➡️ Habit forming requires reducing friction to the minimum. Space, prompts and structure helps users think less and act more.
👉 Stoke the fire
If you can consistently attract authentic folks, encourage a shared sense of identity and keep a finger on the pulse of the community, you’ll stoke the flames.
➡️ How can you keep attracting authentic folks to your community? Referrals, invite-only are some fool-proof ways to maintain authenticity.
Congratulations! You made it through half-way reading point! Why not share what you are reading with friends and colleagues
4. Attracting new folks
👉 Marshal Ganz Framework
Marshal Ganz teaches - organising people, power and change. He did Obamas 2008 grassroots campaign.
A Story of self
A story of self communicates the value that are calling you to act.
What made you start caring? Bring it to life with personal details.
A story of us
A story of us communicates values shared by those whom you hope to motivate to act.
It is the community’s purpose. Show that it’s bigger than you.
A story of now
Communicates the urgent challenge to those values that demands action now
What’s one small immediate way one can get involved.
➡️ Marshal Ganz’s framework is brilliant to bring out: purpose and urgency to act.
👉 Downtown Girls Basketball case study
Aria McManus started a downtown girls basketball team in 2013. It was for women and people who don’t identify as male and who are specifically bad at basketball.
It started with her 30 friends.
It grew to 400 people in 5 yrs.
Growth using Marshal Ganz framework
Each week, Aria took a team photo at halftime.
She offers the photo to anyone who wants after the wrap up to share on social media.
People always found out about DGB through the half-time picture.
➡️ How can you make it easy for people to spread the word on their own terms?
👉 Finding suitable shareable stories for the community
Community which centers around in-person experiences:
“Downtown Girls Basketball” did with team photos.
Community which centers around training or learning:
Instant pot community shares recipes online for others to test out.
Community which centers around contributing and sharing content:
Make the content simple to re-share and discover. eg. twitch allows fans to create short, shareable video clips of choice moments from any broadcast.
Community which centers around confidential/anonymous information:
Changemaker chats is a community of women who gather for unfiltered discussions with female leaders about how they navigated their careers.
👉 Spotlight
Put a spotlight on inspiring people in the community.
Instagram in their inception years, spent hours combing the site for interesting, creative people around the world and featured them.
They even hired people to write the stories in different languages for more reach.
5. Cultivate your identity
👉 Portland Thorns FC draws nearly 3 times fan-base per game
The most cited reason from research has been: “atmosphere and supporters culture”.
The community developed chants, selected fans who lead their section of the stands in chants, distributed lyric sheets etc.
➡️ If members see their involvement in your community as an important part of who they are, they may want to project their pride to the world.
➡️ Pride is a captivating energy. Instagram does this with number of followers - social proof.
👉 Badges, rituals and languages
Anything visual that enables members to telegraph an affiliation.
👉 Ralpha case study
A premium cycling clothing company based in London.
13,500 Rapha superfans pay dues every year to join the formal Rapha cycling club. RCC members go on rides and share free coffees in Rapha stores (aka clubhouses).
Each Rapha cycling club (city) has its own custom seal inviting members to recognise the familiar emblems to start conversations.
They customise even the smallest aspects of official club gear by city. From bicycle stem caps personalised with member IDs to elaborate welcome packages, the organisation shows attention to detail, making badges that are both unique and unified.
➡️ A community within a community is created with personalisation.
👉 Allow new badges to emerge
Bernie sanders in 2016 campaign let his supporters participate in shaping his message and visual identity.
Celebrate the self expression of your members and encourage them to make their own badges. Whether those badges are physical or digital, allow members to use tools of customisation.
👉 Develop your own language
Star trek has Klingon - a full new language from scratch.
Using demonyms - eg. people from California are called Californians. Communities can have demonyms too.
Nicki Minaj’s fans are called barbies.
6. Pay attention to who keeps showing up
👉 Metrics
Retention is the most significant metric in communities.
Find out:
How many people are showing up repeatedly?
Member participation in community activities?
Who they are and why they show up? What they want more of?
➡️ Understanding these metrics help communities to double down on what is important and eliminate what is not working.
👉 Pass the Torch
A community isn’t a community unless it’s organising itself.
Spread ownership to hand raisers to lead in ways big and small, super charging their efforts.
Celebrate their accomplishments.
➡️ A recent example of this: Lenny’s community (built on top of his product newsletter) self organises meet-ups in various cities across the globe, with a global monthly sponsor.
7. Create more leaders
👉 Community spectrum of control
Growing a community is about developing leaders.
Your community’s long term reach and impact will be determined by your ability to find and empower the right set of leaders.
If your community is dependent on a lone leader, its more at risk of collapse in the face of uncertainty and a changing world.
➡️ Instagram did this really well - started with spotlighting users and they grew into influencers.
👉 Mariah Carey Case Study
An influential fan posted on fans message board that she was going to the signing of Mariah Carey. Bree (the fan) ended up sharing her email address when one of the fans wanted her to delivery her message to Carey.
Bree ended up getting 10,000 emails from fans.
Bree printed out a binder and gave it to Carey but expected it to end up in a dumpster.
Bree got a call from Carey 3 days later as Carey had no idea about the fan board. She hired Bree to help in community building. They built a portal to channel fans on the message board to vote for Carey in MTV TRL. In return, fans were rewarded with voice-mails, gifts and surprises from Carey.
Carey went triple platinum with her Rainbow album.
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S R
I love this, super inspiring!
Might even buy the book ;) thanks