Why do communities struggle to attract active members?

Building a thriving online community is challenging, and many fail in the long run. We share insights to avoid common pitfalls and ways to attract active members. Learn more about community lifecycles and strategies for success, from inviting VIP members to leveraging employees and automations. Focus on engaged members to create a vibrant community.

Challenges of Building Online Communities

Many online communities struggle to attract and retain active members. This article discusses the challenge of building growing communities, strategies to avoid common pitfalls, and how to engage members for long-term success.

Background

You may have considered starting an online community to strengthen customer relationships and increase business value. You might also have noticed that most new communities fail and are hesitant to try. Most communities never reach a critical number of active members despite ambitious investments from big brands with large customer bases. In this first article about communities, we share insights on avoiding common pitfalls, so your community becomes a real meeting place and not a deserted no man's land.

Online Community Lifecycle

There are five stages in the community lifecycle. Each stage has different goals and requires different tactics. A common challenge throughout the lifecycle is attracting enough active members.

Most communities fail because they don't attract enough members who contribute and create content. Communities need active members who, for example, start new topics, respond to other members, write reviews and actively interact in other ways. Most members will always be lurkers who only seek information. They readily consume the content created by others but produce nothing themselves. Since most content is member-created, a strategy to attract and engage active users is needed from day one.

All online communities encounter a variety of member types, each with unique motivations, engagement levels, and communication styles. (Figure 1) Each stage in the lifecycle requires tailored methods to recruit and develop active members. Let's dive deeper into these lifecycle stages. (Image 2)

1. The Beginning

When your community starts, a small core group of members must be recruited. These are people with a genuine interest in the subject your community revolves around. They are often experts, professionals, semi-professionals in the field, or people with a specific interest in the topic.

A good way to start a community is to recruit members by "invitation only." This creates a group of members who feel both personally selected and involved in creating something new and exciting. The number of members can gradually increase by allowing active members to invite a limited number of new members. These new recruits receive personal invitations and can be people from the company's network or those interested in the specific topic. Consider if some of these need to be paid for their involvement.

You don't need a wide range of features in the startup phase; in fact, too many features can make visitors feel like they've entered a large, unfurnished house. Our recommendation is to initially start with a simple discussion forum. If relevant for your community, consider including a rating and review feature in the first phase.

An active moderator is needed from the start. This role involves not only managing misbehaving members. More importantly, the moderator actively creates new topics, fosters discussions, asks questions etc. In the first phase, the moderator builds personal relationships with members, e.g., through personal welcome emails and dialogues.

The moderator must be someone with excellent social and communication skills and a strong commitment to the community and its subject. The most active members participate in the forum's development.

Expect the initial phase to take at least three months. This is the most important phase for building a base of active members.

2. Establishment

In the second phase, the forum opens up to a broader audience, engaging more members. Actively invite customers and other relevant target groups, but still with a VIP approach.

Invite your best or most active customers in your customer base. Selected invitation recipients should still feel chosen as "VIP members". Perhaps a handwritten letter with a personal greeting can replace a traditional marketing email.

Consider if there are semi-professional content creators who can engage with the community. For example, a blogger or social media personality with an active following within the field or topic. These people can then create their own "corners" in the forum that they manage and develop.

The moderator plays a crucial role in the establishment phase to create dialogues and engagement. This could involve starting new topics, initiating polls on various subjects, or regularly interacting with the most active members. These members can be granted super user status, which offers extended opportunities, such as moderation. Consider starting a reference group with super users invited to contribute on how the forum can be improved and further developed.

At this stage, you can also begin to engage your organization's staff. Instruct all, or a select group, to spend a portion of their work time participating in the forum as regular members. Perhaps you have staff with a deeper knowledge of the area who can be engaged?

The establishment phase usually lasts from month three to nine, but it can take longer.

3. Maturity

In the maturity phase, the focus is on capitalizing on the core of active members you've built, so now the focus shifts to recruiting many new members.

If you have a large email base or many website visitors, use these channels to drive traffic to the forum. In this phase, more focus should be placed on professional content. The goal of this content is to drive larger traffic volumes from organic searches. Use SEO techniques to identify topics and keywords appearing in Google's searches and results. If the forum has a broad potential target audience, creating wider awareness through paid media, such as broad awareness campaigns on Meta, may be beneficial.

At this point, with a large number of members to invite and engage, you should consider automating communication. Some of the automations that must be in place include recruitment, onboarding, and activation programs. Personalization, such as recommended topics, is needed to increase engagement. Meanwhile, continue efforts to recruit and nurture members who actively contribute to the forum. Hold special VIP member dialogues for the most engaged members.

4. Saturation

In the saturation phase, a larger share of new members is less familiar with the field and topic. These members require a different type of onboarding and automated communication. This includes guides for new users on how to use the forum and find what is relevant to them. By now, several new features have been launched, and you must help new users access them.

5. Mitosis

Mitosis means cell division. At this stage, the forum has become so large that there's room for subgroups. Members can create sub-forums within the community for different subcategories and specific interests. Allow members to manage these subforums as moderators. Now the role and responsibility for creating active and engaged members are transferred to these new moderators. Create meeting places for moderators to discuss development and give them opportunities to participate in the forum's development.

Conclusion

Creating active members who contribute content to the forum requires a plan and systematic work from day one and beyond. This is much more important than extensive and innovative features. Engaged members are the foundation of the forum, and this is where your focus should be.

This is our first article in the series about online communities. In the upcoming articles, we will cover the following areas:

Article 2: Key Strategies and Critical Insights for Success

Article 3: Essential Community Features and How to Create an Effective Implementation Plan