Building a growing online community is a challenge, and many don't make it in the long run. We're sharing insights on how to avoid common pitfalls and how to attract active members. Learn about community lifecycles and strategies for success—from inviting VIPs to involving employees and using automations. Focus on engaged members to keep your community alive and kicking.

The challenges of building online communities

Many online communities struggle to attract and keep active members. This article dives into the challenges of building a growing community, strategies to avoid common pitfalls, and how to get your members engaged for long-term success.

Background

Maybe you've thought about starting an online community to boost customer relationships and add business value. But you might also have noticed that most new communities fail, making you hesitate to even try. Most communities never reach that critical mass of active members, despite big investments from well-known brands with massive customer bases. In this first article, we share insights on how to avoid common pitfalls so your community becomes a lively hub, not a ghost town.

The online community lifecycle

There are five stages in a community's lifecycle. Each stage has different goals and needs different tactics. One common hurdle throughout the entire journey is attracting enough active members.

Most of the time, communities fail because they can't get enough members to contribute and create content. Communities need active members who start new topics, answer others, write reviews, and chat with each other. Most members will always just lurk and read. They enjoy the content others make but don't produce anything themselves. Since most content is member-generated, you need a strategy from day one to attract and engage active users.

In any online community, you'll meet different types of members, each with their own motivations, engagement levels, and communication styles (Figure 1). Every stage of the lifecycle requires a tailored approach to recruit and grow active members. Let’s dive into these stages (Image 2).

1. The Beginning

When launching your community, you need to recruit a small core group of members. These are people with a genuine interest in your community's topic. They are often experts, professionals, semi-professionals, or hobbyists passionate about the subject.

A great way to kick things off is by making it "by invitation only." This makes members feel hand-picked and excited to build something new. You can grow the numbers gradually by letting active members invite a limited number of others. These new recruits get personal invites and can be people from your company network or others who love the topic. You might even consider compensating some of them for their time and effort.

You don't need tons of features at the start. In fact, too many features can make visitors feel like they've walked into a huge, unfurnished house. We recommend starting with a simple discussion forum. If it fits your community, you could also include a rating and review feature in this first phase.

An active moderator is a must right from the start. Their job isn't just to moderate bad behavior; it's even more important that they actively spark conversations, start new topics, and ask questions. In this initial phase, the moderator builds personal bonds with members through welcome emails and direct chats.

The moderator should be someone with great social skills and a real passion for the community and its topic. Your most active members should also be involved in shaping the forum.

Expect this startup phase to last at least three months. This is the most critical phase for building a foundation of active members.

2. Establishment

In the second phase, you open up the forum to a wider audience to get more people involved. Keep actively inviting customers and relevant groups, but stick to a VIP feel.

Invite the best or most active customers from your database. These invitees should still feel special, like "VIP members." Maybe send a personalized email or message instead of a standard marketing blast.

See if there are any semi-professional content creators who want to join in. Think of bloggers or social media personalities with active followers in your field. These creators can even run and grow their own dedicated