Community Building: The Reflect & Research Phase

In part 1 of this series, I touched on the self-determination theory and the 3 universal needs of autonomy, belongingness, and competency, and how this relates to community building. Now let’s take a look at some key things to focus on when you’re starting to build out a community strategy.

So: You want to create a community. Or perhaps there is already an existing community you are leading, but it’s been lacking a strategy – or you’re not seeing the results you’ve been hoping for. Where do you begin??

Before jumping to planning and execution, it’s important to take time to do some research. Doing research will not only save you time, but will also provide you with a more thorough understanding of your community goals as well as your community members and their needs.

For our purposes here, I broke the research phase into two parts: 1) identifying your purpose and 2) asking and listening.

Reflect & Research Phase

Identify your Purpose

First things first - you need to identify the purpose of the community.?

If you’re a business leader, your mind might go straight to generating more revenue and increasing customer retention. If you’re the coach of a sports team, maybe you want to improve the team’s performance in a specific area or areas.

These are goals and desired outcomes, which are also important to identify, but they’re not a community purpose.?

Companies may make money through selling different types of products, and in this case, generating revenue and increasing customer retention could very well be a business purpose. But if you’re trying to take it a step further and create brand advocates, customer loyalty, and a genuine community, you need to think beyond and reflect on a deeper meaning. Flip the script; shift your perspective. What does the community get out of it? What do members get out of being a part of this community? What are the values of the community? How are you going to get them to feel invested in this community?

Here’s an example from my own life. I chose to join the Latinas in Tech community in the middle of the pandemic while going through a career change. I was highly motivated to get involved with the community because I was looking to learn something new, develop my skills, and get tips on transitioning into tech from a different background. I also wanted to connect with others – people that worked in tech that I could relate to and that shared similar values.

Something else that motivated me to join was that the fact that the values of the community were very apparent. From the online events I attended, I could immediately tell that it was a very welcoming, inclusive space, no matter if you’d been in tech your entire career or were just starting to learn about the industry. Members shared common values like inclusivity, advocacy, and empowerment, and were passionate about diversity, equity, and inclusion.

The purpose of the community is one place where autonomy, belongingness, and competence really come into play:

• Autonomy - choosing to be a part of the community
• Belongingness - feeling welcomed, shared values, and fellow members I could relate to
• Competency - feeling supported and successful in learning new skills?

Community Purpose Examples

Here are a few examples of what a community purpose might look like:?

• To build a global community where ______ can connect with each other to share a passion for _____ and enable _______ through _______.
• The [community name] community is committed to advancing and empowering [group/demographic] at/in [company or industry] through education, community, and advocacy.
• The [school and sport] team community is dedicated to providing all members with an opportunity to learn and excel in fundamental sports skills while having fun through sportsmanship, respect, teamwork, perseverance, and self-confidence.

Take some time to think about what your community purpose is. Who is it for? What does your community value? What is the goal? Once you have your purpose, you can look more into the members of the community.

Ask and Listen?

Here is where the all-important skill of listening comes into play. Now that you have your community purpose, it’s time to get to know the members. To be successful in community building, first you have to know who your community is – and truly understand them. What are they interested in? What are they hoping to get out of the community? How do they want to participate in the community, and what are some of their challenges?

Here are some ideas of questions you can ask in surveys and 1:1 interviews:

• What do you enjoy most about this community?
• What do you hope to get out of this community?
• What is the biggest challenge for you when it comes to X?
• In what ways would you like to engage or participate in this community?
• What is most important to you when it comes to X?

Tip: If you are building a community in a work or business setting, create or run the survey/interview questions by cross-functional teams to get their input as well. If you need additional stakeholders to support you in taking action on the survey results, it’s good to get their input beforehand, such as engineering/product, people overseeing your team or organization’s budget, etc.

Next, sit down and look at the data. Are there common themes or patterns emerging? Or maybe there are some things that all members have in common, while there are other differences that help you differentiate the different types of audiences or members that you have. All of this information will help you greatly as you develop your community strategy, which will help you attain your goals and desired outcomes.

In Summary

Remember, before hitting the ground running, it’s important to take a step back and identify the purpose of your community – and listen to your members. This will save you a lot of time in the long run and will set the entire community up for success. If you don’t take the time to ask questions or do interviews, you may be missing some really important information that will help create an impactful community. Lastly, be open to going back periodically and interviewing or surveying community members as needed. This can be a helpful way to check in and gauge progress, or wants/needs.

After you've taken the time to review feedback from your community, you can start planning your community strategy – including tactics, activities, programs, and processes – which I’ll go into in part 3 of this series!