community is the new cool
Anand and I atleast have one person every week who reaches out to us with questions and hacks around ‘community building’. Truth be told, we didn’t start leap.club with the idea of creating a community — it just happened.
Quick recap on what we’re building — leap.club is a paid, social-professional network for women with a simple mission — more women in leadership positions. We do this by enabling 1:1 connections, micro-communities based on professional and social interests, and l&d tools to help these leaders live their best professional lives.
Summing my major learnings over the last year of building this solid powerhouse:
- First and foremost — ensure there’s a big problem or a common mission your community is going after. Helps tie it together.
- Relationships > followers. The best communities are based on strong relationships, not the ‘likes’ on your social pages.
- Invest in every single conversation. Also remember that it’s exhausting to be everywhere at all times so space it out.
- Authenticity, heart and hustle — the core of building any community.
- Hold the vision and trust the process. Being patient is key, but also knowing when not to, is important.
- Give your users ownership and train them on building a community — get them to build with you. More importantly, get them to understand the theory of change.
- Feedback — forever know what to take and what to skip.
Most importantly — get enough people on the field (read: community managers) with a TONNE of emotional (self) motivation — this is hard work, but worth all the effort.
