7 tips for building an online community
Growing an audience online can be an exciting but often challenging task, with uncertainty about when and how to begin. This article sheds light on practical aspects of getting started with building a community.
Your identity is key.
This first tip is more conceptual than practical but serves as a useful starting point. Your identity defines who you are, what your community is about, how you present yourself, and why you are unique. It is foundational in representing your journey and story.
To attract the right audience and stand out in a digital world, you need to connect with people who resonate with your community. Your identity signals to potential members the value they will gain by joining, communicated through your profile, professional bio, and work.
Whether you’re just getting started or an experienced community builder, a strong identity creates a sense of belonging and shared purpose, making people feel part of something meaningful. This is reinforced through your work and interactions with the community.
Your tone is the voice or personality used to communicate with your community. There are many ways to reflect how you “sound,” so be mindful to ensure an authoritative tone, if chosen, remains professional yet friendly and approachable. Consider your visual style, colour palette, typography, and the visual representation of these across your online space. This is your visual language, so present yourself in a recognisable way.
Uniqueness comes from bringing these components together to form your identity and profile. Think about the story behind your work and how it has evolved with you, presented through a refined tone and visual language.
2. Authenticity is essential.
Authenticity means being genuine and staying true to your identity. Building trust and credibility is critical for engaging potential new members, reassuring them that your community is legitimate and worth joining.
Transparency about your values, mission, and challenges humanises your identity. For example, openly sharing the struggles behind completing research or launching a new book can make you more relatable. Authenticity must stand the test of time. This openness invites trust, as members feel they’re part of a genuine journey.
Responding to feedback and engaging with your community directly, openly, and honestly further strengthens their connection to you. Avoid generic, scripted replies that feel like they were written by a summer intern or AI. X focuses on high-profile politicians and business leaders, encouraging the actual person to engage directly with followers and users. Bluesky’s mission is to drive large-scale adoption for open and decentralised public conversation. Both platforms, while attracting different audiences, clearly work to ensure an authentic, real person is on the other end.
Acknowledge feedback and concerns in a public forum, explain your perspective, and address issues. Honest responses, even to tough feedback, build a culture of trust, encouraging active participation.
3. User journeys are an unsung hero.
This topic could warrant an entire article on its own.
A user journey is a complete view of all the steps a person takes, from first contact to completion or end. It focuses on the user’s experience from their perspective. In the context of building a community, the stages are defined as discover, onboard, engage, retain, and advocate.
More practically, your user journey might track someone discovering your work for the first time, beginning to interact by liking or posting their first comment, and becoming a sustained follower or subscriber. Once subscribed, they are likely to advocate and promote your content, inviting others to discover and interact.
Mapping this journey is crucial for building and scaling your online community. It helps identify touchpoints (such as entry or drop-off points), highlights motivations and pain points, and, most importantly, aids in retaining your community, especially if they are paying subscribers.
User journey mapping is a great way to start, and it doesn’t have to be complex. Practical guides for user journey mapping are available online, and it begins with the basics: Can you define your audience? Can you break down the journey into the key stages mentioned above? Can you capture emotions? Can you visualise and test this journey?
4. Think of it not as content, but information.
“Content” has become an overused umbrella term. Instead, treat it as quality information that offers tangible, genuine value to your community. This mindful shift moves the focus from producing generic “content” to providing specialised material tailored to your community. While this may seem obvious, it is often overlooked. Adopting this perspective, aligned with authenticity, helps activate your identity.
Why is this important for online communities? People join communities to connect with real people, gain knowledge, and solve problems. Addressing these needs through valuable information makes your community feel authentic and genuine. Members develop a sense of familiarity with a particular subject or domain. Over time, your work establishes you as a subject matter expert, and your community is likely to advocate for you, encouraging you to join other discussions and forums.
For example, imagine you’ve created an online geography community focused on exploring lesser-known places and cultures on a specific continent. Instead of generic “content” like maps or fun facts, you deliver tailored, quality information. You create a weekly insight detailing unique geography, cultural history, and practical tips for visiting. To go further, you share personal experiences and base these locations on areas of interest from your community.
This approach inspires active engagement and establishes you as an expert, boosting credibility with your members.
5. Planning is important, but don’t get bogged down in the detail.
The planning stage can be like quicksand: Knowing where to step prevents sinking, but standing still, obsessing over details, pulls you in, stalling progress. It’s about striking a balance between planning enough to stay organised and avoiding getting so caught up that you lose momentum.
Start with a broad strategy that defines your identity and story, acting as your guiding policy. Extend this to create multiple narratives focused on a particular theme or subject matter. Allow these narratives to be fluid and evolve with you.
Plan lightly and post freely. Set basic weekly goals with a publishing cadence, sticking to one topic or theme. Ensure this ties into your narratives and links back to your identity. The goal is to make planning work for you, setting boundaries with your time.
Consider the outcomes and your call to action. Always remember you’re providing valuable information to your community. Stepping back from the details helps you focus on what your community truly values. Your tone and style should match your audience’s attributes. As a community builder, present your work in a digestible, intuitive way with a clear call to action.
Analysis paralysis—overthinking that leads to an inability to decide—causes delays and prevents new work from being published. Step away from refactoring code or rewriting the same sentences, and refer to your guiding policy for inspiration. Take swift action to avoid getting trapped in the proverbial quicksand.
6. Syndicating your work.
Syndication refers to distributing or repurposing your original work across multiple channels to reach a wider audience. It amplifies your community’s message and influence, making it a useful strategy for engaging new and existing members and driving conversions through your user journey.
Repurposing work is a fundamental principle. Repurposing in different formats and over different time periods increases your reach to broader audiences. However, a key challenge is ensuring that syndicated content links back to your community.
For example, suppose you’ve published your first book with a small print run through a local supplier. Your goal is to make your community aware of the book and drive sales, with your professional profile on a platform like Republish, as your primary online space. You might write consolidated extracts or expand on topics from your book and syndicate this information on other platforms. This directs traffic to your profile, which acts as a central hub, driving engaged and interested people towards purchasing your book. This simplified example shows how targeted, specialised information can be distributed across platforms to grow your community.
Further advice: Don’t confuse syndication with content curation. Curation involves searching for and sharing others’ relevant work with your community. While curation can complement syndication, they differ in the source of work. Syndication has an inward flow and curation often has an outward flow, as well as having different processes involved.
7. A bit around marketing metrics
It’s a bit of a minefield when it comes to finding the right metrics that work for you. They are often shrouded in mystery with a bit of jargon, which can make the concept of metrics appear esoteric. In addition, the added pressure to understand the winning formula that is used by big businesses. The truth is, there’s no one-size-fits-all approach. The online world is complex, and success comes from using a combination of metrics tailored to you to gain genuine insights into what’s working.
Steer clear of “vanity metrics,” which are often geared towards big brands. While it’s great that your post received thousands of impressions, what’s the outcome? Who interacted with it? Can you identify why?
Focus on conversion rates—the percentage of people who complete a specific action. Track how much traffic from your syndicated work converts to website or profile visitors, how many visitors become followers, and how many followers become paying subscribers. In other words, measure the conversion from those who encounter your work to those who engage and commit to a membership or subscription. Conversion rates are challenging due to multiple touchpoints but become clearer when viewed broadly.
While registrations and subscribers are important, your retention and attrition rates are critical to monitor. Spend equal (if not more) time analysing why people may unsubscribe compared to how to attract new followers. Arguably, it’s easier to draw in new members than to retain existing members over time, as this requires consistent value and engagement. Higher attrition rates can signal issues with your community’s communication or perceived value, which can undermine your long-term growth. By understanding the reasons behind this, you can address pain points, refine your approach, and cultivate a more committed community.
Final thoughts…
Bringing this all together; to build a thriving online community, start by defining your identity, creating a clear purpose that attracts your audience. Prioritise authenticity to foster genuine trust and connection with members. With this foundation, embrace planning to set goals and structure growth, but avoid overcomplicating it. Design user journeys from onboarding to active engagement to create an end-to-end experience. Shift your focus to creating information, not just content, delivering value that sparks interaction. Amplify your reach by syndicating your work across platforms to attract new members. Finally, track metrics to measure success and refine your approach for sustained growth.
While this isn’t a crib sheet or a how-to guide for community building, it may help filter through the noise to provide actionable insights. Find out more how Republish is supporting academics to build their own communities.
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