The Community Life Cycle
By Serena G, Founder of Sense and Forum. Community manager and community strategist.
Have you heard of the community life cycle? Get to know your community better with Sense and Forum’s detailed community life cycle. Pinpoint where your community is at or isn’t at and use this as a guide to map out a clear strategy for your online community.
The online community lifecycle is nothing new. In fact, it has been written and talked about by various community scientists and consultants since the beginning of the internet. Crazy!
We understand that it might be new to you and that there is a lot to take in, but once you have mastered it (and you will), it can help to prioritise your community to-do list and tasks, plus manage your growth expectations. Don't worry if you get stumped by anything. You can reach out to us and we will be happy to answer your questions, provide support or consult where it is needed.
At Sense and Forum, we teach organisations about their communities by going through the five main stages of the community life cycle.
Sensory Development: Creation & Set up
Sense of Trust: Content & Engagement
Sense of Community: Growth
Sense of Belonging: Maturity
Sense of connection: Sustainability and Autonomy
Our community life cycle is there for you to analyse what stage your community is at, and how to progress your community and see it reach its full potential. Use the lifecycle as a guide on what actions or next steps to take.
This resource you are about to jump into is very interactive. Will take you through each step, with actions and tips. So, brew yourself a cuppa, get your notebook and pen out and download the Sense and Forums community life cycle.
Ok, got it? 👍🏾
Pull out the download and have a little think about where your community currently is, right now. Write it down. This is going to be useful later.
Ready for the steps? We thought so.
Let’s Go… 👇🏽
Sensory Development: Creation & Set up
The first step to launching your community is what we call sensory development when you create and set up your community space taking into account the touchpoints in which your members will interact with your business, its features and each other. The starting point or the restart point if you are migrating your community to a purpose-built app.
Before you do anything, start with these two things.
A community is built to ignite conversations and no one person can do it alone. We suggest getting the buy-in from your organisation, team and most prominent advocates. Also, be ready to reward them for their time.
Consider the prospect of a community manager who will produce content, moderate and engage with the community, and much more. This might be you or a member of your team. Something to keep in mind is that you will need these tasks fulfilled daily.
The next part requires a lot of thought and attention, so listen up. Here are the considerations to take before anyone even steps through the door of your community.
The first vital step is to find the right online platform or tools to communicate and connect with your community. We have tried and tested a long list of community apps and partnered with the ones we love, including Circle, Panion and Ugenie. Take your time, try, test break and try again until you are satisfied the community will be safe and comfortable in the app or space you have chosen. Need some suggestions, ask us?
Next, put together a community strategy that is easy to follow internally and externally. Write up the community rules and guidelines, produce user guides, how-tos and FAQ (video demos work well here) and include steps for engagement. That way, your team knows when to step in. When the team is on board, it helps minimise the risk of those tumbleweed moments.
Here is where UX comes into play. Setting up a community is not only the space, app or platform, the channels and content. It is also the tools and touchpoints to engage your community—events, social media, emails, newsletters, etc.
Create your onboarding strategy with a path that allows members to enter the community and find their way around smoothly. Lose your members here and you can lose them forever.
Create a content plan and at least one to two months of content so you can start to feed your community. Remember always to ask members questions or for them to provide feedback or an opinion.
Before launching test test test! Do a soft launch with a small group of your biggest advocates and fans.
Allow 3-6 months for this step. If you have already launched, not to worry, it is not too late to review, change and adapt your community.
🤯That was a lot, we know, but trust the process. It gets easier, we promise. 🤯
Sense of Trust: Content & Engagement
Welcome to the entry phase of your community. It is the point when you open the doors and invite your customers, followers, advocates and fans to start interacting with your brand and each other. Your goal, at this stage, is to introduce the content plan, onboarding and welcome strategy to encourage engagement and networking opportunities, including meetups and events. All the while developing trust in your community.
Something to bear in mind when you open the doors and get new member sign-ups, the community member journey will always start here. You might have people here at the sense of trust stage and a large cohort at the sense of belonging stage. It is essential to understand this, so you know how and when to activate certain content and events.
Top tip: Keep things simple. Launch your community with minimal features, channels and events. You don't want to overwhelm people. Over time you can reveal and launch other features.
🤩It seems easy, right? Ok, let's move on to the next phase. 🤩
Sense of Community: Growth
The sense of community stage is a rewarding point in the community life cycle. You know you are at this stage when you start to see growth in engagement and a surge of new members. This is a great time to amp up your events and networking opportunities.
At this stage, you will also see community networks get stronger. Members will begin to engage naturally and create content by posting, asking for feedback, and posting answers to content in the community. You will see the first signs of your community becoming self-sufficient and self-regulating.
As members become more confident and build trust, you will see and establish super users. You will even start to see leaders and experts emerge.
Phew, we hear you say. But don't drop the ball. If you want to keep your community safe and continue to develop trust, it will always require moderation.
It is vital not to disappear. We know running a community takes time and commitment and you might need to take a break or concentrate on growing the business. If you need to take time out or feel over-committed to the role, it might be time to sub someone in to take on the CM role.
Your community will also generate higher visibility in the external world because you will have empowered your community with knowledge and the confidence to share and talk about what they have learned.
The community, at this point, will also establish rituals and habits. This is why we say to keep things simple and consistent. If you are going to post, promote yourself to post every Tuesday. Commit to maintaining that post and watch the magic happen as people start to feel more confident and engagement with that post increases.
Top Tip: This is the time to introduce a rewards and referral programme if you haven't already. It is a great way to maintain momentum and make the community feel loved.
Sense of Belonging: Maturity
This stage can be identified by a strong sense of belonging among community members. Belonging = happy community members! They will naturally be engaged and most of the activities will be driven by members, whether consciously through their proactiveness or from the feedback they provide you.
Your role as a community owner is to continue to moderate, oversee and provide the core functions of the community. There will be less curating, more organising, repurposing content- always keep things consistent.
The community's purpose will change and turn into advocacy or thought leadership. Use this to advocate for change, industry development, commitment to petitions, and building case studies or whitepapers.
You will notice that member activity will peak and that the new member rate will become steady or decline depending on your membership model.
Top Tip: As the community grows, community interests will change. To keep the community engagement high, every six months to a year, go through a review, change and adapt the process. Generate feedback from the community to make improvements. Listening and giving your community a voice is an empowering piece to the community management puzzle.
Sense of connection: Sustainability and Autonomy
This is the last stage in the cycle. Once the community gets here, it can go into independence mode—a time when the community will find other common interests and organically create subgroups.
Something to keep in mind: As the size of the community increases, it could outgrow the passion, connectivity and shared identity that it once had, which may cause activity levels to drop. Once the belongingness drops, the members don't feel like they are valued and the community diminishes. It is essential to come back to the review, change and adapt to keep things updated and fresh to ensure the community stays engaged.
Sometimes, you might find the community is sitting in multiple lifecycle areas depending on when new users enter. Keep this in mind when you see the ebbs and flows in your community. It might be an excellent time to refresh some content and get a senior community member to lead the conversation. Allowing you to:
1. Hand over responsibility and empower community members.
2. Sharing something that might be new or unknown to someone else. Just because you have done it before doesn't mean it hasn't been seen before.
👏 That's it, you have made it. How do you feel? 👏
Based on the stages above, you will now be able to plan out various strategies in your community, from content and events to engagement and rewards programmes. If you do this well, you can boost the potential of your community, see it grow, add value to your business or see your membership model become a sustainable business.
Also, don't underestimate the power of hiring a community manager and investing in support to manage the community. If you have bigger fish to fry, the investment will be worth its weight in gold.
I told you it was a to take in! Hopefully, you are now ready to conquer the community life cycle at whatever stage you are at. And if you are not sure, that is what we are here for, to ask any questions and we will support and consult you through your community journey.
Get in touch book a discovery call to find out more, or a Sensible Powwow to get those questions answered. ⬇️
Book a discovery call and we can get to know where your community is at and find out how we can work together.
Got some community challenges to untangle and need a better answer than what Google can offer, book in a Pow Wow aka a power hour.