The Business of Belonging: How to Make Community your Competitive Advantage

by David Spinks

Generally speaking, the more specific the social identity, the more likely it will be that the people who share that identity will have a need for community.

If you can give someone a safe space to express themselves and get value in a way they can't anywhere else, a thriving community awaits.

Don't feel guilty when excluding people, because it's the exclusion that makes members feel safe, knowing that the people in the room are those they can trust, and whose values they align with.

If you're concerned about excluding people unfairly, ask yourself, “Whose voices aren't present in the room that should be?”

When you host events for your community, make sure to actively seek out speakers, experts, and mentors from underrepresented groups. We aim to reach 40 percent representation of underrepresented groups on our conference stage every year. Review your designs and communications to ensure the language and imagery are authentically inclusive of the groups that you want to feel welcome in your community.

Put the overarching identity of your community at the top. Then in each level, you can break down the identity into its subgroups based on any criteria. For example, in Google's G2G program we could break down the overarching identity (G2G instructors) into the different kinds of professions they represent (see Figure 3.3).

You will always have leaders at the center who are creating and facilitating community, power members who are your top contributors, active members who participate regularly, and passive members who mostly just consume.

You want to understand all the different ways that someone can participate in your community and, using the cycle, move them along that journey.

“Welcome to our community; please make a massive commitment of time and energy!” isn't a very logical way to motivate people to do something, but that's exactly how a lot of communities and community products are designed. We, as the organizers, know what we want our members to do, but we're impatient and want them to jump right to the high-commitment contributions. For the majority of our members, it will take time for them to get to the point where they're committed enough to participate at that level. You need to make smaller asks first.

only make smaller asks of members at the beginning of the curve, and increase the ask as they move up the curve.

all members aren't going to follow the commitment curve exactly the way you draw it up. Some members will join and find the community to be such a good fit that they're ready to take action and make larger contributions right away. Some members might spend years in your community and never quite get to the point where they feel motivated to increase their commitment. And some members will move up the curve, and back down the curve as their life and needs change, or the community changes.

Passive members are folks who are at the start of the commitment curve. They're participating in smaller, lower-commitment ways, mostly consuming content, learning, and listening.

A passive member is what we often call an audience member, or lurker. They don't contribute by creating any content or engaging in any discussion, they just want to listen for now.

Now it's common logic to say, “Great! Now in order to build an engaged community we just need to motivate all of our passive members to be active or power members!” But the truth is that ALL of these roles are critical to communities.

Passive members play an important role. They provide the eyes and ears that the active and power members care about. Without the passive members there to consume, the active and power members have less of an audience to consume their content.

An engaged community is an ecosystem made up of people moving up and down the commitment curve over time.

Prioritize keeping your inner rings engaged and successful. But don't forget about the outer rings and the value of your audience. Make it easy for your passive consumers to passively consume. Get them the content they need in the most efficient way possible. Love your lurkers.

Our inclination is to make the process of joining our communities as easy as possible. But the easier it is to get into your community, the less value people may apply to membership.

Remember, when they first join, you don't want to make a big ask for them. It can be so small that it doesn't feel like much of an ask at all. And it should always be presented as something that will bring them value. When we ask new members to introduce themselves, we tell them that we'd love to learn more about what they're working on, and we ask them to share one challenge that they're working through currently so we can immediately start bringing them value. And we ask them to browse the content so they can start learning and getting a feel for the space.

Take the time to talk to your members at each level of participation and learn more about their experience. Ask your passive members if they'd be interested in participating more actively, and why they haven't taken that leap yet. Ask your power members if they'd be interested in becoming a leader and why they haven't applied yet.

You never know who might be motivated to participate more in your community, and just needs a little push.

By creating a unique identity for your power users, you give them a stronger sense of community, and you give members in the outer rings something to strive for (to become a member of the power user group).

Validation is what tells our brains that an experience was positive and helps us form new habits of identifying with and participating in communities.

Internal triggers come from our own brain. They start happening when you've repeated the path enough times that your brain automatically goes through the routine in response to the cue.

Extrinsic motivations are things you do in order to earn a reward or avoid punishment, both things that are provided to us by external people or systems. Examples of extrinsic motivations for communities are things like point systems, badges, or getting a shout out from the community manager. Intrinsic motivations are things you do because you genuinely enjoy and value doing them, regardless of the external rewards or punishments. Self-determination theory says that intrinsic motivation is driven by three things: competence, relatedness, and autonomy.3 We can find all three in communities. People join communities to grow their skills and learn, to connect with other people, and are more likely to contribute when they feel a sense of ownership.

It feels really good to be accepted into a new group that we care about! It's the same in your community. It can be highly impactful for a member who's relatively new to your community to get a note from you, or another member, letting them know that they're happy to have them in the community. That's the kind of validation that will make that person want to come back and keep participating.

If your members are intrinsically motivated to help each other, and you start giving them points, money, or prizes for taking actions in the community, they may start focusing on the points instead of the good feelings they get from helping.

So when you give someone a reward, the question is: How does the reward make that person feel about themselves? Does it make them feel important because the reward was very personal and thoughtful?

Does it make them feel bad about themselves because they had higher expectations? Does it make them feel accomplished because they had to do something specific to earn that reward?

When you bring market norms and extrinsic rewards into a situation that was driven by social norms, the market norm tends to replace the intrinsic motivation.

I find that a lot of companies think about swag the wrong way. Too often, companies just slap their logo on a T-shirt and hope that their members will wear it around and spread awareness of the brand. In reality, you just gave them a really comfortable pajama shirt that will likely never leave their house. Instead of thinking about swag as a billboard, focus on how the swag will make the member feel when they wear it or see it. It doesn't even have to have your logo, as long as they remember that it's a representation of your community, and a reminder of a positive experience.

If you have engagement going in your community already, then gamification can truly accelerate things like throwing gasoline on an open flame. It can move people along the commitment curve faster. Creating a “power user” level shows new members what they can one day become if they contribute enough.

The key is to align the gamification system with the intrinsic motivations of your members.

One way to do that is with a peer-to-peer reward system where members choose when to give each other points. Reddit does this with its karma system. Incorporating human judgment into the system will help prevent the gaming of your gamification system.

Your purpose can also be tied to the kind of interaction and relationships you hope to be able to facilitate: If your hope is to facilitate a very practical conversation, then think about who can you invite to the space who has deep experience with the topic you'll be discussing. If you want to make people feel like they're a part of something really big and exciting, then it may make sense to bring *everyone* together for a large event. Customers, prospects, audience members, employees, partners … everyone. If you'd like to host a deep, vulnerable conversation, then you might want to only send private invitations, and choose people that you know will be respectful and personally invested in the topic.

Every space has a unique purpose, focused on serving a specific group of people.

Whatever you organize, always start with people and purpose.

A person will be much more willing to be vulnerable in small groups where they know and can see everyone who's listening and there's an expectation of confidentiality.

I've found that people generally crave the size of community that they don't have. When our network spreads too thin, we crave intimacy. But intimate groups lack diversity and are slow to change, so we start to feel isolated and seek more options. It ebbs and flows.

Today social media feels too broad and unsafe, so people are seeking more focused, independent communities. One day we'll feel siloed again and want to connect with larger networks.

Smaller groups provide the opportunity for more intimacy, but less diversity. Larger groups provide the opportunity for more diversity, but less intimacy. We tend to need both diversity and intimacy throughout our lives.

When you're creating your online community experience or hosting a big event, 99 percent of the details that you're sweating over will not be what people will remember. They'll only remember the absolute best and absolute worst experiences they have.

Pride: the feeling of accomplishment, getting the spotlight, accomplishing a big goal. Insight: learning something new, getting that ah-ha! moment. Connection: meeting someone new or forming a deeper relationship with someone.

For virtual events I like to kick off with a “ceremonial closing of tabs.” I hit a singing bowl a few times while asking everyone to close their email, close out of their tabs, and remove any distractions.

Round of intros: Kick off with a round of intros. Spice it up with a “fun” question like, “What cartoon character do you most identify with?”

Whip-around: An initial question that everyone answers to get everyone involved in the conversation early. A lot of these formats can be considered whip-arounds. They're usually quick answers to a question like, “What is your goal for this discussion?” or, “What is one thing you're grateful for?”

High-and-low: Have each person share a high and a low from their life/work. This is also called “a rose and a thorn.”

Presentation: Have one or multiple members share their screen and give a short presentation, then open up to discussion.

Share a challenge: Each person has a chance to share a challenge that they want feedback on and then gets time for other participants to give them feedback.