During our hiatus I had some people say that they were enjoying the Grow Your Community show, but they were new to community building and didn't know where to start.

There is a great article that I have somewhat boiled down into some quick and easy bites of insight for you.

First things first realize that just buying some community software from our resource area isn't the key to a successful community. As the old saying goes:

"Measure twice - cut once."

This goes for communities as well. When I help people with their podcasts at the School of Podcasting I always state that it's not the technology that leads to a successful podcast. I say to spend $100 on a microphone and 100 hours getting to know your audience.

It's the same here with a community. How can you make a community to serve your audience if you don't know what they need?

There are all sorts of ways you can see what they need. You can look at the comments on a YouTube video about a topic your community would be interested in.

You can check out books about your topic and look at the 2 and 4-star reviews. These reviews typically give specific reasons why they received the reviews.

QUALITY OVER QUANTITY

As you start to figure out who your community is for, you can start by figuring out who it is NOT for. This means you will be limiting the membership and that is OK. The result of having a hyper-focus group of people together is you will have a smaller group with DEEPER discussions. This adds to the "Information I can't get any places else" factor.

THE THREE QUESTIONS

Who is my community for (and not for)?

What will my members do together?

Why does it matter? (So that they can ____)

NICHE DOWN

I talking about niching down for a podcast in this episode of "Your Podcast Consultant" and it applies to communities as well.

COMMUNITY RESOURCES

Check out all the resources for community building at

growyourcommunityshow.com/resources