How to Grow Your Community

We've built a community of 77,000+ people.

And it took us less than 4 years to achieve

Here's a breakdown of HOW we did it:

Whether you already have a community or are still in the planning phases, the toughest step is the first one. But once you find your purpose—be it for retention, feedback or support—it becomes clear that a community is more than just a part of your business.

It's the heart of the entire operation.

Unlike traditional one-off customer interactions, our purpose had something greater in mind.

We wanted to maintain an ongoing dialogue in which every member felt heard, valued, and engaged. This was the only way we could transform customers into brand ambassadors and loyal friends.

Choose a Platform

We started by selecting a platform. We knew this had to be a very careful choice.

After weighing our pros and cons, we decided we were going to choose one that we, as founders, were already familiar with and actively using.

For us, Facebook was that platform, it had a suite of tools perfect for engagement and interaction.

This choice of platform isn't universal.

You have to figure out where your audience lives and where you feel most at home, then weigh the benefits and disadvantages and go from there.

The Strategy:

With a platform in place, we focused on the following pillars to start growing and nurturing our community:

We pledged to maintain authenticity by not shying away from less-than-positive feedback. Every comment, concern or criticism was an opportunity for open dialogue and for us to make an improvement.

All of us (especially the founders) regularly engaged with the community to announce product launches and genuinely connect. We did this through live sessions or interactive posts to make sure that every interaction we took part in brought value to the customer.

But it wasn’t just all business. We made sure to share personal stories, things we got wrong and journeys that made us relatable.

We took down any “corporate divider,” to show that behind the brand were real people with real stories.

But the most important thing we did was listen, learn and implement based on what our customers asked for.

The Growth Tactics:

Growing a community doesn't happen in isolation and it doesn’t happen quickly.

It requires infusing the community into every interaction of your business, this could mean:

• Leveraging social media ads by turning each product query into an invitation to join our community.
• Using QR codes and inserts in packaging as direct pipelines to our community space.
• Using email, SMS or social media to communicate the value of joining our community.

Super Users

This was our top-secret and stronger weapon.

We didn't just rely on our efforts to grow our community, we were a group of 20K people…

We would never grow at the rates we wanted.

So we started giving power to our top customers to become super users.

We offered them lifetime value in exchange for their community engagement, making them our most powerful and genuine advocates.

The Outcome:

The result was a community where members felt a sense of belonging and investment.

User-generated content poured in, we had so much to work with for our marketing voice. Every ad became so authentic and moving because real people’s voices were behind every win.

We slowly introduced communications to guide product development as a community affair, with ideas and feedback flowing in real time.

And sales? They became a byproduct of our time building a genuine relationship with our audience.

It doesn’t have to be a complicated process or an endless stream of discount codes to provide value to your customers.

Talk to them, listen to them and let that guide your brand.

That’s the best way to show them you care and the fastest way to excite them into joining your community.