Why do you need to make your community valuable?

The core foundation of any community is value, value in content, value in interactions, value in the members. Unless your community feels genuine and the members feel valued, or that they are getting something back, they will forget about your community.

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To make your community a success, be true to yourself, stick to what your community is about instead of trying to chase trends and clout for growing quickly. It doesn’t matter if you have a huge community, if they’re not engaging or being an active community then they’re not helping you.

How to make your community valuable?

Take interest in your member’s wellbeing.

Make your community feel valued, make them feel seen and heard instead of another sheep in a flock. Many communities fail because for the members it feels forced, as if they’re just another cog in the wheel. Communities should strive to be something that ignites passion and fire into a community member’s heart and soul, it should be a high point of their day, not another chore to just tick off of the to-do list.

Encourage the less invested members to participate more. 

Every community will have a few people who lurk, just watch what’s going on instead of participating. Your job, is to get these “lurkers” to participate too, to make your community content so engaging, that it entices these lurkers into becoming full fledged members of the community.

Support other “causes” which align with your beliefs.

Form attachments with people, groups, events etc. that align with your values and goals, and form mutual connections helping each other out. This will add a different perspective to your community, allowing your members to interact with others with different perspectives, while exposing your community to more potential members.

Have more interactive meetings.

Instead of meetings that are just you informing the community of something, strive to do something different in every meeting, it could something as small as “tell me a joke”, “what’s your current favourite song” or a catchy tune, or a small game or fact, just something to add a little pizzaz into your meeting. Be sure to get feedback from your community after every session and act on the feedback, this will fulfil two of our criteria of adding value to the community, no.1 and no.4.

Have patience instead of blaming others. 

Your community will obviously have internal conflicts due to the fact that it is made up of various people with vivid personalities, just because they have a common interest and a part of your community they will not get along. You need to be able to be patient and solve these conflicts instead of getting caught up in the heat of the moment.

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Solve conflicts instead of sweeping them under the rug. 

Whenever a conflict happens, do not just sweep it under the rug, hoping it will be forgotten, this is how resentment builds. A wall never breaks from a single huge crack but from multiple small cracks built up over the years.

Listen. Listen. Listen. 

Listen, Listen, Listen. Listen to your community, listen to your niche, listen to what your audience wants. This is the most important value of all, without listening and understanding you can do nothing, you can neither grow nor can you engage, all you do is stagnate until you fade into obscurity.

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Have a clear goal for the future.

Always keep your eye on the future. You know what you need to do, you know where you want to reach, don’t ever forget that and keep working towards it.

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