How to grow an awesome community to fuel your social startup #sundayschool

Original post by NADIA HUSSAIN via TNW

When you’re starting a social company, building a loyal and engaged community is paramount. But that can also be one of the most nuanced and challenging elements of launching your startup.

As employee #6 and community director at Polyvore, I’ve had the opportunity to watch our community grow and build relationships with many of our early users – some of whom have been on our site for more than six years now. Today, our site attracts 20 million unique visitors per month and our awesome community has created more than 100 million collage-like “sets” that are shared across the Web.

But like all social startups, we started with a community of zero. So what does it take to grow a strong, engaged audience? We’ve focused on four core principles that have helped us create, nurture and grow our global community.

Table of Contents

1. Community starts from within

The first step is to recognize that there is no company without its community. Community is the DNA of any social-oriented business, and it’s important for your entire company to understand, appreciate and celebrate it.

You can do this by incorporating a community section into new hire orientations. You can also celebrate community successes as a company by sending around community love letters, successes and stories. You can even make your users part of your office decor.

For example, our office walls are decorated with “sets” created by our users and love letters they send us. It’s a good daily reminder of why we do what we do.

Recognizing the importance of your community and celebrating it regularly throughout the company creates a culture that will help foster its growth.

2. Listen with open ears

Embrace your community’s feedback. Read every email, comment and suggestion, and reply to them! Your community interacts with your product on a regular basis, so it’s important to understand what they like — and don’t like — about it.

Go the extra mile and proactively reach out to your users from time to time to solicit their thoughts about your product and your team. Our team has delivered a number of product launches and feature updates based on popular demand from the community. User feedback can and should help shape your product and the company.

Consistently ask for feedback and user stories over social media. By acknowledging community feedback, your users will be empowered to have a voice because they know that they are being heard.