How To Build Community, Write Like Hemingway, Spiky Points of View.
Growth Currency 💡⚡ 2️⃣1️⃣
Nice to see you today—and welcome to the 30 new readers 👋 I’m so glad to have you here!
HOW TO BUILD A COMMUNITY—FROM A COMMUNITY MEMBER’S PERSPECTIVE 🏘
So you want to start an online community?… Cool.
I have a few ideas to share—from the perspective of someone who has joined a number of communities over the past few months.
Here are five things I've learned about building a community that I believe can make the difference between a “meh” experience to one your members will LOVE.
#1 Engage with your new followers. Like, within the first hour if possible. DM them, email them, personalize your messaging, comment on their first few posts to make them feel like they belong. Even introducing them to the community is something that goes a long way.
#2 Don't over-promise and under-deliver. Better yet: under-promise, and over-deliver. Make your community elevator pitch modest but persuasive enough to be enticing. And blow new members away with your offering—especially if you have a paid community. Keep a few tricks up your sleeve.
#3 Keep it intimate. A community that’s too big doesn’t feel like a community. Keep it small and grow it slowly and methodically. A community of over 100 members gets noisy fast. And those who aren't able to actively engage on a regular basis will feel lost just as fast.
#4 Organize your community. Whatever platform you use, organize it intuitively. Indicate rooms/threads for specific discussions and places where things should be posted. Try to include general rules or a simple sentence for each room/space within your community explaining what each is about.
#5 Solicit feedback. Create a feedback loop within your community. You need to know what’s working and what’s not. Use surveys, DMs, email, Twitter, or a community “Feedback” channel to find out what people like & what they don't, their favorite experience, what they’d do if running the community and what types of people you should bring into your community.
Are you part of an online community? What would you add to this?
Reply to this email and I’ll share the responses on Twitter 🐦
CREATOR SPOTLIGHTS 🔦
Joel Hansen || Joel is a busy guy. He’s helping to build Kernal, writing the Personal Brand Brief newsletter, and helping professionals with their LinkedIn profiles.
Ev Chapman || Ev has been shipping Atomic Essays daily (72 straight!) with Ship 30 For 30 and has recently launched Consumer 2 Creator Lab.
Alex Lull || Alex created Twitbox and publishes The Steal Club where he dissects (ie. *steals*) the growth strategies of epic creators like Arvid Kahl and Blake Emal—and shares them with you and me.
TWEET OF THE WEEK 🐦
Honestly didn't expect this 🚀 with Ship 30 For 30 but it has been an amazing journey. 👉 Click here to join the June/July Ship30 cohort (I'm an authentic affiliate1)
THIS WEEK’S GROWTH CURRENCY 💡⚡
🛠 TOOLS
Typefully.app — A FREE & simple tool by Morning Brew to help you write & schedule tweets and threads.
Hemingway App — Simplify your writing, Hemingway-style, with this FREE writing app.
✍ WRITING
Spiky Points of View and Shared Language by Jay Clouse
Jay dives into Wes Kao’s Spiky Points of View perspective: learn how to write with your own Spiky POV to build readership and engagement. Here are Wes’ tenets of her Spiky POV:
A spiky point of view can be debated
A spiky point of view isn’t controversial for the sake of it
A spiky point of view teaches your audience something relevant they don’t already know
A spiky point of view is rooted in evidence, but it doesn’t have to be a proven fact or universal truth
A spiky point of view requires conviction
📈 MARKETING
27 words that sum up the psychology of copywriting by Harry Dry
Short, sweet and powerful copywriting tips curated by Harry:
People will do anything for those who
• Encourage their dreams
• Justify their failures
• Allay their fears
• Confirm their suspicions
• And help throw rocks at their enemies
- Blair Warren
🧠 PERSONAL DEVELOPMENT
How to Reap the Benefits of Impostor’s Syndrome by Oz Chen
“There are still days when I wake up feeling like a fraud.” - Sheryl Sandberg, Facebook COO. If Sheryl still feels like a fraud some days, it’s okay that we do, too. Oz Chen explains 3 steps to benefit from the increasingly popular syndrome.
🎧 PODCAST
Rhythm, Book of Wisdom, & Pro Speechwriting – Justin Mikolay | The Danny Miranda Podcast 106
What happens when two genuinely kind and interesting people sit down and chat? Some conversational magic. Justin shares how he writes epic breakdowns on Jack Butcher, David Perrell, and conversations between Balaji and Tim Ferriss. He also discusses his 10x Creator Course with Maven.
That’s it for this week! I am so happy you made it to the end, here’s an Easter egg:
Tweet you read this edition of Growth Currency along with your favorite link from this edition—and I’ll give you a 5-star Quote RT :D
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If you learned something about creating content or how to improve as a creator here, I’d love to know, and so would other creators! Please feel welcome to share this email with anyone you think it might help.
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