The 2024 Community Playbook

Community - the easiest buzzword to throw around. The hardest thing to build.

So, when the founder of the beauty brand Glossier, Emily Weiss, says she wants to create a brand where customers want to wear a sweatshirt from, she means building a community.

When Colin and Samir stopped posting videos for a few months on YouTube, but the discussions continued on Discord & Reddit, they built a community.

When ARC browser had enough loyal users to launch an “Early Birds” program to help them find bugs for free, they had a community.

A community is a tribe. More than just a group of people. It's a collective that shares common interests, values, and goals.

So, let’s show you how to build one.

Build Off Existing Community

Jack Butcher started posting his signature black-and-white minimalist design graphics on X years ago. Decent engagement and following. But nothing groundbreaking.

Then he started designing visuals based on quotes from people like Naval, David Perrell, and Marc Andreessen. Leveraged these individuals' personal brand and loyal followings. Which gave him access to their existing communities centered around productivity and entrepreneurship.

This gave him the ability to build a base for his Visualize Value Community. Visualize Value now produces 7 figures of revenue while spending $0 on media.

Seed Community With Employees

Community starts with the people behind the logo. And emoji.

Morning Brew did it with the coffee emoji.

And Beehiiv did it too by turning every employee into a seed member of their community.

Bee emoji in their social bio. Which identifies that they’re part of the community. Then they share tips, tactics, insights, and results with the newsletter community.

The result? Tons of people now reply to posts about Beehiiv before Beehiiv team members can even get to it!

Community = Identity

Glossier's success ($1.8 billion valuation) was not just about selling beauty products. It was about establishing an identity – the effortless "Glossier Girl" lifestyle– which members wanted to belong to.

How did they create this identity?

Glossier cast models from IG or their employees, with similar looks & lifestyles. Which then conjured into the “Glossier Girl” identity. And those models and their followers became seed community members.

And this identity became a magnet. Pulling the right people into the community. And the product is the entrance into an exclusive club.

Offer Extra Value For The Community

Building a community is not about having a large following. Or putting a bunch of people in a group chat. It’s about providing value beyond your core product.

Colin & Samir built a community for members to engage with each other, where they can get feedback on their creative, brainstorm, and create collaborations

And this all exists even when Colin and Samir aren’t online or actively posting. Which truly shows the power of the community.

Because communities start top-down. But need to evolve into side to side.

And I’ll end with this quote:

“Growing an audience online, you're basically aggregating a bunch of people to point them in a certain direction and your ability to point them in that direction determines the value of you as a creator. If you're getting a million people to watch you, but you don't have that ability, it doesn't matter"

- Colin and Samir