1. Identify Founding Members For An Online Platform: Having established the group’s foundation, provide a scalable platform for the community to interact more efficiently and find others regularly. To get your online community started, pick the ideal members in your community for that.
2. Earn Trust: Because of your efforts in previous steps the members already trust the community. Now, get feedback from them so when you launch in the new platform they’ll be motivated to participate.
3. Fuel Online Participation: Invite the selected members and be the first to add content that members can respond to. This way new members don’t have to be the first to post and you facilitate interaction and set the example for how to use the platform properly. Also, ask members to post and answer to posts if things are slow in the beginning.
4. Reward: Collect feedback and ensure users who had time to experience the platform are getting value out of their participation so they will come back. If they aren’t, learn from that.
5. Grow: Once there’s a good amount of content on the platform, you or the other members can bring in new members. But do so slowly to not undermine the high-quality environment you’ve created by curating the right people and building relationships between them.

In contrast to existing communities, new ones lack a social identity, an established way of participation and assurances of reward or value. These are the foundation of the Community Engagement Cycle.

This is why most communities fail before they even begin. A company needs to establ...