let's get started with communities

hello there 👋

my name is haakon, and i’ve written this guide to online community building.

short intro: i’m a startup founder, software engineer, and business developer from norway. i have built thriving communities for my startups and other brands, and i want to share my findings with you.

i have one goal with community.fyi: to help you build and grow an online community around your brand.

background

i’ve been building and researching online communities for a few years now, since back to when i studied at ntnu. more specifically, i’ve researched how digital startups and brands build and use online communities to grow fast.

i ended up writing my master thesis on the topic of ‘how digital startups use online brand communities to rapidly scale and succeed in international markets’. i have since had online community building as a core strategy for my own startup osirion.gg, helped create a few other communities, and have also consulted for multiple other startups and brands on the topic.

still, i am not saying i’m the biggest expert on the topic, don’t get me wrong. i am still learning.

however, i’ve found things that have worked super well for me, and i really want to share the insights i’ve gained over the years, by having:

built multiple online communities with over 10 000 members
1+ years of research and data analysis for my master thesis
read tons of books, blogs, articles, and twitter threads
interviewed 20+ professional community builders
read 400+ academic research papers on the topic
multiple workshops with great startups on the topic

everything i’ve found leads to one conclusion - that online brand communities are the most impactful generators of word-of-mouth and brand ambassadors. and word-of-mouth is by far the most efficient form of marketing.

community-led growth is the growth model of the future.

who’s this guide for?

honestly, this guide is for anyone who wants to build an online community.

pretty much everything should still apply, whether you’re building it around a specific brand or not.

but keep in mind that the main focus is on how to build online brand communities, with the goal of generating user engagement, word-of-mouth, brand ambassadors, and spreading brand information to existing and potential customers.

all things considered, i would say the guide is a good fit for:

companies, startups, founders, and solopreneurs
marketers and community managers
creators, youtubers, streamers, etc
anyone building personal or company brands

if you want to build leverage for your brand, this guide is for you.

note: if you are a b2b brand, be careful - a brand community may not be for you. read this first: b2b brand communities

what’s in this guide?

here’s a quick look at the agenda:

what online brand communities are
why you want an online brand community
do’s and don’ts when starting your community
creating engaging content for your lurkers
how to grow and scale your community
establishing tight product feedback-loops
how to monetize or build a paid community
using your community to rapidly internationalize
and quite a bit more…

i will try to keep the guide written in a casual and natural way, to keep everything as simple as possible.

if you’re as excited as me to learn about online community building, i recommend you read on🔥

ready? 🙏

then it’s time to learn! hop on over to the next post to get started.

tip: use the navigation at the top and bottom of the page to move between posts.