Does anyone have advice?

Discussion
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Hello!
I’m trying to start/grow my community, and wondering what is the best way to go about recruiting new members. Does anyone here have advice? What has worked for you?
Thanks!
Amira

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I’ll tell you what has worked for my community which is currently full / at capacity.

  • Be upfront about what you want / what you are about. Don’t try to please everyone and just advertise to the right kinda person
  • Make decisions now, amend them later. Communities that sit around thinking about the whatifs never get anywhere. It’s ok to make mistakes and be assertive too. My community has a deadline for votes and we have only ever had to go back on a decision a few times for minor changes.
  • This goes back to the first point, but actually know what your mission/goal is. Narrow it down to a mission statement and a tagline. What are your top 5 priorities. Top 3? Not every community can serve every need. We need and should celebrate diversity.
  • Network! I met most of my people through tiktok and discord because that is what my target audience uses. I didn’t spend a penny on advertising. I just spent an hour every day talking to people who have goals similar to mine!
  • Be okay with rejection. For every person you acquire, you will be rejected by 99 others. It’s ok. We are a big world and again every group has it’s own special purpose and need to fill.
  • Start planning before people show up. People tend to have a lot more faith and interest in a project that has already been started, even if its just a few core documents.
  • Invite feedback. When talking to potential people - ask what makes them pull back, what makes them nervous, and what confuses them about your plan! Sometimes you learn something and sometimes you teach them.

My group is in the land acquisition process and we meet twice weekly, ask me questions.

1 Like
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Thank you so much! Those all sound like great ideas. What kind of discord groups did you use?

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I just looked up related tags to my group on the disboard and chatted in those. I usually hung out in voice channels or text chatted about random things until my commune became relevant

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I’ve not heard of discord groups before. Where does someone find those?

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I posted on facebook, on my personal page and acquired a founding group, though they’re technically founding without me now since I can’t help buy collaborative land. My husband and I may buy in later, as then we could use first-time homebuyer grants whereas we can’t use those in conjunction with others. If we buy in then we probably can, at least I hope we can. Another option for us would be to buy into an existing community, there are two viable options in the area for us, sure they wouldn’t be the land-based community of my dreams, but they might be able to be adequate.