Building online communities: 5 things I learnt when I was 15

When I was fifteen years old I created and managed an online community for discussing pop culture. The community grew to 40,000 active members in six months. I left it soon after, but it continued to grow and today it attracts hundreds of thousands of people. 

I am 23 now so it feels like an eternity ago but I want to share some things I learnt in those six months. I hope these help you deepen your understanding of building communities online, or they encourage you to share your own experiences.

I started the community after I read a discussion online about pop culture. I searched for a dedicated place for people to talk about similar things, but I couldn’t find any. I decided to start my own place, building the homepage and creating some content to fill the emptiness. I shared the community in the original discussion, and I went to sleep. When I woke up there were more than a thousand members. They’d already started creating content and sharing it on the page.

It felt very fun and exciting, but it was a heap of responsibility for a fifteen-year-old. I appointed people to help me, I marketed the community, I moderated it, and I was a part of it every day. I left after six months because at that age NCEA felt slightly more important than thousands of strangers on the internet.

Here are 5 things I learnt in those six months:

1. You must create focus in the community for it to grow 

Our biggest decision in the first month of the community was around the type of posts we’d allow. Many members shared content from other sources, or posted images without putting any effort into discussion. This was detrimental to a community around discussing topics. We decided to only allow members to share their own content, and only if they posted text. I believe this was the most important change we implemented for the growth of the community.

By excluding certain types of posts, we actually fostered more engagement. Sure, the members had to put in more effort to create posts, and there were less of them. But the members were more invested because they saw the community as its own unique thing, with unique people and content. It began to build a culture around high-effort posts and discussion.

2. If you’re not sure what to do, ask the community

I was a goddamn idiot when I was fifteen. I didn’t understand what I was doing in life nearly all the time. Looking back, I’m surprised the community didn’t crash and burn! But it survived because when I felt unsure about the community and its future, I simply asked the members. I felt confident that they’d be as engaged as I was, and that I ultimately made the decisions. It made them feel they were taking part in growing something. That feels good.

3. It’s scary how much luck is involved, but keep going

It was easy to wake up on the first day to find thousands of people on the page. I shared it, and it felt like magic the way some strangers aligned to make it a thing. Years after, I felt embarrassed about the whole saga because I saw it as something I lucked into. But the effort I put in was to ensure that there was content consistently on the page, and that was really all it needed. I waited for more people to find it and it grew.

4. Take a break when you need to get some perspective

Running a community is a lot of work. I constantly checked up on it, even at school. The internet exacerbated the effort involved because we had to keep it running through every time zone. The biggest mistake I made was being always on. When new trends blew up elsewhere, or there was a “massive” controversy or issue to deal with, I was always there. 

Social media sites are designed to keep the people you want to attract to your business clicking. But they’re also designed to keep you, or businesses clicking. I left the community because I realised it was unimportant to me. Take a break from the constant intensity and get some perspective about what’s important and what’s not.

5. Really think about who you’re talking to online

Even though I was young myself when I got online, I rarely considered the age of the people I talked to. Anonymity means you could be dealing with either a fifteen-year-old or a sixty-year-old. It’s easy to forgive a teenager for lacking perspective if you know they’re a teenager. It’s hard to properly understand an anonymous stranger. Don’t beat yourself up about their feelings or perspectives until you understand where they’re coming from.

I’d be keen to understand what you have learnt from building, running, or being a part of a community. Contact the team at Eleven and share your story.