What are the most common problems people run into when attempting to build an online community?

One of the most significant issues you can run into when building a community is to do things only to attract new members. Communities require authenticity. That's what makes them different from brands /clients relationships. When building a community, you have to foster its uniqueness and focus on the value it brings to people within the community more than on how many people are part of it. Too often, communities die because we try to add more members by doing things that alienate the core community members or go against their values. You have more “users” but the community itself dies and becomes a service. Don't focus on adding members fast. Focus on adding the right people.

I just wanted to drop a link here that I think adds to the discussion. A few tips for building a community from the founder of https://dev.to https://the.community.club/ben/b...

There are different problems at different stages of the community’s growth. Acquiring members is tough in the early days. Retaining members is tricky throughout. Other problems might be more community specific, like maintaining community norms, welcoming newcomers to the community, etc. There’s actually a ton of research on this. A lot of it is covered in this book by Kraut and Resnick. Building Successful Online Communities: Evidence-Based Social Design (MIT Press) https://a.co/d/1s6B2WK

Keeping user engaged is definitely the most difficult part

The biggest problem is people treat building a community as a growth machine. While community helps you grow but the intention should be pure and selfless. Bringing people together, create a sense of belonging and lastly being service-minded.

Acquiring new users and keeping them engaged are the most imp issues.

I wouldn't say not enough staff, but not the right staff

Acquiring new members will always be the toughest challenge for new community. Is there a solution for this?

And there are many problems underneath that one that cause it.

Don't know how to start.

Keeping users engaged in the forum by posting topics periodically require time and enormous effort and expertise to build content

keeping users engaged is really difficult.

I would say one that's not on here which is providing value. A lot of places build online communities just to have one. Or build one with a way to general purpose and then sit back and wait for users to provide value. Second I would also say is creating a community based on way too broad a topic. Content Marketing or SEO is way too broad, but SEO for laundromats or something like that is targeted enough that people could see how they could gain value from it. Online communities are a ton of work and you have to be really on top of moderation. Thousands of spam and useless/unhelpful posts are going to be posted every day so you have to really build strict processes for this. You also have to lead by example with providing value. Posting useful tips, jobs, connections, AMAs every day and then over time people will start contributing. The days of "build it and they will come" with social media is over. There is so much noise that to breakthrough will take something special if you're just trying to create new content. Now what can be incredibly useful is curation. The information is already out there online but people need help finding it. Going and finding useful resources from around the internet and putting them in one pace is a great way to create value and breakthrough the noise.

Overcoming the chicken and egg problem for sure. We have a Discord for our new app, but it's still just ramping up. Sometimes, when a new user joins and sees there's no one active there, they leave right away. But some don't and stay, so it builds up over time.

Deciding which platform to go with because changing later is hard...

not adding like-minded people

Hello Sheha, i am also trying to build a community on discord, sharing all the info about our startup with the participants. Do you think it's a good idea?

Keeping users engaged.

Keeping users engaged.