Greeting! We, the Fitil team, for almost two years of our work, have built a community where people meet, communicate, fall in love and gain new useful experiences. Our first article was devoted to the creation of the project, and in this article we want to talk about how we managed to build a loyal and active community around the brand.

Let’s start with the definition of the concept of “community” or “community”. By him we mean a group of people who share common interests and values, are united by a common mission and regularly interact with each other.

Let’s say you want to gather your community. The desire is certainly good, but before that you should answer the question:

• Why are you gathering communities?

• What will change in the lives of its participants?

• What will change in your life?

• How will the world change as a result of the work of the community?

If, after answering these questions, you are finally convinced of the need to create a community, we offer the following plan for its formation:

1. Determine what your mission and purpose is

2. Decide why you are building a community

3. Define your audience – who will your community consist of?

4. Define your community’s routine: What will people do together?

5. Define key roles: who will be responsible for building and maintaining the community?

Let’s analyze the process of building a community using our Fitil program as an example

Why do we gather communities?
We wanted people to feel that they were interacting not only with businesses, but also with people. So that communication is initiated not only by us unilaterally, but users want and can talk about their needs, ideas and suggestions.

What will change in the lives of community members?
They will have a new environment, a new circle of communication. There they will be able to show themselves from new angles, communicate, share knowledge, practice communication skills, exchange experience and energy. That is, the participants will be able not only to gain new knowledge and emotions in the context of joint attendance at events, but also to share their competences and knowledge with each other in everyday communication as a full-fledged networking.

What will change in the life of the brand?
The project will receive an audience with greater loyalty and involvement in the processes. Community members not only choose events from the poster and sign up for them, but also take the initiative into their own hands – offer their ideas for events or help in organization.

How will the world change as a result of the work of the community?
People will be able to feel a little less alone, will have the opportunity to open up.

Now to the plan

1. We define the mission and goal.

“We really wanted to create a place that was safe and calm to socialize, where people could discover themselves, make friends, socialize and try new things.

Our program (and our future site) works within major cities. That is, where there is constant stress, a lot of work, people are in a great hurry and run around, not paying attention to each other. We, our community, help people to relax a little, to see people not only at work or in terms of how useful they can be, but from the point of view of ordinary communication. And not just communication, but safe human communication” – Natalia Kudenko, founder of Fitil

Therefore, the mission and goal of our community is to create a comfortable and safe environment for our audience, initiate and encourage communication, share useful information and experience.

2. What are we building a community around?

   A central activity is an event that repeats regularly, helps bring people together in the community and communicate the mission. This is the business card of your community.

In the case of Fitil, this central activity became events. We update the poster every week and fill it with events of various formats: book and language clubs, master classes, parties, tables, brunches, sailing or buggy riding – more than thirty options.

3. We define the audience.

Understanding the essence of the community and who we see in it, it is easier for us to find the right words for communication.

Fitil’s audience is educated, curious people who want to diversify their leisure time, are open to new acquaintances, communication, friendship and relationships.

4. We define the routine of the community.

The routine depends on the goals and is selected according to two parameters:
contentwhich is determined by the mission and goals of the community, the values ​​and interests of the people;
periodicitywhich is determined by the needs of people in society.

Our main priorities are the comfort of communication, competent communication, useful leisure time, human development within the community.

We chose a hybrid type of communication – offline + online.
We communicate live at events and online in social networks and chats, where we share event announcements and photo reports. The rubric in social networks is designed so that users can not only follow the poster, but also develop with the help of useful content that we create together with psychologists, learn more about our team and the community in general.

An additional question: how to develop a sense of belonging to the community in the participants?

• Get to know participants who are similar in spirit and interests, so that they have a personal connection. The algorithm in our application works well here, which after passing a psychological test can tell a person with which of the users there may be high compatibility.

• Discussing the mission of the community, values, asking to share feelings and stories – this is what we did on the eve of Valentine’s Day, when participants shared their stories about the failed February 14th.

• Create more opportunities for participants to offer their ideas, do something for the development of the community. This forms involvement at the deepest level (= contribution to a common cause).
  For example, we ask subscribers to our accounts to share their favorite relationship memes for the meterstick column or movies they want to see for our movie clubs.
  Also, participants share ideas for events and community development, which we then implement.

It is characteristic of the community to create its own “sub-communities”, this happened in our country as well. Our most active members have joined together in a Telegram chat and create joint meetings themselves. Some of the participants even become our super clients – that’s what we call those who later come to organize events with us.

5. Define key roles: who will be responsible for community formation and support?

Moderators

– handles mailings in the application, answers users’ questions, organizes events, helps participants open up during the meeting, shares photo and video reports with event participants.

“Moderators are inclined to calmness, to the respectful attitude of people to each other, to the fact that our users feel at home in their company. Being around people they don’t know.

After all, we understand that a person, coming to us for the first time, to some extent leaves the comfort zone. And we are very grateful to him for his determination and courage. And that’s why we at Fitil are responsible for how the meeting goes and whether the person at our event likes it. Therefore, we prepare them very scrupulously” – Natalia Kudenko, founder of Fitil

Marketing department

– broadcasts the values ​​of the community, creates content to satisfy the interests and needs of the audience, involving users in this process; supports the online routine of the community and looks for new opportunities to expand it.

“Our participants are interested in self-development and psychology, so we, together with psychologists, create useful materials that help better understand their behavior, build relationships with themselves, their partners and others. Also, each of us has our own dating and relationship experiences, which can be funny, sad or positive – we study these stories, ask to share them to support each other, to share past experiences in a safe atmosphere or to learn something from someone else’s experience. For example, in the comments under the post “5 ways to relax in an unfamiliar company”, participants actively shared their methods that help them, and I got new ideas for myself.

And where can we go without humor in the topic of love: that’s how we have a column on Tuesdays “memtornik”, where we ask participants to send us memes on the topic of relationships, so that we can then share them with everyone, many respond to the pictures 🙂

And we also created the section #fitil_особы, in which we talk about community members – so anyone who wants to can declare themselves in all our social networks” – Sofia Kumaneeva, Fitil marketer

Leader (ideological inspiration)

– talks about project affairs in social networks, shares plans, involves participants in the process of discussing community news, strengthening the feeling of involvement in the project.

Result

In order to build a community, you need:

• a great, inspiring mission;

• people close in values ​​and ready to share them;

• basic amount of routine, clear processes, traditions;

• basic platform for interaction: online or offline.

Is that all there is to it? Then act!

The rest can be built up later.