To fight or not to fight
There are a plethora of communities out there today. Most of them put out good content, some of them put out great content, but all of them are technically your competitors. Does that mean you should race against them in the game of community growth? Not necessarily.
Content creators figured out something very smart about the content space. You can grow by collaborating with others rather than constantly battling them — even with other creators in your exact same niche.
The channel Prakhar Ke Pravachan is a great example of this concept, growing from 0 to 100k subscribers by collaborating with everyone from Shwetabh Gangwar (1.24M subscribers) to MC Stan.
The secret: Community collaboration
Community is exactly the same, yet how often have you seen Community A x Community B events outside of the NFT space?
The problem with brand communities is that many of them are venture-backed tech companies, and their CEOs often have competitiveness seeping out of every pore. For them, it's as much about denying others a win as it is about racking up their own wins. This attitude absolutely does not work with content and community. In fact, building collaborative communities is really important.
— Learn from a real life example
If you’re a gamer, you’ve probably heard of Valorant. If not, then it’s essentially an online multiplayer video game. Our community once played a Valorant match with people who originally were from another community. The match had thousands of viewers, and there was a lot of cross-pollination between two communities that were in the same space and same niche. Since people can join multiple communities and want to be a part of the all best ones, events like these are great ways to collaborate without explicitly putting up an announcement like "Go join this other community kthxbye".
Even though neither of them were gaming communities, using a game as a bonding tool between two communities was something stolen from the way some content creators collaborate and cross pollinate audiences.
Follow a simple 4 step plan to expand your community
So, if you want your community to start collaborating with others, we’ve got a game plan for you. It’s honestly quite simple and easy to follow -
Step 1: Prepare a list of communities
Find a list of communities you'd like to collaborate with.
Step 2: Create an outreach plan
Reach out to them and propose to collaborate. Not all will reply, so find other channels in. We’ve found Twitter DMs to be the best way in.
Step 3: Collaboration opportunity between communities
Find an innovative way to collaborate (multiplayer games that are live streamed, podcasts, a joint collection launch, etc.). Get creative.
Step 4: Clear CTA
Make sure there's a clear CTA for the members of both communities to join the other one. Probably a reward too.
💡Graphy Community Platform is working on a native way for two communities to collaborate, allowing both communities to create a temporary fused stage, where an event can be live streamed. Both community "join" buttons will be available on stage.
When you worry about competing, you lose a lot of time which otherwise would've been spent on growth. So, change your outlook and befriend your competitors. After all, in the community game, competition is for losers. Click here if you want us to help your community step out of the competition and grow with collaboration.
