How to build an online community

...of lovely, clever, talented people

One way or another I’ve been building online communities for about 25 years, in and out of the day job.

The biggest — and most unexpected — benefit of writing this newsletter is the community that has formed around it. This is not something I planned, and I’m still slightly startled that it happened at all. I thought it would be useful to dig into that a bit, especially for anybody who is starting out on a similar road.

Photo by CHUTTERSNAP on Unsplash

Is anybody out there?

There was a specific moment I realised something special was happening. I know the date: February 23, 2022. That was the day I sent out this newsletter:

What are you writing right now?

I was poised to delete it. My finger was hovering over the button, so convinced was I that it was going to bomb. My expectation was that I’d send it out and in return get an awkward silence. At that point in time I had 481 subscribers, which seemed like an enormous number but was also very early days. I’d had interesting chats and comments in response to my essays, but I’d never dared to hand the baton over to the readers.

It felt like leaping off a cliff. Was this the moment I’d embarrass myself and my nascent newsletter experiment would by pointed and laughed at?

Before the end of the day the comments started coming. It ended up being over 40 comments in four days (including my responses). I was thrilled: I’d kept the tumbleweeds at bay.

It wasn’t a one-off, either. Each time I’ve sent out a discussion thread, it’s prompted interesting responses. Over time it’s become more self-sustaining, with you lovely readers talking to each other and not just to me. Some discussions have over 100 comments.

The thing to remember about newsletter numbers is that it isn’t really about the raw numbers, but the depth and quality. It’s absolutely a two-way thing: I learn all sorts from the people participating in each discussion, and even after the discussion is no longer active the conversations remain as a record.

Tip 1: Go niche

There are two ways to go with a community. You can go as broad as possible, in order to attract as many people as possible. This is where the social platforms have gone in the last decade: they just want everyone. Twitter/X and Facebook only make sense and are only useful if everyone is there, because that’s the promise that you’ll always be able to connect with your mum/colleague/friend/hairdresser/etc. That’s also why some of the startups that have come along as challengers haven’t quite worked: they don’t have everyone (yet).

It also happens to be the way to attract a wide variety of advertisers. 🤔

The downside is that nobody really cares. ‘Facebook’ isn’t a community, it’s a platform. There are communities within Facebook, which benefit from the massive scale of the ‘parent’, but there’s no real allegiance to the underlying system.

The alternative is to go narrow. Find a niche that interests you, and go for that. There will be far fewer people to theoretically join such a community, but the ones that do will be really into it.

That’s what happens with newsletters, like this one. When I started it I wasn’t sure what the angle would be, as ‘writing’ is about as broad as it gets and there are already a billion resources for that. I ended up going down two particular avenues: serial fiction, and leaning into the idea of ‘writing more’ (or, at all) rather than ‘writing well’.

Everyone who considers subscribing knows what they’re getting. Anyone not interested will know that ahead of time, which creates a useful bit of self-selection. The readers here — you, hello! — are here because we’re interested in the same things.

If you don’t have the scale and resources of Meta — I doubt Zuck is reading this — niche is the way to go.

Narrow and deep, not wide and shallow.

Tip 2: Invite debate

This seems obvious, but it’s easy to overlook. Make sure you invite people to talk!

Thing is, most people are lurkers. They read and thoroughly appreciate what you’re putting out, but leaving comments isn’t their vibe. Which is, of course, completely fine. Most people read books, watch movies, play games, without feeling an urge to contribute to the discourse.

I’d say there are three types of reader:

1. The lurker. They read, they really enjoy your work, but you’ll never directly hear from them.¹

2. The commenter. As long as you invite them in and remind them that discussion is welcome, these people will show up.

3. The contributor. These are the most engaged and will always like, comment, share and so on, without needing an invite. They have opinions, will share them, and also have the potential to be your biggest fans and supporters. A rare find, though.

These aren’t fixed positions. A lurker can become a commenter. A commenter can become a contributor. But everyone starts somewhere, and that’s about making it clear that you, the writer, wants that conversation.

That’s why you need to have little calls-to-action like this one:

It’s why you need to make the point within your copy. What does community mean to you?

Someone else’s newsletter is their domain and it can be intimidating to raise your head above the parapet. If you want comments and discussion, you have to roll out the welcome mat.

Tip 3: Set the tone

Something I’ve observed from establishing and managing communities over the years is that it is critical to be active and set the tone. If you create the space and leave it to its own devices, it’ll evolve into its own beast — which may or may not be what you had in mind.

It means wading in yourself. Want an irreverent comments section full of acerbic wit? You have to demonstrate that first. Want a serious intellectual debate space? That’s only going to happen if you show readers what you mean. Want a relaxed, friendly space that is casual and tolerant? That’s up to you.

As the writer, your writing and comments set the tone for the entire ecosystem. The style and content of your newsletters are guides to what you expect. If a newsletter is a rageful political commentary on the US election, that’s going to attract a particular type of community. If you write a nostalgic newsletter about 1980s toys, that’ll be very different. If you’re an academic re-examining historical events, you’re going to appeal to a specific cohort of readers.

I make a point in my newsletter of sticking to a few principles:

1. I always stay positive (while strenuously avoiding tipping into life coach guru territory).

2. I never go negative: you won’t read something from me that is tearing into someone else.

3. I keep it light: I’m very keen on silly dad jokes, even when discussing something complex. Especially then.

4. I don’t often stray from the point of the newsletter: you won’t find me writing extensively about politics, for example.

5. Zero tolerance for discrimination, hate speech and general nastiness

I don’t have a manifesto pinned up anywhere, but most of that should be self-evident in the newsletter itself, and the way I conduct myself in the comments. That’s what I mean about setting the tone: you demonstrate it in every sentence you put into the newsletter, and every comment you leave (on your own newsletter and anyone else’s). As soon as you walk in the room, you’re setting that tone.

There’s another quirk to consider here in how you provide access. Most newsletter platforms have options for how comments work, and whether they’re accessible to everyone or only paid subscribers. This will have an impact, inevitably, on the atmosphere and type of discourse, and is very contextual to each writer.

If you don’t set the tone, and just leave a space to develop by itself, there can be unpredictable consequences. Perhaps people show up that you weren’t expecting. Maybe the tone of discussion veers off in an uncomfortable direction. Once that happens, it can be very difficult to bring it back on track.

Tip 4: Do provocations

Guidance is also needed when it comes to what is being discussed. What do you want people to talk about? Don’t leave it to chance!

This is where you can work questions and provocations into your writing. Invite commentary or feedback or alternative ideas. If you’ve written about a thorny or controversial topic, invite counterpoints.

You can do this even more overtly by sending out a newsletter that is explicitly about that exchange of ideas. I particularly enjoyed this one of mine:

Fictional maps: yes or no?

I didn’t expect the responses to be so vociferous and varied.

Questions don’t always have to be intellectual or debate-centric. You can also invite people to talk about themselves, because that’s something we all like doing. For example:

What's your current project?

The questions you pose also contribute to that tone that I was talking about earlier. The subject matter and phrasing will influence the comments and the sorts of people you get contributing. Simply by inviting counterpoints, you’re establishing that you’re interested in hearing them.

Tip 5: Engage & respond

Being present in your own community is essential to some of the points I’ve already made, but it’s worth focusing on.

A newsletter-based community is an exchange between writer and reader. It’s an opportunity for conversation. If you invite comments and pose questions but never complete that feedback loop, your readers will feel like they’re speaking into the void. Or maybe you’re just using those comments as a marketing exercise.

This doesn’t mean you have to immediately respond, or sit at your keyboard anxiously jumping on every comment. That can be just as unnerving to a reader as no response at all.

I tend to let comments run for half a day-or-so before getting involved. That gives everyone a chance to say their piece before I dive in with replies. Go in too early and you can short circuit the discussion: the author being present can be intimidating, depending on the context.

This is also an opportunity to re-establish the tone you’re going for. You can steer discussions back on track, if needed. If someone has strongly disagreed with you, it’s a chance for you to reply in a way that furthers the discussion rather than creating rancour.

This sounds like a lot of work

Yes, it does. And you don’t have to go down this route: it’s very easy to turn comments off, if you’re not interested in nurturing your own community.²

I actively enjoy meeting and interacting with readers, so it’s absolutely part of what motivates me to write the newsletter in the first place. On top of that, though, vibrant discussions help to bind everyone together and is a way for readers to meet each other. I’ve seen discussions that have been self-sustaining, with readers talking to each other without me needing to take part.

If you deepen those connections through inviting debate, and creating those two-way conversations, you foster a situation in which readers are more likely to subscribe, and to help spread the word, and be advocates for what you’re doing. If people know that I exist and am present, they are more likely to recommend this newsletter to others. It’s a very virtuous circle.

---

Thanks for reading. Hope that was useful.

Dickens is often cited as one of the early pioneers of serial fiction. So before we go any further, let’s take a moment to appreciate this:

I finally, after months of not quite getting round to it, watched PREY, the Predator semi-prequel. It was very good, and a good example of a film which knows precisely what it wants to do, and then doing it. The idea of using the language of the Western, but entirely from the POV of the Native Americans, and then adding the Predator is so simple, and yet feels so fresh.

Over the weekend I also finished playing through the 20th anniversary remaster of Beyond Good & Evil. It was a game I adored two decades ago, which makes me feel horrendously old, and the remaster has done a great job of updating it to match what my faulty memory thinks the game looked like back then.

It’s a fascinating story to play in 2024. Some mild spoilers ahead: In it, you play as Jade, a wildlife photographer on a planet under subversive control of a secret alien species. You end up being recruited by the resistance, and are tasked with taking photos as evidence of the conspiracy. Your are then tasked with broadcasting the photographic evidence to the population, to convince them to rise up and fight back.

A lot of this lands differently in 2024. In the early 2000s, in the wake of the millennium, conspiracies were still the fun, cool things that The X Files played with. They were fun, cooky things that made for cool stories and stuff to natter about in the playground. Large swathes of grown-ups did not believe them. That’s no longer the case, probably in large part thanks to the reality-warping capabilities of social media.

The idea of ‘evidence’ making a difference has also evaporated, at least in some countries. When people are so polarised, they will wilfully ignore evidence that contradicts their world view, and embrace evidence (not matter how spurious) that reinforces it.

And then we have the idea of ‘a photograph’ being a reliable piece of evidence in the first place. Our media landscape is so warped by digital manipulation and now AI that it’s increasingly difficult to know what to trust.

All of that makes Beyond Good & Evil a curious historical relic, even while the beats of the story still work very well. Thematically it’s still valid, but the solutions it presents to its problems now appear tragically naive.

Right, that’s enough of me for today. See you all later in the week.

Oh, and given the subject of today’s post, don’t forget to:

1. Or they might quietly email you directly, on a more personal basis.

2. Or, indeed, if your subject matter is too sensitive for an open forum to make sense.