How to build an online community - The 5Cs Framework
A strong, engaged online community is the best way to build a profitable business in today’s digital world.
✅ An online community will tell you what they need from you.
✅ They will tell you what they like and don’t like about your product/service/widget
✅ They will share their problems with you so you can create solutions that meet their needs.
Building an online community is one of the most important ingredients in how I’ve built my own multi-million dollar business from scratch.
Over the years I’ve built an online community around my ideal person/client and I understand this person (i.e. you!) so well that I know exactly what you need to help you grow and succeed as a person and a business owner.
This means that I know that a product/service that I create will sell before I even make it - as I’ve spent that much time really getting to know the pain points of my particular community.
But this hasn’t been something that I’ve always known how to do.
I have spent nearly 10 years teaching myself how to build and nurture a community and over the past few months I’ve been thinking a lot about the steps that I have used to do this (and continue to use every single day).
From this thinking I have distilled the process down in to five key stages - which I am calling The 5Cs Framework.
I’ll break it down for you in this post. :)
Before you get started
Before you get started with building an online community there are two important questions to ask yourself.
Why are you building this community?
The first question is WHY you’re creating this community.
It might be to:
share your knowledge and experience and help people
sell your products and services
connect with people and make friends
build community around your cause (e.g. non-profit or community organisations)
find your “1000 true fans” (if you don’t know what this means then read Kevin Kelly’s famous easy where he talks about this concept)
Or there could be other reasons as well.
Building an online community is hard work and takes a lot of effort and perseverance over a long period of time. If you don’t have a strong reason why you want to create your community it’s unlikely that you’ll have the stamina to put in the effort that’s going to be required. So finding your ‘why’ first is very important!
Where will you build the community
Once you know why you are doing it you have to think where you want to build the community. This means thinking about the best platform to use to start building your community.
That might be; Instagram, TikTok, YouTube, LinkedIn, email - there’s so many options and the way to choose which one to start with is to go with:
the platform you use the most already and enjoy being on
the platform where your ideal people are hanging out already - e.g. there’s no point trying to build your community on Twitter if none of your ideal people really hang out over there
Over time, as your community grows, you’ll likely expand it out over many platforms, but to get started you should just focus on one platform and get really good at using that platform first.
How to protect yourself from losing your online community
Another important point to mention is that whichever platform you choose make sure you also start an email list immediately and regularly move people off the platform you’re using (which you don’t own!) and over to your email list (which you do own).
Let me share why this is important…
In 2021 Instagram shut my account down and I had no idea if I was going to get it back. At the time I had about 35,000 followers and I was looking at the very real risk of never being able to contact or reach those people again.
I was quite annoyed at the potential of losing my account but I didn’t panic too much because over the years of growing my business I have grown a strong email list of more than 30,000 people, many of them from my social media platforms. So I knew that if I didn’t get my Instagram account back I would lose contact with some people on that platform, but not with everyone.
Luckily I got the account back about 5 days later but let it be a warning to make sure you start an email list early in to your community building journey and email them regularly with something helpful that they actually want to open and read!
My 5Cs Framework
So now that word of warning is out of the way let’s look at my 5Cs framework that I use to build my own online community and that you can use and adapt to build yours.
I have developed this framework over 10 years of building my own online community.
It outlines a step by step process that I use to capture ideas, create content, share content and then connect and collaborate with my community. The best way I’ve found to build a community is to compartmentalise each of the activities that are involved in the framework and work on these at distinct times in my day or week.
Here is an overview of my 5-part framework:
Curate
Consume
Create
Connect
Collaborate
Let me break each step down for you.
1: Curate
To build a strong online community you need to create content that is helpful, interesting, unique and different to what is already been seen everywhere.
People get bored easily on social media and have very short attention spans. You need to be memorable and stand for something. Don’t be generic and boring!
In order to stand out you need to be constantly finding new ideas and things to share or talk about. And to have new ideas and a fresh perspective you need to always be on the hunt for inspiration.
So this part of my framework is all about curating those sources of inspiration and saving them in a place that is helpful to use later.
I find inspiration and sources of ideas from all over the place, for example:
websites I’m looking at
podcasts I’m listening to
shows or documentaries I’m watching
YouTube videos
just being out and about and having an idea pop in to my head
Every day when I’m going about my regular routines I might come across articles or links or ideas that spark an idea for me. These are things that I want to read, listen to or watch later to give me a new insight or perspective.
BUT…most of the time when I stumble across these sources of inspiration I am in the middle of working on something else. I don’t want to stop what I’m doing right there and read it and process it as this would be very disruptive to my current project.
But I also know my brain is like a goldfish and I definitely don’t trust it to remember this source of inspiration. If I don’t capture the idea somewhere I will just as quickly forget it!
So I need a way to quickly capture these ideas and store them somewhere to consume or think about later when I have some dedicated time.
My quick capture system is quite complicated and involves a number of pieces of tech but yours can be as simple as having a folder in the notes app on your phone that you throw things in to as you find them.
Here’s a bit of an overview of how my quick capture system works (for those who nerd out on stuff like this like I do haha!):
1.I have a quick capture widget on the home screen of my phone that links with my Notion quick capture dashboard
2. I have an organised folder system on my phone where I drop ideas in as I have them
3. I use the ‘Save to Notion’ web clipper on my chrome browser where I can send web links directly to dedicated databases within my Notion dashboard for processing later
4. I also use an app called ‘Instapaper’ to save full articles or videos I want to consume later as well.
SUMMARY OF THIS STAGE:
Curate what you find as you are doing other work or activities in your day.
Develop a quick capture system to save ideas to
Park/save the source of inspiration to consume later when you have some time.
2: Consume
The next stage of the framework is consume.
During the week I have dedicated time put aside for consuming content. I block time out in my calendar to:
read articles I’ve clipped or saved during the week
watch videos I’ve saved
consume online courses I’ve purchased
think about ideas and plan content
Below you can see my ‘ideal week calendar’ and you can see that I have time blocks set aside each week for each of the parts of my 5C framework.
For example:
create = my 1 hour blog writing session each morning or my reels and YouTube recording sessions
create = my daily working sprint sessions where I might create new lead magnets, webinars or online courses
connect/collaborate = happens every day during my daily non-negotiables sessions
consume = dedicated time on Thursday/Friday afternoons specifically for reading, watching things and thinking about new ideas
SUMMARY OF THIS STAGE:
if you aren’t regularly consuming new ideas and information then the ideas you are sharing with your community will get boring and stale (and will be the same as what everyone else is sharing!)
have specific times blocked in your calendar for consumption so you always have time to think through new ideas to share.
3: Create
To build an online community you need to be creating new content every single day.
The more content you create, the faster your community will grow - it’s as simple as that.
But the content has to be good! That’s why it’s important to have the two steps before this one (so you always have great ideas to share!).
Creating high quality content is a whole massive topic in itself but here’s a few of my blog articles about how to do that if you would like to learn more:
SUMMARY OF THIS STAGE:
to build an online community you need to be creating new content every single day
4: Connect
Creating high quality content isn’t enough to cultivate a strong and engaged community.
You also need to build connection with your community and show leadership within your niche.
Here’s just some of the ways I do this:
I’ve built a free Facebook group for my ideal people where we can all hang out in a safe space and ask questions. (Join here if you’re not yet part of it - we have more than 18,000 members at the time of writing this post!)
I personally answer every comment on my social media platforms
I encourage people in to my DMs to ask questions and connect - and I respond personally to every DM that I get (and I get nearly a 100 messages every day). The people in your DMs are your most engaged and connected community members - so take care of them!
I comment on other people’s posts and content they are creating
I just generally try to be as helpful as I can and give away as much value for free - without any expectation of anything in return. As soon as you start doing this with the intent of trying to “make money” people will sniff you out. I genuinely don’t share free content to try and make money as I already make plenty of money - I do it because I just really like helping other people and do it whether or not someone is a paying client in one of my courses or not.
SUMMARY OF THIS STAGE:
to grow a community you need to be social and connect with people
you also need to show leadership within your community
answer every comment and every DM you get, these are your most engaged community members so take care of them.
give away as much free value as you can - without the expectation of anything in return
5: Collaborate
The final part of the framework is collaboration.
As your community grows and you spend time building relationships with people in your DMs and via email you will start to form friendships and potential collaborations and partnerships will emerge.
I have made so many ‘internet’ friends over the 10 years I’ve been in business. Many of these people have turned in to ‘real life’ friends and I have built a lot of successful business relationships, partnerships and friendships from within my community.
Once you start to build these connections the potential for your collaborations are endless. For example:
live videos together to help each other grow your communities
joint trainings/webinars
guest blog posts
affiliate for each others’ products/services
partnerships with suppliers, trades where you refer clients and work back and forth to each other
SUMMARY OF THIS STAGE:
as your connections grow with people in your community think about how you can form partnerships, affiliate relationships and business relationships that could be mutually beneficial
I personally feel that every single business owner should be trying to build their own engaged online community.
Your community will bring you insights, feedback, partnerships, sales and lots of friendships and connections as well. There are so many benefits…
But building an online community takes a lot of time and effort - so know your reasons why you want to grow a community and start before you are ready (because it will take a lot longer than you expect!)
Courses and Templates for Designers and Architects
DO YOU WANT TO….
Improve your professionalism?
Find more clients?
Bring in more revenue?
Create better systems and processes?
Then check out my business courses and templates for designers and architects.
These courses and templates leave you with work done - not just a long list of things you need to do next. We have a really strong focus on taking action and getting things created that improve your business.
Enjoy the rest of your day!
Clare x
Dr Clare Le Roy