Launching Your Community: Lessons From Product Hunt, Trello, and Optimizely

The journey of 1,000 members starts with a single… a single what, exactly? Are you ready to open the doors to your community, but you’re still trying to figure out the first step to launch a community from scratch?

It all starts with those first loyal members. But then what? What’s the second step? And the third? How start with “nothing” and launch an engaging and thriving community?

It’s enough to make you feel like you’re spinning your wheels. Launching a community from scratch can feel a lot like a chicken-and-egg conundrum. Nobody wants to join a community with no members and no engagement, but you can’t get members and engagement unless you already have a community that’s offering value, right?

Well, not exactly.

We’re here to show you how to follow in the footsteps of some of the biggest communities in the world as you get your own community off the ground, one member at a time.

Case Studies

1. The 10 Unscalable Tactics Quibb Used to Build a Community of Highly Influential Professionals

In the earliest of days, you have to build relationships. Do things that don’t scale.

2. The 7 (Mostly Free) Tools Product Hunt Used to Build Their Early-Stage Community

Keep your community lean in the early stages. Try the 7 tools Product Hunt used when they launched and spend less than $80/month.

3. 15 Community Growth Hacks from Polyvore’s CEO, Jess Lee
Yes, you can growth hack community-building. Polyvore breaks it down.

4. How Rover Grew Their Community 3500% in One Year by Letting It Run with the Dogs

Community building is not about management. It’s about leadership. You need to develop yourself as a leader to build community effectively.

5. The Trello Playbook for Launching a Slack Community

Strengthen your community network through engaging a communication tool like Slack to build channels and foster collaboration through instant messaging.

6. How Optimizely Launched a Re-Designed Community Site That Tripled New Member Registrations

Learn how Optimizely redesigned the user experience of their community to increase:

• Members’ time on the site by 103%
• Completed registrations by 190%
• Member log-ins by 117%

From the Blog

The 10-Step Process to Build a Thriving Community from Scratch

From building your identity to driving participation early on to moving to a scalable platform, these are the 10 steps you need to take to get your community off the ground.

From CMX Summit

At the 2014 CMX Summit, Ryan Hoover—founder of Product Hunt—spoke on how to launch and grow a community-driven content platform, including:

• The 3 Stages of Community
• 13 Tactics for Building Community
• Quick Tips for Community Builders

CMX Summit

CMX Summit is the premier conference for community professionals, founders, and organizations. Join us and hundreds of your fellow community builders for 2 days of community-focused sessions and connecting with community-driven professionals.

CMX Summit brings together experts and pragmatic approaches to community for business success. Our conference seeks to expand the discussions, techniques, and tactics applied to community building and support communities and their builders at scale. We want to show businesses practical ways to invest in their communities.