Member Avatar for MktgRob

"If you build it, they will come"

Great line from a great movie but too many people apply the same logic to corporate websites (on of my clients is one of them). If your community growth become stagnant or worse, reversed, is it possible that you have allowed yourself to be complacent in assuming that people will join your community without any other effort? Does anyone know of a community that has taken the "I built it and now they will come" attitude?

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Dani AI

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Good to see this brought up. describes the classic launch-without-a-plan trap and ’s experience underlines one critical reality: communities need people who will show up and model the behaviour you want. When the company treats the space as a promotional channel instead of a place for members to get value, growth stalls and engagement falls.

  • Define a single, concrete purpose (what should members do first?) and design everything around that action.
  • Seed deliberately: recruit 10–50 advocates, give them small roles (welcome, reply champion, topic host) and a short task list for week one.
  • Build a frictionless onboarding: automated welcome, one sticky “how to participate” thread, and a first-task prompt that’s simple to complete.
  • Populate the site with 15–30 high-quality starter threads and 3 evergreen resources so new arrivals always see useful content.
  • Make promotional content explicit and limited: a separate announcements channel and clear rules prevents the community from becoming a billboard.
  • Set a reply SLA for staff (first reply within 24 hours) so newcomers aren’t ignored.
  • Recognize contributors with low-cost signals (badges, pinned profiles) rather than pay-for-post schemes that attract low-quality content.

Measure progress with activation (first contribution within 7 days), retention cohorts at 30/90 days, new versus returning contributors, reply rate, and time-to-first-reply. Expect measurable traction only after several months of consistent seeding and rituals — plan for a 6–12 month runway.

If the client insists on overt selling, suggest a private customer group or time-boxed promotions. Otherwise, position the community as customer success and product-feedback infrastructure; it needs a budget and a dedicated human to manage it, not an automated brochure.

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Member Avatar for InsightsDigital

Yes - I actually have built a few communities with that attitude -

http://getmeajobtoday.pbworks.com/

I have also built other communities - both for personal and corporate - and unless you have a few advocates - the site will not grow.

Member Avatar for MktgRob

My client is eager to start a community but his approach is half 'field of dreams', half 'now that I have your attention let me sell, sell, sell'.

I am hesitant with him.

Member Avatar for InsightsDigital

Many sites have that strong sell side and for me, its a turn off.

Member Avatar for MktgRob

Many sites have that strong sell side and for me, its a turn off.

As a person who entered the business world in marketing before the prevalence of the internet, it is sad to see so many intelligent people who have forgotten that consultative sales are always better for long term results than the hard sell.

Member Avatar for InsightsDigital

I agree. But it is also easy to spot spammer sites and shady sites where the hard sell is so blatant.

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