Building a Design Community Online

I often see people who misinterpret social media as a community building tool. It can be used as such, but very tough to do. (and most people who think they are doing it right are just building another distribution outlet — which is great, but different from building a community) It requires a slightly different approach than the average social strategy. Social Platforms (like X & LinkedIn) • Open networks • Content dependent • Great because people are usually spending lots of their time there • Tough to stand out since you’re competing against the algorithm, other creators, brands, and everyone else in the feed Community Platforms (like Discord, Slack, Circle) • Usually closed networks • Dependent on user engagement • Great for consolidating your core group of members • Very tough to maintain over time since you need people to come back to your specific group (even tougher if engagement is declining) Ok, so how do you use social platforms top build an online community? 1/ Define your community 2/ Share it on your social accounts, in your bio, etc. 3/ Align your content around this community and what they love 4/ When you create your content, keep this specific community in mind 5/ Share updates publicly just like you would within a Discord channel 6/ Allocate a good chunk of time per day to community management 7/ Nurture your most engaged followers by supporting their content 8/ Make introductions directly in the feed wherever possible 9/ Use your platform to elevate others in your community 10/ Introduce group language that people can use How do you know when you’re doing it right? • People will use your account to discover others with similar interests • People will use your language and phrases in their posts • People will use the comments section of your posts like a forum • People will host meetups or connect with one another IRL at events • People will often tag you in content related to your community In closing, Yes, you can use social platforms like X & LinkedIn to build an online community. But it requires much more effort than just posting content about your brand or the problem you solve. You’ve got to constantly keep the community you’re serving top of mind, put in the time to nurture your members, and be consistent over a long period of time.

Please don't listen to the advice "Just post!" or "Record your first video." There is nothing more deadly for your personal brand. I get it. The gurus are encouraging you to start. Because trying and failing IS better than not trying at all. But you know what it also is? - A terrible waste of your time. - Guaranteed frustration when you don't get the reactions you were hoping for. -Embarrassment since once something is online, you can delete it but you already gave people a first impression of you on which they formed their opinion -Sometimes wasted money too since often people buy a lot of software or equipment they don't need since they are in a complete free-for-all, anything-goes phase So what should you do instead? Easy! 1. Figure out your core brand strategy: your niche services, your ICP, your positioning, your SWOT analysis, etc. Don't DIY this. Hire a brand strategist. 2. Pick one to two platforms max. to get started on where your ICP hangs out most. You can always expand later but doing too much at once is deadly for growth. 3. Set up a newsletter from day one (do not skip this!). I recommend Kit (formerly ConvertKit) 4. Hire a coach or find the right program to teach you how to succeed on your chosen platforms. Be careful to interview a couple before you jump in. Look carefully at their credentials, not testimonials, for RESULTS. Avoid hacks or promises to automate everything for you. Do not hop from coach to coach or buy multiple programs. P.S. If you can afford it, working 1:1 with an expert is ALWAYS better than becoming a groupie, which often is a total distraction instead of doing the work. Worse of all, inside communities, often people give one another bad advice. 5. Follow your expert's teachings and produce content for at least 6 months aligned with your audience while driving them towards your newsletter. Just put in the work and stay focused eye on the prize. You don't have to DIY it either. I work with excellent graphic designers, video editors, and copywriters who help me produce high-quality, professional content. Try it and report back if it works. That's why there is so much bad content out there. People don't plan well, don't hire the right help, and then keep trying various things wondering why they aren't growing. Sticking with one thing, investing money into it, and then seeing it through is the hardest thing you can do. But this is how you will win. Let me know in the comments: Have you ever followed the 'Just Do It' philosophy then realized it was a big mistake and got a real strategy? Have you tried any of the steps I mentioned above, and if so, which worked best? What do you know now that you wish you would have known earlier about growing your brand and business?

🧠 Is Your Workplace Designed for Everyone—Or Just the Majority? 👀 Imagine this: A brilliant new hire is ready to contribute—but the tools, meetings, and environment weren’t built with their needs in mind. They’re not underperforming. They’re under-accommodated. ➡️ And this is exactly where universal design comes in. 💡Universal design is not about making special exceptions. It’s about building inclusion into the very foundation of your workplace. When we design with everyone in mind from the start, regardless of ability, background, or communication style, we don’t just accommodate; we empower. This approach transforms workplaces from reactive to proactive, from surface-level compliance to deep systemic inclusion. And here’s the truth many leaders are realizing: 👉 👉 True inclusion isn’t about making room—it’s about designing a workplace where no one is ever left out to begin with. 🛠️ Below are 5 ways to start embedding universal design into your organization: ✅ Audit accessibility – Regularly evaluate your digital tools, websites, and physical workspaces. ✅ Invest in inclusive technology – Use platforms that work seamlessly with screen readers, voice input, and other assistive tools. ✅ Diversify communication – Incorporate alt-text, audio descriptions, and transcripts; avoid relying solely on visuals. ✅ Train your teams – Equip staff and leaders with practical tools and mindsets that promote inclusion. ✅ Institutionalize it – Update hiring practices, performance reviews, and promotion paths to reflect inclusive values. 🧠 These changes don’t just benefit one group—they improve the experience for everyone—and that is the brilliance of universal design. 🏆 The Payoff: Equity that drives engagement and innovation. Organizations that embrace universal design consistently see: ✔️ Higher employee satisfaction ✔️ Better team collaboration ✔️ Greater innovation (because diverse perspectives are heard and valued) ✔️ Lower turnover and higher retention 🔥 The hidden cost of exclusion isn’t just about morale—it’s about missed potential, lost innovation, and the quiet departure of voices we never truly heard. When systems, tools, and environments aren’t built with inclusion in mind, we don’t just create inconvenience—we create barriers. And those barriers silently push away the very talent we say we want to attract and retain. Universal design flips that script. It ensures that everyone, not just the majority, can participate, contribute, and thrive from day one. 🎓 Ready to Take Action? Start With Our Signature Workshop “Working with Diverse Physical and Mental Ability.” 📩 Message me to learn how we can bring this powerful session to your team. #UniversalDesign #InclusiveWorkplaces #ChampionDiverseVoices #Neurodiversity #BelongingByDesign #AccessibilityMatters

I once worked with a team that was, quite frankly, toxic. The same two team members routinely derailed meeting agendas. Eye-rolling was a primary form of communication. Side conversations overtook the official discussion. Most members had disengaged, emotionally checking out while physically present. Trust was nonexistent. This wasn't just unpleasant—it was preventing meaningful work from happening. The transformation began with a deceptively simple intervention: establishing clear community agreements. Not generic "respect each other" platitudes, but specific behavioral norms with concrete descriptions of what they looked like in practice. The team agreed to norms like "Listen to understand," "Speak your truth without blame or judgment," and "Be unattached to outcome." For each norm, we articulated exactly what it looked like in action, providing language and behaviors everyone could recognize. More importantly, we implemented structures to uphold these agreements. A "process observer" role was established, rotating among team members, with the explicit responsibility to name when norms were being upheld or broken during meetings. Initially, this felt awkward. When the process observer first said, "I notice we're interrupting each other, which doesn't align with our agreement to listen fully," the room went silent. But within weeks, team members began to self-regulate, sometimes even catching themselves mid-sentence. Trust didn't build overnight. It grew through consistent small actions that demonstrated reliability and integrity—keeping commitments, following through on tasks, acknowledging mistakes. Meeting time was protected and focused on meaningful work rather than administrative tasks that could be handled via email. The team began to practice active listening techniques, learning to paraphrase each other's ideas before responding. This simple practice dramatically shifted the quality of conversation. One team member later told me, "For the first time, I felt like people were actually trying to understand my perspective rather than waiting for their turn to speak." Six months later, the transformation was remarkable. The same team that once couldn't agree on a meeting agenda was collaboratively designing innovative approaches to their work. Conflicts still emerged, but they were about ideas rather than personalities, and they led to better solutions rather than deeper divisions. The lesson was clear: trust doesn't simply happen through team-building exercises or shared experiences. It must be intentionally cultivated through concrete practices, consistently upheld, and regularly reflected upon. Share one trust-building practice that's worked well in your team experience. P.S. If you’re a leader, I recommend checking out my free challenge: The Resilient Leader: 28 Days to Thrive in Uncertainty  https://lnkd.in/gxBnKQ8n

Start a newsletter. Acquire subscribers organically. Send a welcome email and offer free advice, not a paid course. Clean your list every 7 days. Host a local meetup in your home. Shake some hands, make a toast. Ask them to subscribe to your newsletter, give them a pen and paper. Send a thoughtful follow-up email to those who attended, thanking them personally. Share a story about the meetup in your next newsletter; make it warm and human. Print business cards, but only hand them out to people who genuinely ask. Keep the design simple—just your name, your newsletter, and a single sentence that captures its essence. Invite a guest to co-write an edition of your newsletter, someone whose perspective contrasts or complements your own. Interview them over coffee, not Zoom, and include a photo from your meeting in the email. Give away something unexpected—a playlist, a handwritten postcard, or a favorite recipe. Celebrate milestones, like your 100th subscriber, by sharing what you’ve learned so far. Host a virtual meetup, but make it quirky. No slides. Just a casual Q&A, or a live demo of something you’ve mentioned in your newsletter. Let it feel unscripted, imperfect, real. Ask your readers what they need, not what you want to sell them. Run a survey, not to mine data but to spark ideas. When you write about their feedback, give credit to individuals by name. Print out your newsletter, fold it neatly, and mail it to your friends with a handwritten note that says, “Pass this along to someone you think would enjoy it.”

We’ve managed $100k+ ad budgets promoting online and in-person events and here’s what we’ve learned: 1. Timing matters. The majority of ticket sales or registrations happen in the weeks leading up to the event. We account for this by allocating the majority of the spend closer to the day of the event. 2. Social proof converts. For one client, we searched LinkedIn for anyone who posted about the event after the fact and ranked them by engagement. We then promoted those posts as thought leader ads in anticipation of the next event. 3. Promote transparency. If you are at liberty to do so, why not give away the attendee list? If you have a high value audience and have your targeting dialed in, try a campaign where you gate the attendee list. We’ve seen this tactic promote great conversations that directly lead to ticket sales. 4. Ads that feature as many speakers as possible tend to perform the best. Generally we see ads with faces perform well, so try combining all the speakers into one post. You can then split those ads up into individual speaker ads, use them in carousels, etc. Above all, we’ve learned that preparation is key to promoting these events. For one client, we put together a schedule of ads that would go out as we got closer to the day of the event. This included “countdown” ads where we’d say “the event is 1 month out!” etc. as we built a sense of urgency. Because we put together this plan we were able to get creative requests to our designers early. We had all the creatives ready to go months out from the event and had all the campaigns built and scheduled so that they would pause and activate as the countdown got closer. We’re always testing new strategies to promote these events and it’s impossible to fit all of our experiments into one post. For example, LinkedIn has built in event ads which allow people to register for a LinkedIn event directly from the ad. The key to improving performance for that ad unit is to build up as many organic registrations as possible. Since you can see how many people registered directly on the ad, we’ve seen that a higher number of organic registrations directly impacts the conversion rate on the paid side. Interested in hearing more about how we promote events via ads? Feel free to reach out. We have a ton more ideas we’re looking to test. 🧑🔬

Newsletter operators are lonely (apparently). A guy analyzed 16,271 Reddit posts on newsletters, and community/support was the biggest pain point. Here’s how to build a community of friends you can build alongside: When you hit a wall, the wrong question to ask is “What’s the answer?” The right question is “Who’s the answer?” Every big leap I’ve made in newsletters came from a person, not a blog post. Here’s how I’ve built that kind of network (and how you can copy it): 1. Be a “reply guy” Pick 20 operators you respect. Turn on notifications for them. For 2 months, reply thoughtfully to everything they post. Then DM them. Tell them you love their content and want to jam/trade notes. That’s how I met my buddy Wouter Teunissen. In 2023, I launched a crypto newsletter (Nifty Nest) that I eventually sold to The Milk Road newsletter. Wouter had sold over a million dollars in ads for Milk Road - I thought who better to learn ad sales from? Our first call - Jan 23, 2024 - was 20 minutes and completely changed how I sold Nifty’s ad inventory. That one chat turned into trading playbooks, warm intros, and a cool friendship. 2. Build a content diet Train your algorithm to feed you the skill you want to build. For 60 days, only like, comment, and share newsletter content. Result: your feed starts showing you tactics, case studies, and people you should know. You’ll learn faster and spot opportunities you’d otherwise miss. 3. Join the right rooms If you’re a beginner, the beehiiv community is a great place to get unstuck fast. If you have >1,000 subs, join the Growth in Reverse Pro community (run by Chenell Basilio - she’s awesome!); you’ll meet operators who push your execution. 4. Show up where operators gather IRL There are great newsletter/operator events year-round: one in May, another in October, plus a strong Austin scene. The Newsletter Conference by Ryan Sager and Jesse Watkins is where I met a lot of my closest newsletter friends. Go. Have hallway chats. One good conversation can save you six months of trial-and-error. 5. Create regular in-person or live touchpoints If your city has operators: DM 10 people, pick a café/co-working spot, and work together for 1 hour a day. Share wins, swap subject lines, and debug funnels. If it doesn’t: run a remote daily hour (Zoom + silent work + quick debrief). I do stuff like this for my biz - I joined some fancy gym that IMO sucks, but I love the group of guys I get to hang out with there. Worth it! Takeaway: Keep the flywheel spinning (online → DM → call → Slack → IRL) Architect your time so everything compounds: • Content diet: your feeds teach you newsletters. • Reply cadence: Comments earn you DMs. • DMs → calls: calls turn into Slack groups. • Slack → IRL: IRL turns peers into friends. • Friends → leverage: warm intros, shared templates, faster decisions. That’s the game. Surround yourself with awesome people and you’ll engineer your own luck.

Notice a gap? What do you do about it? Do you wait for a solution or create it yourself? I noticed a need within the community space and had to find a way to fill it. How did I know? By getting to know my members. I asked what they needed-> surveys, one-on-ones, emails,... Need: Community members wanted to connect. Goal: To bring them together in a common spot. Problem: No common place to gather virtually. To gain more support: Spoke with active users (whom I built relationships with) to contribute and help me promote the event. *Solution: Set up a monthly recurring virtual meet-up -> 'Connect CommUnity' *Benefits from this meetup ↳Members became friends online & offline ↳Learned more about each other & built trust ↳Collaborated at events & in projects together ↳IRL connections happened (picture in comments) Impact of it? ↳Enhanced customer experience ↳Members were excited to hang out ↳Established meaningful relationships ↳Members felt appreciated and heard ↳Over time, members started to host the meet-ups. The beauty of it all? I got to see this all unfold and witness the amazing connections form. Gain more insight into what they needed by listening to their conversations. And continually help create a better environment for them all. ⭐ If you don't see a way to solve a problem, create the solution instead. You don't need to wait for a large crowd to get started. Start with what you have and add on. (If you need help, ask your members)

Most exclusive communities have hefty membership fees. We don’t. Here's why 👇 When we started Long Angle, I heard a lot of this kind of advice: "Charge $25k/year minimum" "If it's free, people won't value it" "You need fees to maintain exclusivity" We went the opposite direction. Our community is free to join. Not because we can't charge. Our members are not as price-sensitive, and we work very hard to give them as much value as possible. We choose free because money changes relationships. And relationships are absolutely vital to how Long Angle functions. The moment you charge for access, you create a transaction. Members become customers. Relationships become services. Authentic connections turn into obligations. Think about it: When's the last time you asked a friend to Venmo you for advice? Called up a family member and charged them for introductions? That's not how real relationships work. Instead, we built something different in really the only way we thought we could: • A space where wealth creators can drop their filters • A community that grows through trust, not transactions • A place where value flows naturally between peers By nature, that’s VERY difficult to do in a community designed to help people navigate wealth (this crowd is pitched and sold to constantly). I think results speak for themselves. Everyday, I log into our community & see people asking about everything from teaching their kids about money to setting up trust funds to just finding a good contractor to work on a garage — and they’re doing it all openly with people who have common experiences. Last month, over 150 members flew from around the world to meet in person. Most knew nobody. But they spent three days sharing openly about their lives, challenges, and opportunities. Why? Because there was no ulterior motive. No hidden agenda. Just peers connecting with peers. We do monetize – but differently. We’re always listening to our members to understand what they would like us to invest in to improve their experience. We take an approach to design and launch products and services to meet those needs, some of these naturally end up having a cost to run them and we pass those along. But the core community? That stays free. Because we’re not building just another exclusive club. We're creating a space where wealth creators can be authentic. Where they can drop the guards they maintain everywhere else. And authentic connection shouldn't have a price tag. #community #wealth #business #entrepreneurship