MBA2001 How We Launched Our Online Community

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Hey oh. Welcome to the $100 show Business Insights delivered on the Daily every single day with our daily 10 minute business lessons for the real world. I'm your host, your coach, your teacher Omar is at home. I'm also the co founder of Webinar Ninja, an independent software company I started with my co founder back in 2014 and in today's lesson you will learn how we launched our online community.

Just a couple of days ago we.

Launched Ninja Town, our online community for our software company Webinar Ninja.

This is an exclusive customized sponsor space for our users, for our members, for.

People that use our product to get feedback, to share best practices, to get encouragement, to get accountability.

A place where they can get their questions answered and be surrounded by other.

People going after it.

And in today's lesson I'm going to.

Walk you through how we launched it, all the behind the scenes work it.

Took to get to the point where we have a community to launch.

Going to walk you through everything from.

The tech to the content to finding somebody to help us run this community.

We call her the Ninja Town Mayor.

And how we plan the actual launch.

And let other people know so that.

When we opened our doors people were excited and contributed immediately.

We got a lot to cover so let's get into it. Let's get down to business, okay?

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I want to start by saying that.

Ninja Town, our online community, is something that I wanted to launch for some time. Why?

Well, back in 20, I was a.

Part of an online community that really helped me become the entrepreneur I am today.

It connected me with some amazing people.

I got incredible feedback, I networked, I got introductions, I made business connections, partnerships.

And through that community I was able to really establish my business and get.

Some traction, really start making some money and be profitable.

They say it's not what you know.

But more who you know. And I wanted to create a community for our users, for our members, so.

They can have the same experience I had, so they can get the same.

Feedback that helps them improve every day so where they can meet like minded people to support them.

Listen, entrepreneurship can be lonely, okay? So to make it a little bit less lonely, I wanted to create a world that was supportive, that was helpful.

That gave you back what you put in.

Hence, we launched Ninja Town. Now Ninja Town was a project that.

Took about eight months to plan and to execute.

This is something that we initially started.

To plan back in around June of 2021.

We started to research other communities.

We started to talk about what kind of community we wanted to have. We started planning how it's going to be integrated with our product, as well.

As what is the vibe we want.

To create for our community members.

We started with listing, literally just making a laundry list of all the things.

That we would have to do to launch a successful community. From choosing what kind of technology we're using, like where is this community to be hosted, to our code of conduct.

To who's going to create the content.

Who'S going to answer the questions, how are we going to find this person? What's the job description? Who will be allowed in this community, who? We had a lot of questions to answer and basically we just took one at a time.

It was important for us to make.

Progress every month to make sure that, hey, we're Moving forward and this thing.

Is starting to take form, it can.

Be kind of motivating in the beginning because there's so much to do and you feel like, wow, I don't know if I can get everything done in time or in enough velocity that I feel like this thing's going to happen soon. But my advice is just keep at it.

And you don't have to do this alone. If you have team members, get them involved.

One little tip I would give you is you don't have to reinvent the wheel. If there are other communities you're involved in that you're really enjoying, you like what they're doing.

You want to create a similar experience.

For your community, maybe in a different genre, a different market.

Just reach out to that community and.

Try to learn how they pulled it off.

And that's literally what we did.

One of the communities that I really have found to be useful and well organized is the ConvertKit community. ConvertKit is an email marketing tool and they have an online community forum run by Hayley, who is very, very good as their community manager. Shout out to Hayley. I reached out to her because I'm part of that community. I said, hey, Hayley, we're launching our own community. I'd love to get on a call with you and just really ask you a bunch of questions about how we are doing, what we're building, who we should be looking for when it comes to fulfilling a role like yours.

And she was more than willing to.

Get on a call. I was so happy how helpful she was.

That call was super helpful.

We took down a ton of notes, and it gave us a leap forward. It gave us a clear understanding of what it takes to run an online community.

So you could do the same with.

Any of the communities you're already a part of. And that call really allowed us to create a clear and concise job description.

For the mayor of Ninja Town.

That's what we call our online community manager now.

One step.

A lot of people spend too much time on and really kind of hold them back from any progress. Is the actual tech the actual platform? Where do I host this community? Should I do a Facebook group? Should I do this in Slack? Should I do this using one of the many different online community platforms? There's things like Tribe and there's Circle and there's probably tons other that I don't even know about. And it could be really overwhelming. So what's the easiest way to choose the right platform for you? Well, we created a list of must.

Haves what are some of the things.

We have to have now that we know what kind of community we're building and what we're going to be doing?

So we made a list of this.

Software has to be able to do xyz and one of the requirements is we don't want it on Facebook. We want to build on our own property. We don't want to be controlled by the the Facebook algorithm. We want a distraction free zone. We have a whole argument of why we wanted to be off Facebook for our community. We wanted to cater the experience to a learning environment, to a positive environment, to an inclusive environment. But we had a bunch of other must haves. Like I need to be able to upload or embed videos so that we can put our content there, put our video or academy, our training people need to be able to ask questions under the video so that they can comment and ask questions and we can reply. The other requirement we needed to have is a single sign on. What does this mean? This means that I don't want them to have a different login for the community than the actual product, our product software, webinar Ninja. So they need to have that technology called single sign on.

So after we had a whole bunch.

Of must haves, we went to market with this list and shopped around and looked at all the different platforms and we basically chose the one that has all our must haves that is simple to use. Okay, there were other contenders that had all our must haves, but it was a little bit more complicated, a little bit too much, and it was kind of giving us more than we needed. We just wanted something that was all inclusive in terms of our must haves.

And super simple to use. We ended up using Tribe.

Tribe is a great online community platform that gives you full control. It's white labeled, it's your business, they host it. And it ticked all our boxes. Once we established what software we're using, we started to build out the community in the different sections. And then we went out to find our mayor, to find our online community manager. We put our job description on our website. I put out the word to all my network, hey, we're hiring this position. Do you know anybody that'd be great for this?

And somebody in my network actually recommended.

Jenny, who is our online community manager. We interviewed her. We thought she would be perfect for the job because she's so much like.

Our users, our members, and for us.

It'S really important for the manager to be one of them, to be a part of that community.

We Made her offer, she accepted. And as she joined, we started to.

Include her in the launch plans. In building out, we basically gave her the keys to the castle and said, hey, this is your community now. You now do the finishing touches. You get it ready for launch. You have the power of the entire team behind you. You have the marketing team, you have our copywriter, Connor, you have me, you have Nicole, you have everybody. You need to make the sure that this is a success.

So about three weeks out, we started.

To announce we are launching Ninja Town, our online community. We talked about it in our members webinar, which is kind of like our office hours.

We started sending emails out to all our members and non members and saying, hey, this is a big deal. This is going to be amazing. This is going to be another added bonus to being a member. We talked about what are some of the advantages, what are some of the things that you're going to look forward.

To, what are the things we're going to be doing inside that community so.

People can get excited.

And we told them the launch date. We're opening on the 8th. It's going to be amazing. Jump in as soon as we open the doors. Now we wanted to make sure that when we did launch it was a successful launch. So what we did is one, we created an onboarding sequence or onboarding plan.

For anybody who comes in.

So as soon as they come in.

We tell them to do three tasks.

So that they get engaged right away so they contribute. So they start giving into the community and participating.

The next thing we did is that we gamified it.

We told them, hey, we have this thing called reputation points. And they earn these points every time they answer a question, they ask a question, they participate, they like something. And as they move up the ladder of reputation points, they earn prizes like.

T shirts and mugs. On top of that, we have a.

Ladder for them to move up from member to ambassador to content partner. And we use the belt system in karate, white, brown and black belt.

An ambassador is somebody who basically is.

Like a community leader within the community. Somebody that you can count on to show their area of expertise and to help and contribute. And a content partner is somebody that will be part of our content calendar will do webinars will show their area of expertise, of course, their company and their background will get shout outs. It's a great way for them to contribute and give back, but also for our members to learn from each other.

The other thing we did is I reached out to our current active members, our ambassadors, and asked them, hey guys, we're launching this community. You guys always show up to our webinars. You guys are active users, you're super users. Do you want to jump in and.

Be ambassadors from day one and help make this community special? We basically are asking them to, hey, help us make this an active, fruitful, engaging community. These people are your biggest fans. You should always be leaning on them and then we open the doors.

The first few days and weeks of your online community is critical. You want to make sure that it's.

Engaging, that people are asking questions, that people are posting the right areas, that there's some guidance, but also there's fun and there's celebration so people can feel like, hey, this space is positive, it's helpful, it's useful, it's somewhere I want to hang out on a regular basis.

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Launching our online community has been an incredible journey, but one that was actually quite fun to put together and actually see come to life. We purposely wanted to make it fun for us and not just see it as work.

We did things like have Jenny, our.

Community manager, cut a ribbon to inaugurate and open up Ninja Town. She recorded a video of it and we used it in our marketing to celebrate the opening of Ninja Town.

We had fun with the different sections and spaces inside of our community to make it Ninja esque.

All our marketing materials, our copy, our.

Images were all positive and celebratory. This is a big deal. You're adding something to your business that is amazing. You're bringing people together. You're being connector. So don't play it down, play it up.

Because a launch is a good chance.

For you to celebrate and to recognize.

The importance of your business and the community you're building.

Also, you only really have one chance to launch, so you might as well.

Make the best of it and have some fun.

If you're interested in checking out Ninja.

Town, seeing what it looks like, how.

We set it up, you can join for free. All our members including our free plan.

Members over@webinarninja.com get access to Ninja Town for free.

So go ahead and sign up for free. Check us out.

And check out Ninja Town.

That wraps up today's lesson. Thank you so much for listening. Make sure you hit, subscribe or follow.

On your favorite podcast app so you don't miss an episode.

Before I go, I want to leave you with this.

One of the big reasons why we wanted to hire somebody to run our community is because community management is a full time job, okay? Making sure people are heard, making sure people are being answered and taken care of. And also here and there you might.

Have a hater, you might have a.

Troll, and that needs to really be taken care of. You know, somebody got to be on top of that.

And if you're running your business and.

Doing a million other things, you're gonna get distracted. You need somebody who's focused that can take care of your community. For you to represent your community, to be your eyes and ears, but also be the leader in this area, to be somebody who takes ownership and makes it their baby. Thanks so much for listening and I'll.

Check you in tomorrow's episode.

I'll see you then. Take care.

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