Your Community is a Garden
I've killed my fair share of plants. I've multiplied many others. In moving to a new country, I am still getting used to knowing what the weather is like. One hot Tel Aviv summer day will kill your mint plant. I learned that the hard way. The right amount of water and the best composted, nitrogen-rich soil isn't enough. The sun and humidity killed my mint. I needed a different plan. What worked in Los Angeles didn't work in Tel Aviv.
Experienced gardeners aren't born with a green thumb. No 6 year-old kid looks at a dying plant and knows exactly how to fix it. If you have a green thumb, you have patience. You didn't get a green thumb overnight. It's almost certain it took you years to develop it, hone it, and improve along the way.
It's become clear to me that caring for a community is like tending to a garden. In realizing the similarities, it's helped me to become a much better community manager (CM).
Communities are gardens
A community manager is a gardener.
New community features are the experiments gardeners use to expand their garden.
The people in your community are the plants.
New segments in your audience are like new plant species.
Healthy communities run on lots of things, just like plants need soil, sunlight, water, etc.
The platform you choose to run your community is like the climate and environment you plant a garden in.
What may feel important (i.e. sunlight.. aka "getting that post out by midnight"), isn't always the most critical thing for your community. What may feel less important (i.e. humidity.. aka "the right community platform"), might be what is holding your community together.
And this is a critical note:
Simply gathering 20 people together to join your community is no more impressive than buying a bunch of new plants from a nursery. It will take time to learn how to care for each plant. Some plants will die (or churn in our case), and some will multiply.
Challenges for Inexperienced Gardeners
I lived with 7 other guys in college. We rented a house and we had a small yard on the side of the house. The area didn't get much sunlight, it was mostly clay, and yet the weeds loved it. I naively thought I could transform it into a garden. I had no idea what I was doing. I let a potato grow sprouts, I dug in the ground, added some new potting soil, planted it, and thought it would work. I watered it a few times, but only weeds grew instead. My potato farm was a pipe dream.
Most new gardeners fall into similar traps. They will:
Not know how to enrich the soil properly. They will be tempted to water their plants too much, give too much sunlight, or vice versa. In our case, let's assume new CMs are like new gardeners. Newer CMs don't know how new communities tend to grow. They will try new ideas, new engagement strategies, waiting for something to "click." They need expert insight at first, not more prototyping. While water and sun matter, they only need the proper amount of each. This could look like posting too often in a forum, too many CTAs, too many features, etc.
Confuse patience with neglect. Any healthy community will take time to grow. But wise gardeners know they need to check in on the health of their seedlings. They analyze the conditions, forecast what might happen next, and make the needed adjustments. They don't just walk away and hope it'll work out. CMs need to keep an eye on how things are progressing and make small pivots.
Give up too early. New gardeners give up often and believe they could never learn what it takes to turn one small plant into many. Experienced gardeners propagate and test new ideas. The first idea might fail, but the 4th or 5th might be perfect. While some communities should close up shop, most simply need to keep persevering.
Experienced Gardeners know how to grow plants.
Ask anyone who tends to a thriving garden and they'll tell you it took them a long time to figure it out. And they "figured it out" by doing the following:
They experiment frequently. Wise community managers will try new engagement strategies, features, different platforms, and more. They become highly adaptable and responsive to the needs of the community.
They diagnose issues early. Instead of waiting for a leaf to fade from green to yellow to brown, they get ahead of the issue. CMs monitor where the trends are heading. They see a dip in engagement and start brainstorming, they don't freak out and they don't avoid it. They tend to the problem and change the trajectory as a result.
They continue to learn by doing. They have fun with the garden. It's wonderful to see new plants blossom and bees pollinate. This is the gift of their craft. CMs grow in their experience by pressing forward. Shortcuts don't work out well. Vanity metrics are just that. What grows a community in both breadth and depth is the product of continuous learning and experimentation.
Just like gardening, building a thriving community takes patience, experimentation, and continuous learning. Founders new to community will make mistakes. But with the right mindset and approach, they can nurture a vibrant, engaged community. Keep experimenting, diagnosing issues early, and enjoying the process of growth. Your community, like a well-tended garden, will flourish with both time and dedication.
