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Guides
Step-by-step guides for launching, running, and growing a thriving online community.
How to Run a Mentorship Program in Your Community
Most community mentorship programs fade after the first call. How to run one that lasts: a narrow goal, mentors a step ahead, a fixed number of conversations, protection for mentors, and a proper ending.
How to Get Sponsors for Your Community
Sponsors do not need a big audience; they need a specific one. What sponsors actually pay for, the formats that keep members on your side, how to price and report, and when to walk away.
How to Run an Introductions Thread That Connects People
Most introductions threads become a wall of hellos nobody reads. What to ask instead of "tell us about yourself", why every introduction needs a reply, and how to turn introductions into connections.
How to Handle Unwanted DMs in Your Community
Cold pitches, recruiting and harassment happen in private messages, where you cannot see them, and they fall hardest on new members. How to set the rule, make reporting easy, act fast, and give members control of their inbox.
How to Run Peer Feedback in Your Community
Most feedback threads get silence, "looks great!", or six people rewriting the work. How to structure the ask and the reply, keep giving reciprocal, protect beginners, and close the loop.
What to Do About Lurkers in Your Community
Most members read and never post, and most of them are not a problem — they are often your most loyal. What to stop doing, and the few moves that help the readers who would like to say something.
How to Run a Wins Thread Members Actually Post In
Most wins threads end up with the same three people posting. Not because members have no wins, but because the thread taught them only big ones count. How to hold the bar down, reply to effort, and keep numbers from becoming a scoreboard.
How to Run Office Hours for Your Community
Office hours fail when nobody comes, or when the same three people come every week and it turns into free consulting. How to run them as a queue: questions first, ten minutes per problem, and answers that outlive the call.
How to Run Accountability Groups Inside Your Community
In a community of several hundred, nobody notices when one person stops checking in. Accountability comes from a few specific people expecting you — how to size, match and run small accountability groups that last.
How to Run a Community Challenge People Finish
Most community challenges are lost on day three, when someone misses a day and nothing tells them what to do next. How long to run one, how small the daily action should be, why leaderboards lose the middle, and how to end it on purpose.
How to Host an AMA in Your Community
Most community AMAs open on an empty thread and end with answers nobody can find a month later. How to scope one, choose the guest for the questions rather than the name, pick live or written, and turn the result into something new members can use.
How to Write a Community Recap (and Who It's Really For)
Most community recaps are written for the people who were there. The real reader is everyone who missed it — why to quote instead of summarise, why popular is not the same as important, and why a recap that asks for anything backfires.
What to Ask on a Member Profile
"Complete your profile" is the most common onboarding step, and almost nobody says what a profile is for. Its one job is to let one member decide to talk to another — which questions pass that test, which are for you, and why required fields backfire.
Why Members Keep Asking Questions You've Already Answered
A question asked three times is not three lazy members — it is one broken path found by three people. Why structure and findability are different problems, and how to read what your community searched for and could not find.
How to Handle Self-Promotion in Your Community
The default rule is no self-promotion, and it quietly forbids the most interesting thing your members have to say. The one test that separates a contribution from an ad, why ratio rules turn helpfulness into currency, and why the promo channel is a quarantine with a friendly name.
Should Members Have to Earn Access to Your Course?
Level-gated lessons make people participate before the advanced material opens. It is worth doing in a narrow set of cases and worth refusing in most: why a paid course settles the question, why a level is not a curriculum, and why the locked screen matters more than the lock.
How to Handle Conflict Between Two Members
The most common hard situation in community work and the least written about: two people you like have fallen out, nobody broke a rule, and the rulebook does not help. Why staying neutral lands as abandonment, and why the room is the real audience.
How Big Should Your Community Be?
Almost nobody decides how big their community should be — they decide to grow it, which is not the same thing. What actually breaks at scale, why the money argument is usually a pricing question, and why splitting is the only growth that keeps what you have.
What to Do About Inactive Members
Most member counts are an archive of intentions. The four groups that "inactive" merges and why only two deserve action, why re-engagement campaigns ask settled people to re-decide, when removing members is lying to yourself, and the one number worth watching instead.
What to Do With Member Feedback
Collecting feedback is the easy half; deciding in public is the hard half. Why a request is only a guess at a solution, where the real signal actually lives, why the suggestion box does damage, and why saying no out loud beats saying nothing.
How to Run a Community Across Time Zones
A community spread across time zones does not have an events problem, it has a rush hour — and the expensive part is the feed, not the calls. Why rotating the call time usually makes it worse, why a recording is not attendance, and why density beats reach.
Why Members Leave Your Community (and How to Find Out)
Almost nobody leaves a community — they stop arriving, which produces no record of itself, so most exit-survey advice does not transfer. The four ways people actually go, why the reason they give is rarely the reason, and how to ask someone who faded.
How to Make Your Online Community Accessible (2026)
Most of what excludes people is not built into the platform — it is created daily by the people posting. The four barriers that account for most of it, how to write alt text that is actually useful, why the recording is an accessibility feature, and the norms that outlast any setting.
AI-Generated Posts in Your Community: What Actually Works (2026)
The problem is not that members use AI — it is that writing became free while reading stayed expensive. Why detection fails and who it wrongly accuses, the three complaints hiding behind "it feels like AI", and the one test that is both fair and enforceable.
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