Now that everything is in place, you need to efficiently grow and maintain your new community by routinely providing new content and staying engaged as best you can. This is especially important in the early stages of your tribe's existence when it's literally just you. Remember that every community starts at just one, but it can only go up from there.

Think of your first short-term goal as reaching 200 initial members. Our extensive research has shown that this is usually the tipping point of when most communities start to self-sustain, breaking free of the "chicken and egg" dilemma (or network effect) of internet communities. Time it takes to reach this goal can vary as it greatly depends on several factors including your current blog audience size (traffic), your niche/topic, your engagement/dedication, and even luck. That being said, many existing Snapzu tribes have successfully reached this figure in a matter of days.

The following are some useful and proven tactics in making your community stand out and getting noticed so you can get that member count climbing:

  • Post cool stuff:
    At its core, Snapzu is a content sharing and discussion platform designed with a democratic curation approach that rewards good quality and insightful content, as illustrated by our Front Page, where the top content gets the most exposure and with the best "real-estate" on the page. Each time you submit/post/share something on Snapzu, it has a chance to ripple around, rise in the content ranks, and reach the Front Page, resulting in exposure of not only your community, but also your Snapzu profile. On Snapzu -- like on Twitter -- users can follow your profile, slightly increasing your reach and influence with each new follower, especially with the popular following feed. Just remember that we have a 10% rule in effect, where you can link to your blog (or any other web properties you own/operate) once every ten (10) posts, as explained [here].

  • Interact with your community:
    Just like you may already do on your blog (if you have commenting enabled), when you see people being active in your community by submitting new content, making comments, adding related links, and other participation, be sure to interact with them whenever you can. These (like-minded) members help grow your community by contributing their time and you should give them the most memorable experience so they eventually come back for more. The more loyal members you have contributing, the more useful and engaging your community becomes as a whole.

  • Take care of your community:
    Having clear set rules and enforcing them is an essential part of running a great community that people will want to come back to and participate in. When the time is right, be sure to appoint a few trusted moderators to help out in managing things if things get a little too busy to manage alone. Moderators have access to most of the tribe tools and can also help with inviting new members (and earn referrals.)

  • Continue blogging as before:
    While your new Snapzu community is an extensive social companion to your blog, it does not change the fact that your blog is still your blog. Regularly writing fresh new content on your normal schedule is the absolute most important part of blogging and building backlinks which can improve your SEO.

    However, if you've ever heard of the 80/20 blogging rule, you should know that most of your time (as a blogger) should be spent promoting your blog and its posts. This means that if you spend 2 hours writing a new blog post, you should then spend 8 hours doing anything in your power to get people to read it (or otherwise land on your blog.) Your Snapzu activity counts towards that 80%

    Once you reach a few hundred members, things usually really start to pick up and you can consider your next goal of 1000 members. Then 5000. You get the point.