Flywheels are mechanisms that gain power as they take off AND are self-propagating. Community flywheels are growth loops that propel community engagement or attract new members. They should be a continuously improving set of repeatable, tactical activities that scale engagement or membership.
Here’s the most well-known example of a community flywheel: User-generated content. A community member joins a forum. They post a question, it gets answered. This Question and Answer attracts traffic through search engines, attracting a new community member who repeats the Q&A cycle.
Another example is the ‘Pssst, start a new thread!’ flywheel. This is where a community manager keeps an eye out for interesting comments on existing forum threads. They drop a direct message to the member that posted the interesting comment and say privately, “You know, that’s a really great question/thought! Would you mind starting a thread on this? I think the community would love to dive into this further!” The community member takes you up on this, and hopefully that thread has an interesting comment or two that can spin off into their own threads!
This worksheet will help you understand the anatomy of a flywheel, and support you in creating a few flywheels to test.
What are the programs or main activities do your community members experience?
What resources do you have to share? How does your community feel seen? What do they value? Think of really simple rewards (like a thank you) and higher impact rewards (like swag).
<aside> ☸️ Activities Brainstorm
Examples
<aside> 🏆 Reward Brainstorm
Examples
You’ve done a bit of brainstorming above to help you plug in ideas into each column:
Activities
Starting with one activity, think of actions the community member takes to engage (e.g. like RSVP, upvote, post a thread, etc)
Come up with a way the community member can not only take this action, but contribute
Rewards that reinforce this behavior
Output (how you’ll share value from the contribution)
| Community Activity ➡️ | Member’s Action ➡️ | Outcome or contribution ➡️ | Reward ➡️ Note: Optional but reinforces the behavior | 🔁 Output | | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | | Ex. Attends an online event | Takes post-event survey | Has the option to adding an event testimonial | Free spot in next paid event | Set up a workflow to tweet testimonials after every event | | | | | | | | | | | | |
Finally, how will you put 2 of these flywheels to test? Use the space below to create a plan.
Flywheel #1
Flywheel #2
<aside> ☸️ Flywheel: ______________________________ What tools will you need to use to implement the flywheel?
What support do you need to implement?
How will you know this flywheel is a success?
What’s are the first steps to launch the flywheel?
<aside> ☸️ Flywheel: ______________________________ What tools will you need to use to implement the flywheel?
What support do you need to implement?
How will you know this flywheel is a success?
What’s are the first steps to launch the flywheel?