The ability to get things done with collaborative [community] networks is the next evolution in human productivity. — Mike Leavitt (White House Cabinet)

Are you in the process of building an online community? If you are, the skills you are learning now will take you far in the near future.

Research by GovLab.org has discovered that in 11 out of the 15 nations surveyed, the majority of people said the most important group in their lives is primarily online.

**Forty-six percent of Americans say their most important group is online. **In Brazil, among those with access to the internet, it’s 50 percent online and 13 percent in person.

With more immersive and genuine online community experiences in the pipeline, it’s likely we will see these numbers increase.

Former convener of the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) Mike Leavitt describes why communities are so important in his book Finding Allies, Building Alliances:

“In a global economy, the present and especially **the future belong to the best collaborators, not the biggest organizations **or the ones with the best resources.”

Convene your own online community

Now that you know how important communities are for people. And you know their potential for the future, how do you start your own powerful community?

As with any type of relationship, the more trust there is, the better it functions.

The same goes for online communities. It’s easy to forget that when organizing Discord servers and coming up with giveaways and games to entertain people.

**I started building online communities in 2018. **My first was a message board-style community for independent musicians to share, trade, and sell marketing and promotions.

After growing the community for a couple of months, I realized I was the only one providing tips. Nobody wanted to give their promo secrets because it would be giving their edge away to the competition. There was no trust, so the community didn’t work.

The tools of trust

If you want to grow your own online community,** here are the 7 best tools in 2022 to enhance trust.**

📍Calendly — I love this simple little app. With a few clicks, it integrates into any of your existing online calendars and your zoom account.

You can make the link available on your Discord server, on your website, or on social media. **This allows anyone to schedule a zoom call with you to learn more about what you stand for. **This openness goes a long way toward building trust in collectors and your community.

📍Bonjorno — I discovered this cool little short video email app from Pat Flynn’s book ‘Superfans.’ An important piece of gaining trust with your community is showing them you’re a real person. People buy NFTs and join communities of people they like.

Your community won’t know you unless you let your hair down. Video lets you get personal like no other mass media tool. With Bonjorno,** you can record little videos, in your personal environment in response to new members. This gives your community a peek inside your real life.**

📍Loom — I use Loom almost daily. The Chrome extension makes it simple to take video clips while you're working and share them with your team or community. Like Robert Kiyosaki says “Never do the same thing twice.” With Loom, any processes you do on your computer can be easily shared at scale.

📍Twitter Spaces — Even as the overall audio chat room phenomenon has slowed down since Covid, Twitter Spaces is growing in the NFT community. Hosting your own Spaces and answering questions about your project on the fly is a great way to build trust and make new friends.

📍Gatheround — Keeping your community together can be a 24-hour activity. It quickly gets exhausting. So it’s important to create ways for your members to get to know each other.

When your community is engaging without you, you’ve reached another level. GatheRound lets you host video chat roulette sessions. So different members of your community are randomly paired up together to video chat. You can give them prompts to get the conversation going. And the app gives everyone a way to stay in touch.

📍Medium.com — I’ve had an incredible experience using Medium to grow my community. My first couple of articles reached almost 2,000 people shortly after I wrote them. Many of them joined me as clients. It is a powerful tool to provide trust in your expertise.

**By writing valuable content and sharing what you learn, your community will come to know you and your interests. **You’ll start to become familiar, which is a powerful trust factor in itself.

📍NFT Pump — Full Disclosure, this is a service I created. I am biased. I created this promotion service to solve a very important problem facing all NFT projects. Most NFT projects are new and at the start of building, which means very little engagement.

This makes for a lot of sad and lonely Twitter accounts. NFT Pump helps you to build trust by having consistent tweets, and an engaged and supportive community right from the start.

Wrapping Up

Remember, having the skills to build a successful online community is already in demand and will only increase.

Take the time to get personal with your community members. Show them you care on an individual basis until there are too many of them.

There are many tools for community building. This list features the ones I use and have had success with. Experiment with your own set of communication tools to find the best ways to bring your members together.

If you have found a particular app or online tool helpful in building your community, I would love to hear about it. Please leave it in the comments.