Rob Alvarez Bucholska
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The One Choice That Will Determine Your Online Success | Episode 413

 

Build a thriving, monetized community—without chasing members or cranking out content 24/7.

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Content is not king. In this episode, we unpack the 3 key “engines” that turn passive followers into engaged community members. If you’re tired of content burnout and ready to build something meaningful, this one’s for you.

Rob is a host and consultant at Professor Game as well as an expert, international speaker and advocate for the use of gamification and games-based solutions, especially in education and learning. He’s also a professor and workshop facilitator for the topics of the podcast and LEGO SERIOUS PLAY (LSP) for top higher education institutions that include EFMD, IE Business School and EBS among others in Europe, America and Asia.

 

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Lets’s do stuff together!

Looking forward to reading or hearing from you,

Rob

 

Full episode transcription (AI Generated)

Rob Alvarez (00:00)
Everyone says success online is all about the content, but the truth content isn’t the choice that matters most

Rob Alvarez (00:10)
So here’s what usually happens. You push yourself to be consistent. You post nonstop. And don’t get me wrong, consistency is important, but engagement feels hollow. People don’t really connect. They just consume. And eventually burnout starts setting in for you.

If content was enough, creators would not be struggling with sales, community growth, retention, but they do because content alone does not keep people coming back.

There is one choice though that does make the difference. It’s the choice that turns passive viewers into active members.

That choice decides whether your community thrives or slowly fades out.

I’ll show you the three engines that drive that choice.

Once you see them, you will understand the one decision that really builds lasting success online. By the way, if this is something that interests you, find the link in the description where we have a bunch of free resources for you to implement this deeper in your own online thriving community.

Rob Alvarez (01:16)
I remember before taking into account this first engine that I’m gonna talk about, I remember in my own community, it was hard. It always is, right? To get people from just joining from that discover phase, actually joining to actually be getting on that onboarding phase. Especially when the system is not something you completely control and design. in gamification, I love to do these onboardings and they can be more complex. And there’s all sorts of customized stuff you can do. But if you have a system, which tends to be what we do with online communities.

There are only so many things that you can do. So I had all the systems built in and they work phenomenally. And I know this because after this change, the systems actually started working better because people went through them. There was this small thing that they needed to actually jump on and do the actions within the system that we had built. And when I did this small thing, I realized that there were some people who were so much waiting for this to happen.

that some of these people have been around for a bit already. And when I use this small action, in this case, it was simply giving them a welcome message. Some of the people that we gave that welcome message to are all already, and this was very recently that we did this, they are already en route to becoming paying clients from literally possibly being somebody who would have dropped out of the community. And that does not happen because I was creating more content. I mean, I gotta be honest. I love my content. And even if I was…

and I’m sure I am slowly improving and getting better, but even if I got my content to be better, it was not that much better to have such a huge change. It actually happened because people in the community felt seen. I gave them that welcome message and because everything else was set up, that was at that point enough for people to feel seen and start going through the other things. Within the same engine, you wanna consider and you wanna make sure there’s three things, right? So they wanna be seen.

Then once they are participating, they want to feel heard. There’s other people there who are actually hearing what they say because if not, you know, what’s the purpose of me participating and saying things? And it then goes eventually well beyond just being heard and it’s about being valued. And here’s where sort of the owners, the mods, the admins, whomever you want to call them inside your community, they have to come in because what other people are proposing, they’re saying they’re trying to improve stuff because they’re part of that community. They want to feel that that

is valuable for the community. You wanna feel valued by these people and of course other members will help with that. But that starts of course by the top. You wanna be able to value that. And watch out, I’m not saying you have to do everything any member just comes in and suggests. I am saying that you do have and you should because that’s good feedback. You should implement some of the things that the people in your community are proposing. And I’m sure they’re having at least some fantastic ideas. So go in, go all in for that. And that is the first engine.

What people are looking for is recognition.

And you probably know me from other videos as well. I like to talk about games and gamification. So here’s my Uno card I was reusing from the start. That’s a card game. Sports are also a form of games, Because they are actually some of the oldest forms of structured games that we have. And that’s why I’m gonna use a sports analogy here. And it has to do more than the sport itself, it has to do with sport fans.

because sport fans, the true, the core fans, the ones that make a difference and probably the profits out of a significant portion of the profits of these teams are not just fans just watching the games. They’re sharing chants, they have nicknames, they have phrases, you’ll never walk alone kind of phrase. I’ve heard that, I’m not a fan of that team, but I’ve heard that so many times that when people hear that, they know that this is part of that tribe, of that place in where they actually belong together.

I’ve also seen Skool as a platform of my choice, which by the way, if you want to open your own Skool community, you can open one and have the first 14 days be for absolutely free. You can find that on the link below. But in Skool communities, I can see how people are sharing, they’re sharing patterns, they’re sharing words, they’re sharing memes. Because language nowadays includes that because that was where you start building that second engine and it has to do with shared language. It builds identity.

It’s not just conversations happening anymore. When your community has its own words, its own rituals, it feels like being in on some sort of secret, right? It starts building that scarcity, for people who are on the outside and scarcity of, I am here and nobody else is here. And once people feel that and they start feeling that greater meaning, that belonging, that social belonging, because they’re a part of this scarce thing, they’re not leaving.

And that’s the second engine. That second engine is all about shared language.

And for this third engine, I want to share a very personal story from back in the days of the pandemic. many things happened during the pandemic. Among them, for me personally, I started playing Fortnite a lot more. I still love the game. I don’t play half as much as I did. In fact, I don’t play even 10 % as much as I did. Back in those days, since we couldn’t go out and share with other people in a physical space, a lot of people went online and online games were a place for this. And my place was…

Fortnite and I didn’t just play almost every day, I actually connected pretty much at the same hours not exactly the same hours but around the same hours every day because I knew that if I and again does not have only had to do with I connected at those times because I was outside of the job because of course I was Working full-time and then when I finished the job I could do this But it’s not just the the hours off work because they had more hours, which I did other things, of course

I went into those specific hours because I could find my tribe. could find people there. And sociologists talk about the need that we all have for something they call the third space. that’s actually the third engine. The third engine is the third space. Home is your first space. and work is probably your second. Some people have that the other way around. But there is a third space where that’s where belonging lives. can be a combination of these things. A cafe, a park.

Plaza, sports club, online. And online, your community can become part of the third space for a lot of people, for your members. ⁓ One of the third spaces that they might have in their lives might be that online community.

If your community is only about content, it’ll never become a third space. People will drop in and drop out. But if it feels like that third space, they feel safe, they stay, they return, and they invest not only money, but also themselves, time, and all the things that require a thriving community to actually thrive.

So what do these three engines really add up to? And if you’ve been listening, I’m pretty sure that you’ve understood that, of course, it is not about content. So we’re reversing the script right there. It is all about culture. Content can attract. And I’m creating, this is a piece of content. I’m attracting you towards something. But it is culture that actually retains. It’s culture that actually converts. It’s culture that actually multiplies the potential.

for revenue, for engagement. And that’s the one choice. Do you wanna build content or do you want to build culture?

And if you’re ready to build that culture, not just your content, you can definitely click on the link below so you can find all the free resources we have to help you build out all of that, not content, but culture. You’ll see the principles that you need, how to implement it for yourself. You’ll have a place to start building your own culture. However,

As you might know from my prior videos, and as I’ve already mentioned since I am into games, I always like to finish these videos by saying that at least for now and for today, it is time to say that it’s game over.

 

End of transcription