**This is the final post of All-Things-Community for 2021. I’ll be back in 2022 with more great content! Thank you for being a subscriber, and Happy Holidays to you!**
To close out this holiday season, I want to share with you…Santa’s Little Helpers - The Happiest Place on Reddit! If you haven’t decided yet on how you can give to others this holiday season, then look no further.
What I love:
The mission. The community pools together their time and resources to help struggling families during the holidays, and they’ve been doing so since 2013. To me, they are a perfect example of a forum community that’s been created to give back and serve others.
Clear procedures and tips. If you want to be part of this community, then you’ll need to follow the procedures and frameworks that they have established. Since they’ve been at this a number of years now, they know what they’re doing. This community only sees success if everyone is following these rules. They also provide plenty of tips to help new community users get acquainted.
Ability to filter posts for the kids most in need. The community wants to make sure that all of the kids in need are getting something this holiday season. They’ve made it easy to find these children by hosting this page which lets you filter by age, number of kids in household, and gender.
The festive UI. Reddit only gives you so much control over your UI, and this forum has added just the right touch of holiday-ness to liven up the page!
My wish list:
That this community’s efforts could continue year-round. <sigh>
How Big Brands Approach Community
Special thanks to the team from Smart Passive Income for having me on their podcast! We talked about community strategy for big brands and what smaller brands can learn from that. You can listen in through Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or Stitcher.