Making a community grow

[Itaria No Shintaku]

Hello,

i recently took the job to develop our LUG/Community.

I am italian, and I am from Rome. My LUG is RomaBrick and we also have a twitter account as well as a facebook page and an internet site.

I took the charge to write at least one article per day to increase our site's view and scope, but I don't really see it growing.

Our goal is to became a standard for the Italian community, because we are really understated as a community. Here in Italy we don't even have a Lego Store and this is really a pain. We aim to make TLC understand that the italian community is alive and big, and that italians are a lot in Lego too. The problem is that AFOL are scattered all over the country, and most of the time they don't even know there are LUGs and Legofests, while we organize at least one every two months.

Most of our visitors are totally amazed, they didn't even expect our MOCs, we currently have the biggest Castle asset in all Europe and we are very proud of that.

But, this said, I really have to admit I am pretty new to this part of the job.

So, I welcome every suggestment, I am open to any kind of advice, after all it's all about developing our passion!

Thanks!

[Jared]

I don't run my LUG, there are much more qualified people for that, but just remember the most important part is to have fun. LUGs are about meeting people and having fun with LEGO. Be careful it doesn't turn into a business, then you're on a slippery slope.

[dr_spock]

Since you're in charge of promoting your LUG, you could start by putting the links to your LUG's website in your signatures.

Start an Italy thread like the Canada thread. There are a number of Italian users here. I usually try to find out which part of the country a new Canadian user is located on EB. Anyone in the area can be a potential new LUG member.

Ask your LUG members to help spread the word about your LUG. I don't know what kind of budget your LUG has to buy advertisement. Word of mouth is very inexpensive.

You could try to hold events outside of your normal area to reach AFOLs in other parts of the country that doesn't already have a LUG present. I think there are two other LUGs in Italia?

Buona fortuna.