There was a day when you could create a Facebook event, post it on your “wall”, and 200 people would show up to a coffee shop to see what it was all about.

And there was a day when you could create a Facebook ad and adjust the conversion settings to be so hyper targeted that you’d reach 3,000,000 people before you were charged $100.

In 2012, I was hired as a consultant to use social marketing channels to grow the membership base of an emerging social platform designed for creatives.

I had previously launched and grew a non-profit organization that was relished by hundreds of creatives, and this client presented the opportunity for me to leverage his digital platform to expand my partnerships nationally — while getting paid. I could help but dive right in.

1. Immediately we created growth objectives for followers, members, and paid subscribers. When combined, these user growth objectives aligned to the financial goals the client had estimated to sustain his costs, test new revenue streams, and begin to position his platform for angel investment, and targeted buyout.

2. I built a marketing strategy that included engagement tactics for existing, online creative communities, various social channels, marketing channels like e-mail, reciprocity campaign ideas, messaging examples for an automated content repository that would be distributed across channels, and a direct messaging approach that would be used for paid subscribers.

3. As we tested and refined the marketing strategy, conversations came up with the new potential users — that led to features ideas, and new UX/UI development on the platform. I relayed these iterations to the development team and many of the new feature ideas were created on the platform to help convert user growth.

Together, we acquired nearly 20,000% new growth on the platform in less than a year. Tested, gamified features began to stick with users, loyalty increased, cost of retention decreased, and the platform was soon bought out by a successful opinion leader who was able to bring his personal brand and paid services into the platform and continue to expand the community, internationally.