Sharing Your Community
How to invite people in — to your existing audience, your friends, your network — without spamming anyone or sounding desperate.
Circus deliberately doesn’t push your community at strangers — there’s no algorithm shoving you into a Discover feed. That means growth is intentional, and how you share it matters more than on platforms where the feed does the work for you.
This guide walks through the share tools the platform gives you, where to put them, and a few patterns that work better than others.
Your community link
Every community has a single canonical link — short, memorable, and the same wherever you put it. Use it everywhere. The same link works on every platform, opens the app if installed, and falls back to a web preview if not.
- Format:
circus.app/c/your-handle - What it does: Shows the community preview (cover, name, member count, latest activity), with a Join button.
- Mobile: Opens the Circus app if installed, otherwise opens the web preview with a one-tap install prompt.
- You can change your handle once after launch — old links keep working via permanent redirect.
Share cards
When your community link is pasted into a message, email, or social post, the receiving platform automatically pulls a share card from Circus. You don’t have to do anything — but the card is the first impression, so it pays to know what it shows.
The banner image you set on your community. Use something that reads at a glance — text-heavy designs lose meaning when squashed into a 1200×630 preview.
Exactly as set in your settings. Members judge in three seconds — make it scannable, not clever.
The first 150 characters of your community description. Lead with what it is and who it’s for, not “welcome to our space”.
Shown only after you cross the early-stage threshold. Below that, the card shows “Just launched” instead — counts of three feel worse than no count at all.
Drop your link into a private message to yourself in Slack, iMessage, or WhatsApp. What you see is what your audience sees. Adjust the cover and description until the preview tells the right story.
Where to share — and where not to
The instinct is to spray. The thing that actually works is sharing in fewer places, more deliberately.
Where it works
- Your email list. Single highest-converting channel for most creators. One launch email, then a soft mention in the next two newsletters.
- Existing community spaces (Discord, Slack, group chats). Post once with a real reason; pin it; let it sit. Don’t keep bumping.
- Your other social profiles. Pinned post, link in bio, occasional mention when relevant. Don’t make every post about Circus.
- YouTube descriptions and end-screens. Especially for video-first creators — link in every video description, mentioned at the end of any video about community-related work.
- In person. If you do events, a printed QR code on the table converts better than anything digital.
Where it doesn’t
- Mass DMs. Reads as spam, even from people who like you.
- Cold posts in unrelated subreddits or forums. Earns bans, not members.
- Comment-spamming under bigger accounts. Damages your reputation more than it grows your community.
- Engagement-bait posts on social. “Comment YES if you want my Circus link” reads worse than just sharing the link.
Direct invites
For the first 50–100 members, a direct invite from you personally is more powerful than any share card. The Creator app has a one-tap invite flow that opens a pre-written message you can edit before sending.
- Personalize the first line. “Hey Sam, you’d like this” beats “Check out my new community” by an order of magnitude.
- Tell them why. One specific reason this is for them — a topic they care about, a question they’ve asked you, a project they’re working on.
- Give them an out. Say “no pressure”. Make it easy to ignore. People who join under social pressure don’t stick around.
- Don’t follow up unless they reply. One ping, then leave it.
QR codes for in-person
If you do events, meetups, conferences, or anything in real life, a QR code is the single best invite mechanism Circus offers. Generate one from your community settings — it’s a static PNG/SVG that points at your community link, with the Circus mark embedded.
- Print it big. A4 minimum on a stand at your table; A5 on a hand-out card.
- Add three words above it. “Join the community” — not your community name. Tells passers-by what they’re scanning.
- Track scans. The QR code includes a tracking parameter so the join count from a specific event shows in your analytics.
Pacing your invites
The biggest mistake new creators make is exhausting their existing audience in week one. A better cadence:
One announcement to your full audience across every channel. Newsletter, social, group chats. Make it count. Don’t repeat it.
Reference the community in your normal posts when relevant. “More on this in the Circus community” — not a fresh sales pitch.
Share moments from inside the community — a great member post (with permission), an event that went well, a question being discussed. Lets people self-select in.
Pinned posts, link in bio, video descriptions. People who want in should find their way without you having to ask.
What converts and what doesn’t
- Specific posts beat generic ones. “I’m running a weekly listening session inside this community” converts; “I have a community now” does not.
- Show what’s inside. A screenshot of one good post or thread will do more than five marketing tweets.
- Honesty about size beats puffery. “Small but active” is fine. “10,000-strong community of fans” when it isn’t, isn’t.
- One CTA per post. If you want them to join, that’s the only ask. Don’t bury it under three other links.
Re-using share assets
The Creator app generates a few standard share assets you can drop into anything — newsletters, social posts, decks, websites. All are sized for the most common surfaces and use your community’s cover image.
- Square share image (1080×1080). For Instagram and most feed-based social.
- Vertical share image (1080×1920). For Stories, Reels, TikTok, and lock-screen sharing.
- Email banner (600×200). Drop into the top of a newsletter without resizing.
- QR code (SVG + PNG). Scales cleanly to any print size.
Ready to share?
Once your community is set up in the Creator app, your share link, share cards, and assets are all generated automatically. Find them under Settings → Share.