How To Develop Your Community

Are you developing individuals or a group? Neither is bad, but they’re very different.

If your community is for individuals to improve themselves, you can highlight high-achievers, develop competitions and give individuals a unlimited chances to stand out. Build in the right game-mechanics. That’s what individuals want – the chance to demonstrate and improve themselves within a group.

Facebook is for individuals, so are most blogs and skill-focused communities (photography/fishing/gaming).

At the other end of the scale is a community where members want to feel less individualistic and more part of a high-achieving group. That means referring to the group in the ‘we’, celebrating group achievements, using mass-communication and making comparisons between other groups.

This is where some Wikipedia, some charities and various open-source communities live.

Of course, most communities lie somewhere in between the two ends of the scale. Your job is to figure out if members join mainly to develop themselves or satisfy their affiliation needs. Now mark that spot on this scale and develop the right mix of individual/group activities to match.

Comments

[Guillaume]

Thanks for the tips, never really thought of it but I now realize how important it is.

[website information]

In both types, you can perform competition because competitions can develop oneself and a group. It also serves as a condition checker for an individual or group.