Month: November 2018

I worry we’ve gone too far towards trying to build a sense of community instead of satisfying the practical need.

This was a big point from The Indispensable Community. A lot of organizations are trying to build a strong sense of community when they shouldn’t be.

Fostering a strong sense of community works when the topic is a strong part of your members’ identity.

A rare few of your members will create something above and beyond what most people create.

It’s usually something which took a lot of time, a lot of resources, and a lot of skill.

When this happens, I think we need a ‘no naysayer’ rule.

Most company websites aren’t nearly as integrated with their community as they should be. Too many have just a subdomain under a navigation tab where

I visited a client’s community recently.

The homepage was filled with static content. Much of this content hadn’t been updated in weeks. Too much of it was targeted at newcomers.

For most communities, newcomers arrive via the back door. They search for something and find it in an article or discussion within your community. But they don’t find it on your homepage.

Lou reminded me recently that many people have a hard time connecting their idea of community with the objectives of their work.

It’s a lot easier sometimes to get support for a community by calling it something else.

I missed the real anniversary, but here’s a quick summary of FeverBee’s first decade. Thousands of blog posts. 1.2k+ course students across eight training courses.

I’m afraid you’re out of luck. All the easy community ideas were taken a decade ago.

You’re not going to launch a new, definitive, community for mums, authors, doctors, investors, or any other topic.

Unless…

Unless you’re truly willing to genuinely build the first community of its kind.

Unless you’re building a customer support community, you want a unique, powerful, concept.

For example, a community for authors isn’t a unique concept. A community exclusively for authors of bestselling books is more interesting. As is a community for qualified authors to connect with verified book agents. Or a community for authors of detective novels etc…

Member research can help you come up with good ideas for concepts, but until you test them out you never know if it will really catch on and excite your audience.

I’ve begun using this term a lot in the past six months (thanks Patrick).

Within every community strategic plan we create, we try to separate the critically important things which have to go well from things which can be ok.

The must-win battles are the hard part of our work.