Someone recently came to us to help them start a community for entrepreneurs from scratch (i.e. no existing audience).
What would you advise?
“Yes, go ahead and start a community for the web’s busiest people, who receive countless spam, and have dozens of existing communities to choose between?”
“Or no, this idea is almost certainly doomed to failure?“
You can’t launch a new community today for a generic topic.
That’s an uphill battle you’ll probably lose. You have to have a concept that targets a tiny group of raving fans and helps them accomplish something they didn’t think possible.
The smaller the total audience the better. This succeeds because the raving fans are infectious. They bring other people in. The passion and level of participation helps attract and retain newcomers. Much of what we consider to be a ‘norm’ or ‘common standard’ today began with with tiny groups of raving fans.
Don’t ever try to build a generic-topic community. It’s too late. We have enough. Start building communities in the niches for raving fans