Community Strategy Insights

The latest insights on community strategy, technology, and value by FeverBee’s founder, Richard Millington

Solving Problems Or Seizing Opportunities?

Richard Millington
Richard Millington

Founder of FeverBee

You know what you’re going to get on customer service forums.

Someone will post a problem, someone else might post a solution.

If you have a problem that’s where you go. Actually, you only go when you have a problem you need to solve.

Sadly most online communities work on this principle too.

If you have an immediate problem to solve, you post it in the community and hope someone helps. No problem? No visit!

The alternative is to build communities around seizing new opportunities. This means providing ideas when they weren’t expected. Inbound.org, Reddit, Hackernews and many others thrive on this principle. They train people to post new ideas whenever they see them.

This encourages people to visit every day. If you miss a day, you might miss out on a great idea.

The choice then is to decide which you want to be. Do you want the community to be a place where people post questions and wait for answers? Or do you want the community to be a place where people share new, unsolicited, ideas when they see them.

The difference in approaches (and results) is considerable.

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