Community Strategy Insights

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

The Secret Ingredient

Picture of Richard Millington
Richard Millington

Founder of FeverBee

You can't build a community concept from research alone. 

Research only tells you what the audience does, thinks, or wants now.

The next step is to develop a testable hypotheses. 

For example, if you know many amateur photographers are using Instagram, and selecting the right filter is a big challenge, will a community about filters for amateur photographers succeed?  

You might create a simple guess-the-filter site or #whatfilter hashtag to accompany several images and see what response you get. You could bring together a few experts in filters on a Facebook group and have a FilterHeroes group on Facebook for people to get advice. If this didn't take off, how about a 15 minute course on filters?

Your challenge is to find cost and time effective ways to test your hypotheses. 

A scientist will burn through a dozen or more negative results before finding a positive. That's part of the process. It takes them years, we can do it in months. 

Developing an expensive community platform, undertaking a big promotional push, and telling your top members to join is neither cost or time efficient. Introducing a topic in an existing community, trying out a hashtag, creating a simple Facebook group is much better.

You need to get meaningful results as quickly as possible. Don't go further down the path of developing a community until you've found something the audience loves. Be prepared for the negatives until you reach the positives. 

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