Community Strategy Insights

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

Too Great Expectations

Richard Millington
Richard Millington

Founder of FeverBee

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It's better to set expectations low and get better rather than set expectations high and get worse.

If you create 3 items of content per day, respond to every discussion, welcome every member, and respond to every complain, you'll soon find there's not much time for anything else – like the important work of growing the community. 

If you set expectations too high, you'll probably let the community down. As the community grows, you start creating bad content for the sake of filling a gap in the content schedule . You struggle to response to every perceived complaint or criticism because you replied to the last. These aren't critical tasks. 

Set reasonable expectations early on. An item of content every 2 to 3 days might be doable. Let a few complaints/criticisms slide. Respond to fewer discussions. 

Now you have simple expectations to keep, you can gradually raise them. You can increase the intensity. This creates a sense of momentum – which is even more powerful than setting high expectations to begin with. 

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