Work in Progress is one of my favourite new communities. Members can share what they’re working on, get help from others, and be accountable to other members to keep their streaks going (were it not for the membership fee, they would have tens of thousands of members by now).
The community began as a tiny Telegram group with a few friends sharing what they had done or were working on. The accountability part took off and has now morphed into an entire community for people to share what they’re working on. They can earn streaks for posting several days in a row.
Work in Progress serves as an important lesson too about the range of possibilities for building a brand community today. It’s a place where you share your current projects, get help from others, and see projections in motion rather than the completed set.
Three lessons here are important.
First, test any concept in a small group first. If you can’t get the behaviors here, don’t build the community yet.
Second, if you want to enter a very competitive space, another forum-based platform doesn’t cut it. You’re going to need to build your own technology.
Third, communities that produce end results (actions) are better than members simply talking. Once you go beyond discussions as the main goal, you have an infinite number of possibilities for what the community can be.
There is no sector, even technology (by far the most popular sector for building communities) that’s too competitive to build a community. If you can identify the right use case, you can build a community that no-one has even tried to build before.