As high quality content and effective brand strategy move down the long tail, “community” has become an important concept for every post-Web 2.0 player. Crypto token holders, influencer fanbases, DTC brand customers, creator audiences, and new social networks are all often referred to as communities, and each has a stake in developing community for... See more

Community is more than just a feeling of belonging. In the context of business, it’s a structure for creating value. A simple way to understand it is to compare “community” to an “audience.”

Community is one of those words that means different things to different people. For clarity’s sake, I’ll share my definitions of the word. To me, community is as simple as a group of people helping each other out.

Where community becomes powerful is when there are clear and well-defined goals. Each plan should be tied with a metric to measure the impact on the community. First, you should ask yourself what is valuable to measure. Avoid vanity metrics like the number of members: it doesn’t matter how many people are in your community if no one is interacting

The result of this are very real network effects: as engagement grows, the community gets smarter, faster to respond, more globally available, and generates more value.

1) The community quadrant (to understand how community differs from other groups of people who interact with a product) 2) The community funnel (to understand what makes a community compelling to prospective members).