Wanted to offload some brain flatulence on things I learned about building a community over the last 8 years (holy crap I’m old)
Between NFT shilling, metaverse expansions and senior management looking for a new place to dump their money, communities are now becoming the hot new (resurrected zombie) buzzword. I’ll start with the basics.
Members are not metrics
Community is meant to be a safe space for common interest. If someone has joined a community, the person is already interested in the topic. Community is not a sales/ marketing channel. There’s really no need for further shilling. It is a major turnoff.
The drive for more members, MAU, DAU is truly nonsensical beancounting to justify return on investment. It is equivalent to expecting ROI on marriage or having kids. Community is about relationships and the ROI is intangible in terms of creating a brand that people love (so I guess if you really want to, find an accountant that can figure out how to park this under goodwill and collateralize it as a long 🤪)
Safe space
Communities need to be safe for the members. One of the most challenging things I have had to balance is to figure out how to grow new members while actively engaging the OGs.
The mods need to set clear rules and boundaries without it becoming a cancel culture witch hunt. This is also where I feel despite all the automated moderation, human in the loop is still…
