Today I had a discussion about an entrepreneur who runs a well know business in Australia. He commented about building a community, then working out how to extract revenue later.
Seems everyone is trying to build on line communities these days. How many auto generated emails are you getting? My inbox is full of them. Sure we know it works, we know it’s crucial, we know its all about the community. Interestingly when we say community we don’t really mean it. We mean bunch of people who we can do direct selling to. But here’s a thought:
There are only so many communities we can all belong to.
People are suffering from ‘Community Overload’.
The law of diminishing returns is not excluded from community participation. We only have 24 hours a day – something the internet hasn’t been able to revolutionize just yet. And just maybe some of our people / customers / community don’t care as much about what we do as we’d like to think.
It just might be time to flip our thinking a little here. Maybe we can just sell something instead. Maybe create a great product or service which people value – and just leave them alone. The ultimate community which matters is family and friends, and the best way we can serve that group is by not stealing time from it.
This is a huge topic – connectedness leads to overload and it is becoming a big issue for a lot of people.
Another issue with creating a community is “how are you a unique community?” there are so many communities out there all trying to do the same thing. Making it nearly impossible for all of them to turn out to be profitable businesses.
By focusing on doing something that people like (“find value in”) a community will form. Hate to use an example that is easy to come by, but look at Apple for example, they create things a certain group of people like, and that certain group of people has built a community themselves.
Users will build a community if you’re making something people like.
scott: this blog post is good example of what you’re saying. a micro community is forming around a topic of discussion.
Steve’s created something and those that have found value in it (ie. those taking the time to comment) have created the micro community.
Not all communities need to be formed for the purpose of direct monetisation. I’ve noticed that those that do it most successfully leverage the community for something else, or use it as a springboard to an idea that spawned from the community.
I read today something about the sitepoint dot com guys and their success with 99designs.com . an idea that came from their observations and involvement in that community rather i guess a direct monetisation strategy like charging for membership.