Communities need a process too, otherwise they become a mess

During Q3 and Q4 of 2024 I’ve took a deeper dive into networking and joining various online and offline groups.

The diversity for business is undeniable. You should never base your business on just one marketing route. And while LinkedIn is great for generating business, it is a needy platform.

Plus, and you’ve heard me say this before, it’s rented space.

Having an email newsletter is a step in the right direction.

Joining various networking groups, online or offline, can take you even further.

The added value of meeting with other business owners and sharing ideas is huge. I don’t think I realized how much I needed this in the first years of business. Especially when business is going well.

In 2024 I decided to slow down and rebuild my marketing. The upgraded newsletter was just a part of it. I also started going to events (not that there are too many where I live), and I started to join online communities.

I have met some amazing people and generated leads through these groups. But that’s not what this article is about.

The different groups I joined were on various platforms: Slack, WhatsApp, Discord, Skool, and a few more.

The behavior of each group and the dynamics within the group changed based on the platform used.

Skool gives you a feed type experience, similar to social media. It has great gamification options and also enables releasing content based on user behavior. This is great for encouraging engagement and building a community that will drive itself.

Don’t be fooled, if you decide to go down this route, you will still have to work hard to have a lively and active community. Moderators are a must on any platform to drive people into action.

There are other added values to Skool and I highly recommend you try out the platform. Join a few different communities - there are many free ones as well as paid options. Yes, Skool enables free and paid communities which is another major benefit.

WhatsApp, interestingly enough, was my least favorite community platform. I was actually surprised, because it’s so easy to use as a one-to-one messaging tool and it makes sense to use for messaging 1-to-many.

But alas, it is just too crowded. I am part of a number of communities. Most are semi-active with just around 200 members and about 10-20 messages a day. At that rate, the community is sort of manageable. You can track who’s sending what message and there aren’t too many active threads (if you can call them that) at once.

But one of the communities I’m in receives hundreds of messages a day. It is SUPER active. 90% of the content is irrelevant to me and it’s hard to find the 10% that is relevant.

The communities are not separated into groups based on topics and thus I find myself mostly ignoring the chat and logging in once every few days to see what I’ve missed.

One of the easiest platforms to work with is Slack. You can set up channels based on topics, and you can have private channels as well, that only enable certain people to join.

Conversations can be threaded and easily followed.

And you also have the 1:1 option.

Slack also has amazing integrations and works really well for business and communications for project management.

You can have channels per department, team, and even clients. This ensures smooth communications throughout. Plus, because of the amazing integration options, your team members can choose where they prefer to be the bulk of their day, without harming your process and automations.

I could go deeper, but that’s a different discussion altogether. (You could read this article about Whatsapp vs Slack if you really wanted to.)

Like I mentioned, there are other community platforms and each has its pros and cons.

Are you a part of any interesting communities? I’d love to hear about them. And which platforms they’re on. Leave a comment and let me know.

~Irit