The end of an era (sort of)
Community Camp, Community Circle-Ups, and more are now no longer a service offered by Strange Birds.
Read more to learn how I’m integrating my knowledge into all copywriting projects going forward.
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An important fly-by announcement from Strange Birds!
Recently, I quietly took down the Community Design and Community Camp pages off my website.
I had been thinking about closing down the community design wing of my business for a couple of months now, but could never bring myself to do it.
Not to mention I love talking about all things community.
But here’s the kicker: while I love community design and others love learning about it,?the gap between ‘learning’ and ‘paying’ is quite wide.
The amount of education that was required to qualify someone for a paid offer with me was vast.
Folks know community building is important for their businesses, but putting money into designing a fantastic experience for their members?
It’s just not commonplace enough.
This means my pre-qualified customer base is small.?(and mighty! I love all of you so much!!!)
If I looked at just the hard numbers, it wasn’t worth it.
I didn’t have the time or energy to put the energy required into making an offer like Community Camp the knock-outta-the-park program I knew it could be.
Plus, community design had never been the profitable side of my business—it relied on my copywriting services to fund it.
After over a year of chewing up my copywriting profits, I had to face the music.
Community design isn’t a viable service offering for me anymore.
That doesn’t mean I’m no longer going to talk about community or help my clients build communities!
Never ever.
I won’t NOT write about community building in my Tuesday emails.
The topic is here to stay.
The only things that are gone are—
My lead magnet?(sigh, it was so good)?because I no longer want to attract folks who?only?want community design, but rather copywriting with a side of community.
领英推荐
Last chance to grab it!?Click here to download: Foundational Building Blocks of Community
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Community Camp?(bigger sigh). This one is so hard. My designer, Jack, did a fricking BRILLIANT rebrand of it and then I…never launched it again. I mean, look at this logo!!!!
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Community Circle-Ups, my one-hour community consulting offer. I still offer one-hour consultations, and?folks could book one just to talk about community, but Circle-Ups no longer gets it’s own calendar link.?(deprioritizing in my service mix!)
This might be the end of the official “I have a product or offer about this thing” era, but it’s not the end of community design!
Community design will be now fully integrated into every single copywriting offer I have.
The Go-Try-It-Out Section
I bet everyone reading this has a service lurking in their closet gathering cobwebs.
It’s probably one you completely love and you put a lot of energy into creating it.
Yet it’s also probably taking up weight and space in your brain, space you need to focus on your big sellers.?(especially now with the economy doing…whatever it wants)
Shutting down a service you love is the hardest thing to do.
But hey – it doesn’t mean it was a failure.
It means you allowed yourself to totally geek out about something that?matters.
Just because folks don’t buy that particular service doesn’t mean you wasted your time.
Everything you learned in designing that service absolutely impacts everything else.
How can that service be integrated into your big sellers to make them even better?
Because you better believe my knowledge of community design makes my copywriting miles better than it was before.
This was a hard blog post to write, but now that it’s been sent out to the world, I have more space to go after my goals for the year.
A big goal?
Build out the team at Strange Birds, aka be an active part in creating a new community.?(hint hint hint big things are coming soon)
I perfected turning art into a science.
1 年We often recognize adding services or doing something new as a sign of growth. But knowing when to focus and when to sunset something is a pretty great sign of growth and maturity, too. Congrats, Anna!
curious about the future of work
1 年I really loved reading this - I think it's so incredible that you've given us a glimpse into your business and what was likely a really challenging decision between heart and mind. I also love knowing that community building is baked into the way you do the rest of your work. Research and product iteration often take us in directions that we never imagined, including changing our whole ethos about how core business is done. Bravo!