Here are the most important considerations in online community strategy distilled into a quick reference visual model – the Periodic Table of Community Strategy.
I’m a fan of creating useful models that can help people get to the most important elements of any strategy and that’s why I spent some time recently creating the Periodic Table of Community Strategy©. I hope you find it useful.Â
It’s an homage to the original Periodic Table of Elements, and my attempt to distill the important considerations around online community strategy and community building into a quick reference visual model.
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I’ve been building, launching and sustaining communities for 25 years and have lectured to and trained hundreds of community builders.
I’ve developed community and social media strategies for publishers and media, charities and non-profits, finance and insurance business, b2b businesses, arts, culture, sports and consumer brands, so I have a pretty good handle on what makes a community strategy successful.Â
The ‘build it and they will come’ theory around community is holey, you can get away with a minimal viable community strategy, but it’s better to sit down and go through a checklist of the key areas that you need to consider.Â
The table breaks community into 10 categories:
- Community strategy
- Community types
- Community management techniques
- Social media platforms
- Community platforms
- Community goals
- Community management roles
- Community membership roles
- Community member motivations
- Community governance
- Community checklist
This blog post covers each of the categories in depth and also links to a free to join community for community strategists and people interested in community and social media strategy – The Guild Community Collective.
The high resolution version of the table is also available to download in that community, but the real value comes from the knowledge experienced community builders are happy to share on there. Do feel free to come and join us.Â
This is version 1.0 and there will be future iterations of the Periodic Table of Community Strategy©, so if you have suggestions, spot any errors or just want to give me some feedback, please connect with me on Guild and DM me.
Happy community building!
And if your looking for an alternative to Facebook, LinkedIn, Slack and WhatsApp for your communities, do consider the benefits of trying Guild for your mobile-first, custom-branded, fully featured admin and analytics, Ad-free, privacy by design groups and networks.
