Why Picking the Right Online Community Platform Is Essential
You’ve likely noticed that launching an online community has exploded in popularity since 2020.
Marketers community strategists, funnel builders. They’ve all been eager to sell you a quick blueprint for setting one up. But here’s the rub. Most of these blueprints. They’re designed to make quick money without a care for sustainability or your business model.
Let’s be clear. There’s nothing wrong with making money. But if your community doesn’t genuinely serve your members in a way that helps your business too, you’re setting yourself up for a giant failure.
Too many online community leaders just replicate a model that worked for someone else but is utterly misaligned with their own goals and capacities.
And then two things happen:
- They start incurring costs without making money back.
- The workload starts spiraling out of control and they end up folding the community because it’s just not worth it.
I’ve been building communities in various forms for more than 20 years now. And I’m here because I’ve seen way too many good communities fall into the trap of quick wins and trendy platforms.
The truth is that creating an online group is fairly easy. What’s much harder is turning it into a change-making space that keeps members coming back for more.
Great communities are built intentionally.
They help members and the businesses that are supporting them to reach their goals. You can’t achieve that if you let a pre-packaged plan that begins with picking a shiny new platform, dictate your options.
The key takeaway I want for you here is that choosing the right platform for your online community should be one of the last decisions you make. Not the first one.
Before you dive into those technical aspects, take the time to understand the true needs and objectives of your community. Invest in dialogue, ask questions, and maybe even bring in someone who’s been down this road before.
Your community is so much more than a revenue stream in your business.
It’s a living ecosystem that thrives on value engagement and a strong sense of belonging.
And while choosing a platform plays a really important part in creating that synergy and that success. It is not the first step in the process.
You need to take the time to ask yourself a few strategic questions about what you’re actually creating and what matters most in order to be able to make the best choice possible.
This is what this guide is about.
