Communities are a focal point of cohort-based courses (CBCs). You can't have a start and end date, and just expect a high completion rate. You need community to help students stay motivated and stick through learning hard things. So how is community building different for CBCs vs other types of organizations? What unique challenges do courses bring?
Read MoreIncreasing engagement is a big deal for most startups and brands. You might have a presence on a channel—Instagram, Facebook, Slack, email, or your own internal platform—but do people want to show up?
The more engaged people are, the stickier your product is, and the more reason they want to stay. The longer a customer stays, the more chances you have to ultimately make a sale. But without a strategy for increasing engagement, digital communities can easily fizzle out. This leaves you panicking for ways to get people to come back, which is not a fun spot to be in.
If you're a co-founders or marketer, here are the key elements of maintaining (and growing) community participation.
Read MoreDigital communities... Everyone seems to be talking about them.
At the altMBA, I had the privilege of building our community from scratch to 2,000+ alumni. You might have read that a community can increase engagement, build a moat around your product, and lower your cost of customer acquisition over time. All of that can be true.
You might be thinking, I'm sold. Can I skip the strategy and go straight to building my community? I want to start sending out Slack invites!
But wait:
First, having a Slack room does not equal a community. (That’s a topic for another post...) Second, you can skip straight to execution, but you might end up building the wrong thing. You could invest several months and thousands of dollars into a digital community that no one wants to be part of.