The Business of Belonging

Chapter 2The Fundamentals of Community Strategy

Now you hopefully have a high-level understanding of what it means for a business to build community. Building a true sense of community for your customers, or any other member type you're focusing on with your business, can unlock a massive source of passion and action that will help you scale your business. Community can help you create a new business category, or become the “go-to” resource in your category. It's the one thing competitors can't copy, and it's just a good thing to add to the world.

But what does that all mean for you and your business in practice? What does a community strategy look like? And is any of this business value measurable?

In this chapter, I'll teach you the simple structure you can use to map out your community strategy, and we'll go through The SPACES model, the go-to framework for defining exactly what objective community will drive for your business. We'll also talk about metrics, measuring the business value of community, and what the community investment journey looks like for every company.

The Three Levels of Community Strategy

If you want community to be something that your business makes a real investment in, and makes a core part of its strategy, then you have to be able to point to the measurable impact that community is having on your business.

Most companies when first investing in community focus entirely on engagement as a measure of success. They look at how many people are participating ...