The Business of Belonging

Chapter 6Designing Community Spaces and Experiences

Congrats, you've completed your Social Identity Cycle! You now know who your members are, how they will participate, and how to validate and reward them. And hopefully, you have some ideas of how you'll measure the health and engagement of your community. That gives you plenty to work with on the community level of your strategy. We're ready to move into the third and final level of your community strategy: the tactical level.

In this chapter we'll look at the spaces and experiences that you're creating for your community, and what you'll do day-to-day to make those spaces and experiences highly engaged. We'll talk about the different kinds of experience you can organize, go through the 7Ps of community experience design, and talk about the specific elements that can make your community experiences truly meaningful and memorable.

The Two Kinds of Community Experiences

Although there are a lot of actions a member can take along the commitment curve, the real community magic happens when they participate in a shared experience.

It's your job as a community builder to thoughtfully design spaces and experiences that draw your members in, make them feel at home, and serve as a proper environment for the kinds of interactions you want them to engage in.

All community experiences fall into two buckets: synchronous or asynchronous.

Synchronous experiences are where members are participating live, at the same time, usually in the ...