Community Strategy and Platform Selection

Strategy Before Tactics

Before you post a welcome message or set up a channel, you need clarity on three questions: Why does this community exist? Who is it for? And how will you know it’s working?

Most communities skip this step. They pick a platform, create some channels, invite people, and hope for the best. This produces the “ghost town” problem: a community with members but no activity.

Defining Your Community Purpose

Help me define a clear, compelling purpose for my community.

Context:
- My organization/brand: [describe briefly]
- The audience I want to serve: [who are they?]
- The problem they face: [what do they struggle with?]
- What I hope to achieve: [business goals]
- What MEMBERS should achieve: [member goals]

Help me craft:
1. A community purpose statement (one sentence that answers:
   "Why would someone join this community?")
2. The "member promise" — what specific value will members get
   that they can't get elsewhere?
3. The "identity test" — who is this community FOR and
   (equally important) who is it NOT for?
4. Three measurable outcomes that prove the community is delivering value

Purpose Examples

Weak Purpose	Strong Purpose
“A community for marketers”	“Help early-career marketers land their first management role through peer mentorship and shared playbooks”
“Connect with our customers”	“Help our customers get 10x value from our product by learning from power users who’ve solved the same problems”
“Network with professionals”	“Give freelance designers a trusted space to share pricing strategies, client horror stories, and referrals”

✅ Quick Check: Why does the strong purpose always specify a transformation or outcome? Because people don’t join communities for “connection” in the abstract — they join to solve a problem, achieve a goal, or find belonging with people like them. “A community for marketers” could be anything. “Help early-career marketers land their first management role” tells a prospective member exactly what they’ll get and whether it’s relevant to them. Specificity attracts the right members and repels the wrong ones.

Platform Selection

Help me choose the right community platform.

My community:
- Purpose: [from your purpose statement]
- Target members: [audience description]
- Expected initial size: [100 / 500 / 1,000 / 5,000+]
- Primary interaction type: [real-time chat / threaded discussion /
  courses and content / events and meetups]
- Budget: [free / $50-100/month / $100-500/month / enterprise]
- Members currently use: [which platforms they're already on]

Compare these options for my situation:
1. Discord — real-time chat, channels, bots, free, young/tech-savvy
2. Slack — professional, threaded, integrations, familiar to businesses
3. Circle — threaded discussion, courses, events, clean UX, paid
4. Mighty Networks — courses, content, mobile app, paid
5. Facebook Groups — massive reach, casual, limited features
6. Reddit — public, threaded, upvoting, anonymous-friendly

Recommend one primary platform and explain why the others
don't fit as well. Include migration considerations if I already
have a community elsewhere.

Platform Decision Matrix

Factor	Discord	Slack	Circle	Facebook Group
Best for	Gaming, tech, creators	Professional, SaaS, B2B	Creators, courses, memberships	Casual, local, mass-market
Real-time chat	Excellent	Excellent	Basic	Poor
Threaded discussions	Basic	Good	Excellent	Good
Content/courses	None	None	Built-in	None
Moderation tools	Good + bots	Basic	Good	Basic
Cost	Free	Free-$12.50/user	$49-399/month	Free
AI integration	Extensive bot ecosystem	Good API/bots	Growing	Limited

Setting Measurable Goals

Help me set SMART goals for my community using the SPACES framework.

My community purpose: [from above]
Current state: [new community / existing with X members]
Timeline: [3-month / 6-month / 12-month goals]

For each SPACES dimension, suggest a specific, measurable target:
1. Sense of belonging — member satisfaction survey score,
   % who say they "feel part of the community"
2. Purpose — % of members who achieved [specific outcome]
3. Access — avg. time to first response, onboarding completion rate
4. Contribution — % of members who post (not just read),
   UGC volume per week
5. Engagement — DAU/MAU ratio, avg. posts per active member
6. Support — member-to-member help ratio (peer answers vs. staff answers)

Prioritize: which 2-3 metrics should I focus on in the first 3 months?

✅ Quick Check: Why focus on only 2-3 metrics initially instead of tracking all six SPACES dimensions? Because new communities have limited data and limited capacity. Trying to optimize everything simultaneously leads to optimizing nothing. For a brand-new community, the critical metrics are usually: (1) onboarding completion rate (are people who join actually engaging?), (2) contribution rate (what percentage of members post, not just lurk?), and (3) first response time (how quickly does someone get a reply?). These three determine whether your community feels alive or dead to new members.

Designing the Member Journey

Map the ideal member journey for my community.

From discovery to active contributor, design these stages:
1. DISCOVERY — How do potential members find us?
2. FIRST IMPRESSION — What do they see when they arrive?
3. ONBOARDING — First 7 days: what happens, in what order?
4. FIRST VALUE — When do they get their first "aha, this is worth it" moment?
5. ACTIVE PARTICIPATION — What triggers the shift from lurker to contributor?
6. SUSTAINED ENGAGEMENT — What keeps them coming back weekly?
7. ADVOCACY — What makes them invite others?

For each stage, identify:
- The member's emotional state and needs
- The key action they should take
- How AI can assist at this stage
- The metric that measures success at this stage

Key Takeaways

Community purpose must answer “Why would someone join?” with a specific transformation or outcome — vague purposes create ghost towns
Platform selection should match where your members already are and what interaction type your community needs, not which platform has the most features
Member count is a vanity metric; the SPACES framework (Sense of belonging, Purpose, Access, Contribution, Engagement, Support) measures actual community health
Focus on 2-3 metrics initially: onboarding completion, contribution rate, and first response time determine whether your community feels alive to new members
Map the full member journey from discovery to advocacy so every stage has clear actions, metrics, and AI assistance opportunities

Up Next: You’ll build the onboarding system — using AI to create personalized welcome sequences that turn new members into active participants within their first week.