I would say that there are three primary stages of a community’s life. The maturity of your community can vary depending on where you are in the journey—whether you’re just starting or already tracking the business impact of your community. Here’s an overview of these three main stages.
Phase 1: Seeding the Community
In this initial phase, your focus is on building the foundation. Even if your community isn’t established yet, you already have potential members. The key is to identify where they’re active (e.g., Slack, LinkedIn) and create a space for them to connect. Establish guidelines, set expectations, and facilitate organic conversations around the topic (and hopefully your product).
Phase 2: Cultivating Growth
When you have the basics in place, it’s time to scale. The goal here is to grow membership while keeping the community engaged. Expand your presence across additional channels, like forums or knowledge bases, and start identifying key contributors.
Phase 3: Demonstrating Community Impact
Once your community is thriving, it’s time to measure its direct impact on business goals, such as product adoption and revenue. This phase focuses on understanding how community activity accelerates sales, improves customer retention, and influences product usage.
For that you can use a community analytics tool like Practical CM Analytics to track interactions and engagement across platforms. This helps you monitor growth, community health metrics, pinpoint areas of success and identify champions who can help drive the community forward.