Community is a BAD value proposition 🙅

Let’s start with the hot take: 

If you’re building a multi-featured membership, leading with community as your primary value proposition is often a recipe for disappointment. 

Think about it.

When we say "community," we're essentially talking about relationships. 

Relationships are incredibly hard to assign a tangible value to. 

Unlike a digital book that might cost $9.99 or a course priced at $299, community doesn't have a fixed perceived value in people's minds.

This ambiguity makes it challenging for potential members to justify spending their time or money on something as abstract as "connecting with like-minded peers." 

It's not that people don't value relationships – they absolutely do – but they struggle to quantify that value upfront.

Interestingly though, while people may not join for the community, they often stay for it. 

Let’s look at a real-world example that perfectly illustrates this:

Steph Smith, a digital product creator (and my old teammate at Trends), runs a Discord community with over a thousand members.

The community is highly-engaged, and almost entirely self-organizing (they don’t even need a community manager!)

Sounds like a community builder's dream, right?

Here’s the thing:

Steph didn't lead with the community as her primary value proposition. These members are people who purchased her digital product, "Internet Pipes."

People came for her digital product – a tangible offer with a clear, quantifiable value, but they stayed for the community.

The lesson here is simple:

Focus on creating compelling entry points. 

Once you get someone into the membership, the community will act as the vehicle to keep them around.

Some useful strategies for initially acquiring those members:

1. Digital Products: Offer an information product or course, like in Steph’s example, that naturally leads into a community experience.
   

2. Strategic Partnerships: Collaborate with existing communities to tap into an audience that already values community engagement.
   

3. Events: Host events and IRL meetups that provide immediate value and naturally transition into ongoing community involvement.

Once you've attracted those members, the challenge shifts to retention (to be covered in a newsletter edition very soon 😀).

Now…

What if you could master every aspect of community building, from crafting irresistible value propositions to fostering long-term engagement and measuring your success?

That's exactly how we support our partners here at Wondry.

We go beyond just solving the initial challenges – we equip you with a comprehensive toolkit for building thriving, engaged communities from the ground up.

When you partner with Wondry, we’ll help you:

• Create and nurture a thriving community culture through thoughtful moderation, engagement tactics, and conflict resolution systems

• Select, implement, and optimize the right community platform for your goals

• Develop and execute powerful retention strategies, including events and partnerships that provide immediate value and encourage long-term engagement

• Implement robust measurement and analytics frameworks to continuously evaluate and improve your community's health, growth, and overall success

And more.

Want to see how Wondry can help?

Reach out to book a 15-minute discovery call with us today.

And, as always, keep reading How to People every week for more tips on building and scaling your community 🤝