Sometimes building a community proves to be a lot harder than you hoped. Even when you’re following the golden rules of community building, sometimes it just doesn’t work.
In his talk, I illustrate how community building does not merely depend on using the right tactics, but also on understanding your community’s culture and preferences and being ready to adjust your plans to serve it. This might imply letting go of approaches you are very attached to in order to find better solutions for building the best community.
Once you know the general principles:
1) Validate existing platforms
2) Improve good methods
3) Explore new pathways
4) ... and nuke what doesn't work
At WooThemes we had a bit of tunnel vision in which we saw the "community forum" and our "community" as synonyms. When we realized a forum was only a tool and that we could get rid of if, because our community was no longer there. Doing this opened resources and left a better impression with our users. We now focus on building community through our better website, Facebook, Reddit, GitHub, WordPress.org, meetups, WooConf, and so on.
If you think that your community equals a tool you use, then you're getting too emotionally attached and you should learn to take distance in case it works no longer and you have to nuke it.
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