Do you have community members with significantly different interests, skill sets, goals, or preferences who would benefit from more personalized interactions or content?

Do your members have varying levels of experience and would they benefit from content and support based on their experience?

Is your community strongly rooted at a local level?

If you answered yes to any of the above questions, it could be time to consider creating a group strategy.

As your community grows it may become trickier to narrow in and talk to specific segments.

Groups (sometimes referred to as sub-communities) are housed within your wider community. By creating a group you can offer your members a dedicated area for more niche discussions, specialized content and events, and more.

Let’s take a look at an example… Say you have a developer community. Members will undoubtedly have different levels of experience. You don’t want novice members to be intimidated by complex content aimed at more experienced developers. And you don’t want to offer beginner content to experienced developers. Creating groups based on experience level is a great way to provide members with super targeted content.

Uniting members around a common interest, level of expertise, goal, demographic, etc, encourages more meaningful engagement amongst members because the space is more intimate and direct! Members can forge more powerful connections and discover collaboration opportunities—groups can also connect those who may not have found each other otherwise. And you can leverage these groups for gathering feedback, niche data, and more!

For a group approach to be successful you need a well-thought-out strategy. If you start a group too early or create a group without a real value proposition it can do more harm than good to your community.

Download our guide and explore all the essential points you need to consider to get your group strategy right.