The Business of Belonging

Foreword ix Introduction xiii Becoming a Community Professional xv Building the Community Industry xvi The Community Era Has Arrived xviii Notes xix Chapter 1 Why Community is the New Competitive Advantage 1 A Customer Community is Born 1 The Rise of Community-Driven Business 3 Giving Customers a True Sense of Community 6 The Unrivaled Scalability of Community 8 Community is an Extension of Your Team 10 The Power of Owning a Topic in People's Minds 12 The One Thing They Can't Copy 13 Good for Business, Good for Humanity 14 Notes 17 Chapter 2 The Fundamentals of Community Strategy 19 The Three Levels of Community Strategy 19 The SPACES Model: The Six Business Outcomes of Community 22 Metrics and the Attribution Challenge 35 Finding Your Community Focus 36 Growth Engines vs. Cost Centers 39 Choosing a Measurement Framework 42 The Community Investment Journey 45 Notes 53 Chapter 3 Creating a Social Identity 55 The Social Identity Cycle 55 Who is Your Community Built For? 60 Who Doesn't Belong? 63 Investing in Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion from Day One 65 What is Your Community's Personality? 68 How Can You Make Your Members Feel "Cool"? 70 Should Your Community Have a Unique Identity from Your Company Brand? 72 Finding Sub-Identities within Your Community 74 Defining Identity by Levels of Contribution 76 Notes 78 Chapter 4 Mapping the Community Participation Journey 79 The Commitment Curve 79 The Four Levels of Participation 81 How to Attract Members to Your Community 86 Creating Intentional Barriers to Entry 89 Designing a Compelling Onboarding Experience 90 How to Move Members Up the Commitment Curve 92 Activating Successful Community Leaders 94 Notes 96 Chapter 5 Validation, Rewards, and Incentives 97 Creating Habits with Rewards 97 Extrinsic vs. Intrinsic Motivations 99 Avoid Replacing Social Norms with Market Norms 101 SNAP! A Framework for Effective Extrinsic Rewards 102 The Thing about Gamification 105 Come for the Utility, Stay for the Unity 107 Measuring

David Spinks is Cofounder of CMX, a 20,000 member organization dedicated to helping community professionals thrive. David is also the VP of Community at Bevy, an enterprise software platform that powers event-driven community programs and virtual conferences, following its acquisition of CMX in 2019. David has personally advised and trained hundreds of organizations in community strategy, including Facebook, Waze, Salesforce, Airbnb, and Google.