Become great at community strategy

Build and scale a thriving community.

By Richard Millington,

Founder & Managing Director @ FeverBee

Course length: 2h 52min

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English subtitles Certificate included

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Master the strategies you need to build a highly engaged community

As people crave deeper connection in today’s digital world, communities are more important than ever. A brand community has become a powerful tool for strengthening your organization and creating highly engaged brand advocates. But most marketers skip the most important step — the strategy.

This course will help you develop a successful community strategy, from scratch, using the best practices from today’s leading communities. Get the resources you need to launch, quickly reach a critical mass of activity, and scale your community to its full potential.

Don’t just wait and hope members will show up

Most community efforts flop because they fail to understand what truly hooks members and keeps them engaged. The “build it and they’ll come” approach might work for your local park. But it isn’t enough to build a thriving brand community.

This course will help you overcome that challenge by teaching you the step by step process of developing a magnetic community strategy. From audience research to building detailed member personas, and selecting the right platform for your audience.

Avoid costly mistakes of launching a community without a strategy, and set the foundations for sustainable growth.

After taking this course you’ll…

  • Have a comprehensive member journey that captures newcomers, ensures they engage in your community, and nurtures them into top community members.
  • Know the different technology platforms you can use, and set up the right one to match the needs of your audience.
  • Be able to use deep research techniques to build detailed member personas
  • Create a content and activities plan to boost discussion and turn top members into top contributors.
  • Transform your member engagement with powerful psychological rewards
  • Develop the perfect community platform to maximise engagement levels.
  • Avoid other common pitfalls by developing a comprehensive community strategy

Get to the why and find your community sweet spot

Building a community is a balancing act between what the brand wants, what the community wants, and what members want. Go too far in any one direction and you’ll end up with a ghost town or struggle against the ‘engagement trap’.

This course teaches you a framework to evaluate and balance the needs of your organization with those of its members. You’ll identify the right goals for your community, and develop a unique positioning strategy to help your community stand out.

Learn the tried and perfected processes that have helped build booming communities at organizations like Facebook, Wikipedia, Sky and Lego.

This course is essential for you if…

  • You’re launching a new community from scratch and you’re feeling lost, you’re not sure what you need to do or even where to begin.
  • You work for an organization that needs to scale its customer support and success efforts.
  • You’re managing a community but don’t have a clear strategy in place or vision for the future.

This course is NOT for you if…

  • You’re a social media manager looking for more clicks, likes, and shares on the standard social media channels.
  • You’re creating a blog, content site, or another platform which doesn’t allow member-to-member interaction.
  • You have a strong track record in delivering successful online communities and are looking to upgrade your technical skills (UX, Design, programming etc…)

Skills you will master

Audience buildingCommunity buildingBrand communityCommunity researchCommunity Management

Richard Millington

Founder & Managing Director @ FeverBee

Richard Millington is the Founder of FeverBee, author of 3 books on communities, and speaker at community events around the world.

Over the past 13 years, Richard has helped 310+ organizations, including Apple, Facebook, Google, The World Bank, and SAP use powerful psychology to build thriving communities. Through his community management academy, he has also trained 1250 of the world’s top community pros.

Your course curriculum

Community strategy

1 The Basics of Community Strategy

This first lesson covers the basic framework for developing a strategic plan for your community. Topics covered: Learn the five elements that form the kernel of community strategy and why each is needed for a community to succeed. Understand the key de …

2 Why Create A Community?

Learn to identify the potential goals for your community, how to set them, and why your goals should be really specific to the people you’re working with. Topics covered: Learn what makes communities are unique from any other type of activity (content …

3 Who Is Your Community For?

Discover a series of techniques to determine who your members really are and how you can satisfy their needs. Topics covered: Learn the most important thing which draws people to a community and keeps them engaged.Understand how to identify segments fr …

4 How To Find The Community ‘Sweet Spot’

A community must finely balance the needs of the organisation against the needs of its members. Topics covered: Learn the different types of communities you can create and which is right for you. Each type can guide you down a completely different comm …

5 Finding The Perfect Positioning Strategy For Your Community

Your community faces a number of competitors and substitutes. How can you perfectly position your community in the minds of your members and offer the benefits they need to stay engaged? Topics covered: Learn to analyse and evaluate the competition for …

6 Developing Your Community Experience

It’s critical to select the right community platform if you want to thrive. There are hundreds of option to choose from and new platforms emerging every day. How do you select the right platform your community? Topics covered: Determine what category o …

7 Developing The Community Member Journey

Most communities suffer from horrific retention problems. It’s not uncommon for most members to disappear after making a single post. This is because there isn’t a detailed journey in place which takes members from first becoming aware of the community …

8 Launching Your Community and Reaching A Critical Mass of Activity

It’s critical in the early stages of your community effort to reach a critical mass of activity. If you fail, your community will never take off. However, a ‘big bang’ launch isn’t the right solution. Instead you need to launch fast and keep growing. T …

9 Developing Successful Superuser Programs

Every community eventually relies upon a small cadre of top members to keep things going. The real challenge is learning how to identify, nurture, and build a program to support the top members of your community. Topics covered: Decide how many superus …

10 Building Your Community Skills

Engaging community members often doesn’t seem like a particularly difficult thing to do. Yet there is a lot of complexity, psychology, and nuance in how you engage any audience. If you don’t use the right words or overcomplicate your message, you’re no …

11 Creating a Community Risk Analysis

Launching a community entails certain risks. It’s important to identify the most common types of risks and how you can prevent or mitigating the impact of each of them. Some of these risks are mild, others are show-stoppers. Topics covered: Be able to …

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Learn Community Strategy: FAQ

Who is this course for?

This course is essential for you if…

  • You’re launching a new community from scratch and you’re feeling lost, you’re not sure what you need to do or even where to begin.
  • You work for an organization that needs to scale its customer support and success efforts.
  • You’re managing a community but don’t have a clear strategy in place or vision for the future.

Some careers that will especially benefit from this course are community manager, content manager, product marketer, brand marketer, and social media manager. 

What will you learn?

After taking this course, you will:

  • Have a comprehensive member journey that captures newcomers, ensures they engage in your community, and nurtures them into top community members.
  • Know the different technology platforms you can use, and set up the right one to match the needs of your audience.
  • Be able to use deep research techniques to build detailed member personas
  • Create a content and activities plan to boost discussion and turn top members into top contributors.
  • Transform your member engagement with powerful psychological rewards
  • Develop the perfect community platform to maximise engagement levels.
  • Avoid other common pitfalls by developing a comprehensive community strategy

What does the course include?

Our Community Strategy training includes 11 lessons, 14 downloadable resources, 2h 52min of video material, several assignments, and a final exam.

Are subtitles available for the lessons?

Lessons have English subtitles and transcriptions available.

Will I receive a certificate of completion?

After taking this course, you will receive the Community Strategy Certification from CXL, with credentials that you can add to your LinkedIn profile.

What is the refund policy?

All plans come with a 7-day refund period .

How long will it take for me to finish it?

This is entirely up to you – it’s how many study hours per week you can put in. This course is 2h 52min long.