The Business of Belonging: How to Make Community your Competitive Advantage

by David Spinks

Owning a topic in people's minds is quite simple (but not easy): you need to successfully solve their problem for them enough times that your community becomes the most efficient and trusted place they know of to get an answer, and they form a new habit. They need to feel confident that if they ask a question in your online community, they will get quality answers in a reasonable amount of time. They need to feel confident that if they show up to your event, the content and the attendees will be high quality, and they'll get the value they came for. Then, whenever the thought pops into their head that they have a question or an idea around your topic, it will trigger them to think about your community, where they'll go first.