At a fundamental level, i think the tightness of a community is anti-scale, especially at the beginning.
This comes from my learning from observing Visa build FAN.
While drafting my tweets, I default to using my marketing brain and make it clear, concise, to the point, ending with a call to action.
But I realised this is distribution-focused or audience-focused content, not community-focused content.
Community content is usually with a ton of nuance, and a lot of tangents, experiences, examples, and anecdotes. Best of community content – Hindu scriptures or the old testament Bible – was written in languages that were bad from a distribution perspective.
My biggest takeaway is: function of content in a community vs media is completely opposite.
| Content for communities | Content for audiences | |
| What are we creating? | Community | Media |
| Function of content | Filtering | Reach / information |
| Nuances / tangents | Desired | Not desired |
| Type of content | Tribal truth | Absolute truth |
| Meant for | Aligned folks / to identify aligned folks | Non-aligned folks |