Competitor Analysis
It is important, both before and after a community has been developed, that any existing online communities, mailing groups and social gatherings within the same ecosystem are identified.
You need to know what niche they fill, what areas they don’t cover, and what percentage of the audience they have.
What are the most successful communities within that sector?
What type of communities are they?
How old are the existing online communities?
How active are they?
First, directly ask the target audience which communities they participate in and are aware of. Second, search for communities via search engines.
Discovering Communities
Directly ask the target audience which communities they participate in and are aware of.
Second, search for communities via search engines & databases such as
If no such communities exist, either a major opportunity, or a major warning that there is not a strong enough common interest to create this community. It's usually the latter.
Classifying Communities
By purpose
leisure
relationships
causes
self-improvement
collaboration
By common interests - People join communities of interest to share their love of a specific topic with others.
By geography. These are communities based on geography. the most well-known types of communities.
By practice. These communities are comprised of members who undertake the same activities.
By action. Communities of action are dedicated to making change in the world. This includes most of the non-profit and political community efforts. Increasingly, many other types of communities evolve into more of an activist force about their topic over a period of time.
By circumstance. People who are within a circumstance not of their own making include most health communities, LGBT groups, and others with a common self-interest. These communities are often very strong but difficult for an organization to create.
About the Community
Age
Review when the domain name was registered.
Scroll to the earliest forum posts.
Look at archive.org for that internet address.
Community size
Platform, you can usually identify the platform by reviewing the source code
Social networks
Message boards
Chat rooms
Virtual worlds
Stage in Lifecycle (Growing, Stable or in Decline)
You want to know whether the community is growing in activity, is relatively stable, or is in a decline. One way of identifying this is to use archive.org and compare the growth/decline of activity in the community over a one-month period.
Subtract the total post count from one month to the next and divide this by the number of days between to obtain the number of posts per day. You can then repeat this process for a subsequent month/year to ascertain the growth of the community.
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