What is the ‘Expansion Effect’ in community strategy?

CommunityCommunity GlossaryCommunity StrategyCommunity TheoryCommunity Based MarketingCommunity Led GrowthCommunity ManagementModerationWellbeingCase StudyCommunity of Purpose

10 Feb

Written By Michelle Goodall

”I realise that I’m sounding a bit elitist when I say this, but this community was so much better when I knew everyone personally in it. It feels like it has got too big. I don’t engage very often these days.”

This came from a recent conversation with someone I know. They felt that a community that they once loved had got too large. That there were too many members. That many of them were anonymous. That they didn’t know who they were speaking with.

Have you ever experienced this in a community? Perhaps you were a founding member or an early member. Perhaps there were only a few people and you had met them in person?

Was conversation in the community once focused and helpful, but now you find it hard to find “signal in the noise” in a community?

Has your involvement in a community reduced at the same time as membership has grown?

If the answer is yes to any of the above then you’re experiencing ‘expansion effect’ in a community. And you’re probably not the only member who is feeling the impact of community growth.

What is the ‘Expansion Effect’?

In communities, it’s almost the opposite to the ‘Network Effect’.

The Network Effect is when the value of a product or service increases as more people use it, leading to greater user engagement and growth for businesses. Marketers love the Network Effect.

An example of the Network Effect in consumer goods is ‘Who Gives a Crap’ toilet rolls. Their growth has come from people seeing their bright, distinctive packaging and using their bathroom tissue, usually in a friends’ house or a bar/restaurant. The more they see the brand ‘in the wild’, especially if it’s a friend who they like and trust, or if the restaurant is stylish and cool, the more likely they are to consider buying their loo rolls.

Or it’s when you see that someone you trust and admire in their professional life is using software, productivity tools or apps like Notion or Claude and then try them as a result of this ‘social proof’.

Most start up and scale up businesses try as hard as they can to fuel the Network Effect to power their growth.

”The ‘Expansion Effect’ is when the perceived value of a community for an individual reduces when the community becomes too big. Most importantly, the additional value per each new member is so small that the community expansion doesn’t bring enough additional value. The ‘Expansion Effect’ can also disrupt the norms in the community that made it such a space of value and support.”
Michelle Goodall

What happens when the ‘Expansion Effect’ takes hold of your community?

In my experience, you won’t get any loud signals that the ‘Expansion Effect’ is potentially hurting your community.

People, especially in the UK, rarely dramatically sashay away and leave, or email you because your community now doesn’t meet their expectations.

But you will start to see patterns in your engagement data. Some members will ‘quietly quit’, or fail to renew if it is a subscription community.

You’ll see your event registrations and attendance dropping. The people who were once highly engaged community members will be absent in discussions where their experience or opinion is highly relevant and helpful to others.

You may need to look hard for these signals because on the face of it, your community is growing in numbers. But your community definitely is starting to feel unhealthy and untethered in other ways.

How can you grow but avoid the negative elements of the ‘Expansion Effect’?

Ah, that’s where you need a community expert with experience in noticing the Expansion Effect and having strategies to deal with it! Hello there! Nice to meet you.

A short answer if you don’t want to pay for advice is that every community is different, but when you do start seeing the signs of the expansion effect, don’t ignore it. You do need to act.

One example of a B2B professional community that I advised was experiencing the ‘Expansion Effect’. We created a new private space for a sub segment of early communities members who had very senior roles in their organisations.

The community was growing. It was highly engaged. It was successful.

But this group was starting to feel that they couldn’t have the candid and open discussions that they used to have in the community. People who could be be impacted by some of their business decisions were also community members.

We met with this group and listened to their concerns. The result was that we agreed to create a space just for them.

Old members. New focused space for candid conversations. No fanfare.

They continued to engage in the wider community, but felt that their concerns had been heard.

Hey presto, happiness all round.

In summary

The ‘Expansion Effect’ can be a side effect of community growth and it can have a negative impact on some of your community members.

Be aware of it and use community data, your senses and the member connections you have to understand when it is happening.

Consider ways of effectively mitigating it, without impacting the wider community experience and community membership negatively.

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