The value of community for content creators
In 2024, more creators are recognizing the value of building their own community for their audiences. Creating a space for your followers to build connections with each other, not just with you, can be an exciting way to take your business to the next level. It's a way to deepen the trust you have with your followers and offer space for community interaction, group messaging, local events, or even volunteer opportunities.
Hosting a community forum gives you a space to host community events and come up with creative community activities that go beyond social networking to drive true community engagement.
Why should creators consider community-building apps?
You'll be more successful if you choose a mobile application that your followers are already using.
One of the biggest challenges in online community building is getting your members to check in with your space every day. There is a lot of content competing for our community members attention these days, so you are only doing yourself a favor if you choose a community app that your members are already checking daily. You can find this out with a simple poll.
Community apps have come a long way, so you can easily find something that meets your needs.
If you have specific needs for your community like a way to host live events or online courses, an intuitive interface, the ability to send push notifications or a way to create member profiles, you can find a community platform that meets those needs! It's a much better option than trying to DIY something or hosting a chaotic group chat without a friendly interface that makes the group accessible to your members.
An online community platform gives your community features and legitimacy.
Hosting an official community on a third party community platform creates a sense of legitimacy with your users that your community is a safe and legitimate space, with way less work on your part. Just some of the features you may want to consider for your community are:
- Live events: will you host virtual or in-person events? A hosting feature can make this much easier for you!
- Push notifications: do want to stay top of mind for your members or alert them to time-sensitive issues?
- Online courses: do you create and sell online courses, or want the ability to do so within your community?
- An activity feed: would it be helpful for your members to see the most recent posts and messages?
- An intuitive interface: is your community super investigative and tech savvy, or is something simple and intuitive to navigate essential?
- Member profiles: do you want your members to be able create profiles with contact info?
- Customer service: does the platform have support to help you with set up or help your members with issues, taking burden off of you for management?
- Private spaces: will you want to create private channels that only select groups of members within the community can access?
- Live streaming: are you a big live streamer, and want this feature natively within your community?
- Customization options: do you care about white labeling your app, or having custom colors or URLs?
So, what are the best community apps for creators in 2024?
Community building apps are all so different and offer such a diverse range of features and benefits that it's really impossible to "rank" them in a best-to-worst style. So, we're presenting them in categories based on what they offer and who might want to use them so you can get the best sense of which one might be right for your community.
The Old Guard:
Online communities have been around for a lot longer than most community apps. Many communities that have been functioning for 5 or more years are hosted on one of these three "Old Guard" community applications.
Facebook Groups
Facebook is the OG of social media, and Facebook groups are one of the OG spaces for online communities. In 2024, a Facebook group can be a good community app for your situation if most or all of your members are already active on Facebook every day, are already members of other Facebook groups, and if you mostly want members to be able to post specific situations or questions and have other members offer comments and opinions. Facebook Groups are also discoverable, so if you want a built-in way for new members to find out about your community, that's another reason to consider this choice.
With their recent announcement of expanding group limits to 265 members, WhatsApp is a longstanding community contender for casual group chat style spaces. You won't get many fancy features or advanced functionality, but if you're trying to keep up a conversation with people who are already on WhatsApp all day, it could work for your community.
Slack
Slack has evolved as a community space for many professional communities, since members of those groups (like engineers, designers, writers, etc) are already on Slack all day for their work. There are some very large and successful communities on Slack, and their features like topical channels, private channels, Huddle audio-casting, archives, threads and emoji reactions help keep big and fast-moving conversations organized. Slack can be expensive for big groups, though, and for content creators building their own community spaces, it's not likely to be the best community app for you.
The Industry Giants:
Once mobile apps started evolving with a community-first ethos, a few platforms built specifically to create community rose to the top as leaders in the space.
Circle
Knowledge sharing has never been easier than with Circle's community-oriented forum. With different price points and functionalities from private channels, native courses, live event hosting, and member profiles, this platform does have a mobile app (that you can whitelist!) but it's pretty heavy weight for creators. Unless you plan to make your community offering a paid membership and focus on it as a big part of your business model, Circle is likely too advanced for you.
Discord
A favorite amongst gamers, builders, and entrepreneurs, Discord rose to popularity more recently but quickly overtook many industry favorites as a community giant. Discord offers anonymity, quick-moving chats, and the opportunity to deeply customize and gamify different roles and permissions within the group. If you expect your community to be very large; cover many different time zones; or prioritize anonymity or gamification; Discord could be right for you!
The New Networks:
As a vertical starts to see success, there are always new contenders that emerge to offer more specific or more modern features and pull customers away from the industry giants and OG's. What these platforms tend to lack is that native draw, where your members are likely to already be there for other reasons. To make up for this, they typically offer really comprehensive suites of features and high level customization and branding.
Heartbeat
For creators looking to hustle and monetize, Heartbeat Chat has great features. You can lock certain channels, sell event tickets, offer paid courses, and sell in 150 global currencies. Heartbeat would be a great platform for creators in the digital and affiliate marketing space selling MRR courses who want to expand beyond the "one-and-done" nature of that interaction and offer ongoing education and support to others learning the trade.
Geneva
Geneva's community app is hyper-local and has a reputation for appealing to Gen Z. They have many established community groups that make it easy for you to find your people, but you can also start your own! If you plan for your community to mostly be a place online to coordinate in-person events and activities, Geneva could be the right fit.
Mighty Networks
Mighty Networks is another heavyweight, with a similar set of features to Circle in a more mobile-oriented setting. Mighty Networks offers custom branding and white-labeling, so your community will feel like you built an entire app just for them. But, there's not really any native existence across multiple communities on Mighty Networks, so your ability to draw people's attention specifically to your community is important here.
The Honorable Mentions:
Curated Connections
We're huge fans of this easy member-matching community add-on that allows you to pair your community members for one-on-one interactions based on things they have in common.
Instagram broadcast channels
If you're not quite ready to jump into a full-on community app, but you want to explore what it looks like to engage more intentionally with a subset of your audience, an Instagram broadcast channel can be a great place to explore.
Making the right community choices
When it comes down to building a community as a content creator, there are really just two main decisions to make:
Is building an online community right for me and my business right now?
Timing is everything, so think about whether your community seems to have a natural energy for more gathering and conversation right now, and what bandwidth you have to manage such a group. Though there are many benefits, a neglected community can lead to chaos and trolls, so make sure you are channeling the energy of your existing audience rather than trying to create that energy out of nowhere.
What is the best community app for me based on where my followers are already spending their time and the features I need to offer the group?
Poll your members to understand where they already spend time and pick a space that's native for them. You won't win the attention battle, so you have to go with the flow! Plus, prioritize a few features that are the most important to you in a community platform and use that to guide the rest of your decision-making.
%202.webp)
