The Online Community Life Cycle – Where Are You?

Every online community has a life cycle. The key is to identify which part of the life cycle you are in to determine your strategy in order to strengthen the community to achieve your goals. Whether you are augmenting an existing community, starting a member/customer community or developing an interest-based online community, the life cycle is the same. Just like a butterfly, before it can fly on its own it needs careful attention each step along the way. So let's take a deeper look. Below is a break down of the life cycle that each online community goes through. The goal for any online community is to get to and stay at the maturity phase.