The game of digital media is changing in front of us. What was before a race for reach and scaling through the transaction of content creation and consumption is now about individuals' depth, relevance and resonance.

This can best be achieved by scaling intimacy and two-way relationships within a community, rather than simply creating an audience.

The influx of content on the internet has broken down global barriers and spanned different niches, platforms, and media types, we are now able to achieve a level of personalization that was previously impossible.

By leaning into this personalization, the pressure to appeal to a wide audience is replaced by a desire to connect more deeply with people who share your interests and goals.

Scaling relationships with mass participation

Web2 creation was built on the backs of traditional media goals like creating mass appeal and reach based on audience segments driven by scarcity (TV timeslots, national audience demographics, which later morphed into creator niches and content types (YouTube creators vs TikTok creators).

We have long known that communities are valuable when they can coordinate together to accomplish shared goals. But as our small pockets of the internet grow, how can we maintain the intimate connections that made them appealing to others in the first place?

When you grow a group from 5 to 5000 it turns the nature and the dynamics of the group upside down. It changes from an intimate honest environment where participants dare to disagree and voice their opinions into a more of a megaphone-like situation where the more confident just put their ideas out there and might not even get feedback, especially criticism about it.

This is arguably a not very healthy way to operate most groups, requiring a different approach to growth, though it might still be functional for fan-like communities. There is so much value in genuine, everyday interactions when people are heard and feel safe enough to share. We should strive to keep this value.

The appeal of Web3 growth

In most cases, Web3 groups begin around a shared mission or interest and grow into larger organization-like entities where naturally lots of subgroups develop together with a hint of financialization.

Unlike the ones built on traditional media goals, these groups are more like living organisms, growing and evolving together, co-creating shared stories through serving the shared mission.

This appeals to more and more people (as the meme of web3 and shared digital ownership is successfully spread), and rightfully so because there is never seen before potential in these mechanisms, it’s important for us to fight the urge to commodify and generalize.

• If we’re building everything for everyone, then what we will end up with is lots of things that deeply resonate with no-one

• We need to protect our spaces from becoming performative, and instead focus on honest, authentic, small-scale relationships.

Granularity fixing growing groups

To the best of our knowledge and what tools enable today, granularity will be the solution for the next phase of healthy community growth.

In granular communities, individuals have specific roles and the organization itself can grow into this umbrella of a shared topic/mission while subgroups of interest can be established organically with a chose-your-own path type role selection.

By establishing more granular roles within a community, you can keep mechanisms alive that help the community flourish, for example facilitating healthy disagreement and decision-making between members.

"The Role of Roles” is to segment members into overlapping layers based on their journey status, and unique interests and to know how they can contribute to the success of the whole. You can identify members and filter the community by setting requirements of key metrics of activity that correspond to roles, and automatically grant access to actions, exclusive groups, content, tools, or means of communication.

More about managing access in a web3 way even without having your own tokens here:

The roles allow members to get relevant information based on who they are and what subgroups they might be interested in, resulting in less information overload.

We need to incentivize people to show up as their authentic selves, and self-curate their journeys, in order to maximize their ability to connect with others who share their interests and preferences, to spin off into new groups when it makes sense, rather than trying to fit into a box that doesn’t accurately reflect them.

How creators can apply these learnings to their own growing communities

Fight the urge to have a single “niche”

• Follow your own curiosity - there is more value in pursuing that which you actually care about with others who share your interest than reaching a target audience you’re not sure even exists. While this might seem like a bad move from a short-term monetization standpoint based on what marketing principles have been teaching us, for unique long-term success this is incredible to grow audience longevity.

Utilize tools and analytics

to gather feedback from your growing community that allows people to self-select how, where, and when they participate

• To get a healthy distribution of roles in your diverse community, it's important that you spend time with your groups, understand what roles are filled naturally, and who needs some encouragement to step into the role that fits them best.

Curation of conversations

• Curation of all forms is essential for psychological safety and the establishment of inclusive, valuable spaces. Having moderated subgroups only contextually relevant members can access will give immense trust in the larger group itself and it cultivates more exchange of ideas, which ultimately is the goal for all mediums, engagement. Encourage disagreement and honest conversations within small groups. Members should want to get better together more than they want to be seen as wise or right, this is easier to accomplish when there are shared goals and the outcomes matter less than the process of getting there together.

Set up private spaces for each major role

• Healthy relationships require clear communication. As roles start forming naturally and based on your encouragement, you'll need to be extremely clear to align expectations when giving information to the newbies on their shiny new roles and possible responsibilities. This works best by setting up private subgroups for each role to be able to ensure the highest relevancy and efficacy of communications.

More about what makes small exclusive spaces can create more inclusivity in communities in this article:

I encourage you to start communities that align with your authentic journey rather than focusing on growing your reach and monetization from the get-go, and see where that takes you. When they start growing, introduce as much granularity as possible and let tools developed for Web3 like guild.xyz manage access along your roles automatically.

Lmk if you want to learn more, I am here to help: @reka_eth.

This piece was born based on conversations and co-creating journey with @ldf_gm, a panel I did during EthLisbon 2022 and this substack entry.

If you found this useful and would like me to keep creating resources along this topic let me know by collecting the entry!