[IPS News] Guest Blog: How to beat your competition

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The Internet is a fierce battleground for users, clicks, attention, and audience.  Competition surrounds your community from all angles and new threats constantly emerge.

The Internet has leveled the playing field for local businesses, solopreneurs, and small organizations which means more people than ever are competing for users.  Online communities are no different, and as companies realize the growing power of communities, you too may face more challenges. 

Online communities are growing faster than ever:

•  IDC predicts worldwide online communities market to grow to $1.2 billion in 2019
• According to research by Leader Networks,  twenty-three percent of marketers who have online communities indicate that the size of their communities doubled in the past year.  

How is your community competing against your competitors?  Is your community growing or stagnating relative to your competitors?   

In this blog post, we identify core concepts of competitive strategy that stretch from traditional theory to unique methods of winning for communities.   

Theory of Competition

The broadly-accepted understanding of competition in the business world rests on the seminal work by Professor Michael Porter, when he mapped out the origins of competitive forces in his 1979 book “How Competitive Forces Shape Strategy.”  Fundamentally, all strategies for Porter distill into two basic options: Build on what you already do, or do something no one else can do.  

You can compete by doing what everyone else is doing but be more efficient, such as offering higher quality content, a better user experience, or having a lower price of member acquisition.  Or, you can expand the pie by forging a new position in the marketplace, such as staking out an untapped niche or developing a unique service.    

What’s your current competitive strategy: be better at what you’re already doing and your competitors, or to do something completely new?  

Emerging Theories

A new strategy on competition is emerging that is just as potent as Porter’s competitive forces. It’s especially relevant for online communities in the digital age: reacting opportunistically to emerging possibilities.  

Discovery-driven planning is the field’s most recent thinking.  It was introduced 20 years ago in works like Tim Luehrman’s “Strategy as a Portfolio of Real Options” that talked about flexibility as a strategy.  The idea was also introduced in the more recent “Stop Making Plans: Start Making Decisions” by Michael Mankins and Richard Steel, which argued for continuous strategic planning cycles.   

Online communities are impacted by – and can seize advantage of – fluctuating factors:

• Technical advances and digital disruptions 
• Disruptions in your industry 

The faster you react to market or technological change, the greater your advantage will become over time.  What disruption recently impacted your industry or niche?  How can you capitalize on the opportunity?  

Application to Online Communities

Online communities are at an especially powerful intersection of customers, superusers, industry experts, and brand representatives.  By assembling a broad mix of users, you gain a source of competitive knowledge and crowd wisdom unmatched by traditional businesses.  

• Market intelligence – Harness the power of crowds by letting your members feed you real-time market intelligence on the industry, market trends, and competitors.  
• Use technology to your advantage – Become an expert on utilizing your Invision platform as a technological advantage, whether you’re increasing visitor registrations with Post Before Registering, adding in store filters in Commerce, or enabling the application manifest settings for faster access on smartphones.
• Collaborative ideation – Collaborate with users early in the design process to create services or products that are highly-differentiated.
• Co-Creation – Channel your user’s expertise, enthusiasm, and product knowledge into co-created content such as tutorials, support answers, industry news, contests, and more.
•  Brand Ambassadors – Turn your membership’s most passionate users into brand ambassadors to provide outreach and personalized connections.  

Conclusion

Communities are challenged and tested every day by a multitude of competitors that compete for users. Competition is fierce, and as the web continues to proliferate and level the playing field, competition will only get stronger. 

It’s no longer enough to host a general discussion forum.  Successful communities envision a clear competitive strategy.  

Although competition is fierce, there are winners on the Internet who consistently gain market share. 

The winners are those who understand the fundamental drivers of competition: to create sustainable advantages over their competitors, to offer unique services and experiences, and to react opportunistically.  They also leverage all facets of their community for maximum value.      

Join me in 2019 in defining your competitive strategy and becoming a Community of Excellence. 

- Joel R

Joel R is a mystery wrapped inside an enigma. When he's not running his own successful community, he's peppering Invision Community's private Slack channel with his feedback, community management experience and increasingly outrageous demands (everything is true except the last part).

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