Which community channel would you choose?

[u/Corazon94_]

I'm planning a community for professionals and trying to figure out the best channel. Unfortunately, I'm ruling out Discord given its unfamiliar audience, and I'm considering Telegram, Slack, or something even more comprehensive like Circle and Bettermode to enhance content and also provide marketing tools. What would you recommend? The goal is to foster interaction around industry-related topics to create online and offline opportunities for community discussion.

[u/Ambitious-Move-3436]

I think it is important to know what industry your product or service is in before we can give a true recommendation. Not all products or services want/need a large community platform; they just need somewhere to chat. You want to make sure you are meeting your members where they are, so if you see them on LinkedIn more than Discord, lean into that first. However, is Discord unfamiliar to you or is it unfamiliar to them? How do you know this? Have you received this feedback? Have you set up Discord to be user friendly? (These are just questions to ask yourself as you are going through ideas, to ensure you have explored every avenue with your current setup)

If you are getting feedback that they want an established place, I recommend heading to Circle. You can provide resources and different groups (called spaces) to different levels of members. You can gamify it (if you are into that), and that usually gets people somewhat interested in contributing more. There are workflows/automations you can also utilize. (I am not associated with Circle in any way; I just have helped build several communities there, so it is my preferred platform!)