Platforms have been an important outlet for creatives and professionals to express themselves. YouTube, Reddit, Facebook and many other platforms have allowed people to connect with one another, to share their knowledge and to work together. On these platforms, smaller communities are formed around the same interests.

Later, smaller platforms emerged to unite a niche who share the same values. For instance: GoFundMe built a platform around people wanting to help others. GoFundMe empowers people to donate to good causes. This ranges from a charity to an individual in dire need of help. DonorsChoose created a platform of like-minded people to help school teachers in the United States to get much-needed materials for their class funded.

Creating more narrow platforms makes it possible to enable high engagement because community members want to have a positive association with that community.

GlobalOwls empowers digital marketers and designers to donate their knowledge to nonprofits to help them become more effective. Digital marketers and designers interact with nonprofits to help and to showcase their skills to the community, thus improving their own brand.

For all three platforms, high engagement is only possible if the platform is able to build a community culture of which members want to be part of. Building a high engaging community of like-minded people takes a lot of time and testing, but the impact for getting this right is huge.

This article was written by Michael Vuong.