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It's not uncommon for some brands to have a link to their Twitter account and Facebook page, with a hashtag they'd like you to use when discussing their products.

That is an audience, not a community.

A true community encourages group conversation and empowers people to contribute ideas, promotion, content and support.

Interested in ideation?

Collecting, curating and organising ideas and feedback is a critical part of managing a community for a product.

If you wanted to add more rigour to your ideation process, then Invision Community has built-in tools that you can use.

This video covers setting up a "Question & Answer" forum, which forms the basis for your ideation section along with using the built-in translation tools to tweak the interface language.

The complete process takes around five minutes and is the perfect way to collect and organise community ideas.

Minor releases are almost always just maintenance releases. We gather up a fistful of bug reports and fix them to ensure that every month or so, our clients enjoy more stability and efficiency with Invision Community.

However, more recently we've noticed that we're running low on bug reports, so we've managed to squeeze in a handful of improvements in Invision Community 4.4.5.

Let's take a look and see what's new.

4x4 is a power series by Community Advocate Joel R that focuses on four items in less than four minutes. They're designed to cover everything from quick maintenance checks to community tips to help you make the most out of your Invision Community.

This month, Joel outlines four quick and easy growth strategies (as well as his impressive use of emoji)

Bad communities promise great things to its members. Good communities offer great things to its members. Great communities fulfill the greatness of its members.

A primary purpose of every community is to fulfill the needs of its members. A strong community will go beyond the immediate, basic needs and ensure that fulfillment is a positive experience. By doing so, it builds in positive rewards and reinforcement for an enjoyable sense of togetherness.

4x4 is a new power series that focuses on four items in less than four minutes. They're designed to cover everything from quick maintenance checks to community tips to help you make the most out of your Invision Community.

1. Don't be afraid to post contentious questions.  Find the red hot button in your industry, and press it.   2. Popular block to the top of your forum index AND at bottom of topic.   3. Add poll block to sidebar.   4. 

Mary Meeker delivered a rapid-fire review at the 2019 Code Conference of her latest Internet Trends Report, widely considered to be one of the most influential and comprehensive reports on Internet trends.

Joel breaks down the big trends and what it means for community owners.

In the June edition of his "2019 Year of Community", Joel takes a deep dive into how influence can build trust and help govern your community.

"Have you seen communities where the moderators take heavy-handed actions and do things without prior notice? Or they assume you know everything? It feels rude, unwelcoming, and very cliquish. On the other hand, I’ve also seen communities where the moderators and community managers take the time to explain every response."

In the first of our expert series, we invite Martin Jolly-Jarvis to give us an overview of how Facebook ads can help drive traffic to your site.

"The purpose of this post is to give you a short introduction, so you know roughly how to make profitable ads.

It’s not going to turn you into an expert, but it might stop you digging in the wrong spot and spending BIG on things you should avoid."

When I wrote my last entry, The Dogly Mail had just reached the 100 member milestone but since then things have grown impressively.

The photo competition has proven very successful at encouraging new signups and we are now at around 1400 members picking up 15-20 new members a day. This is far better than I could have hoped for but there a few caveats…

A successful community only needs three core elements to flourish and begin producing results.

Your community will require some care and effort to flourish, but with the right strategies in place, you'll ensure that the value your community produces continues to increase as time goes by.

Let's take a look at the three elements that make for a successful community.

Have you ever found yourself muttering "there has to be an easier way" when managing your community?

If you have, it's likely that you are not the first person to think that. Invision Community has been refined over nearly two decades, and in that time we've received a lot of feedback from clients running very large and busy sites.

We love a short cut, especially when it makes our clients lives easier.

There's plenty of time-saving features throughout Invision Community, and here are five of the best.

Cultivating a strong Sense of Community is a clear goal for community builders. Develop a strong sense of community, and you’ve built a community experience that sparks a more meaningful and connected community that your members will love.

Two headlines caught my eye today as they appeared side by side in my newsfeed.

On first glance, they seemed contradictory.

The first was that the UK lost nearly 2,500 shops and stores last year and the second is that discount fashion retailer Primark has just invested £70m in a new store in Birmingham.

This new store covers 161,000 sq ft over five floors and features a Disney-themed cafe, a beauty studio, a gents hairdresser and a Harry Potter themed section.

If the UK is closed thousands of stores, and a recent department store has just fallen into administration why would a brand invest £70m in a new store?

We all seek success with our Invision Communities. For too many of our communities, however, we yearn for success but we don’t plot the correct navigation to get there. We haphazardly pursue our strategies, trying new ideas and hoping one will stick. It’s time to take a step back and assess your goals in context to your growth. It’s important to understand the stages of the community lifecycle, and to strategically match your goals with your growth sequence.

"Increasingly, social media is making it harder and harder for us to talk to each other directly. We are tired of fighting with algorithms, and we do not want to pay to appear in your newsfeed. So we’ve decided it’s time to bid farewell to some of our social channels and open up the conversation between you and us instead."

We catch up with Helen for a progress report on how her new community "The Dogly Mail" is faring.

"We recently broke the 100 member milestone and that all came from word of mouth. We’re not talking huge numbers but I’m very encouraged for the future. My focus is now on building interactions with four main areas of the site."

Every day, LGBTQ young people from all walks of life log into TrevorSpace, the world’s largest moderated safe space for LGBTQ youth online.

TrevorSpace is a service from The Trevor Project, the foremost suicide prevention and crisis intervention organization for LGBTQ youth in the world.

TrevorSpace is growing by over a thousand new members every week.

Here's how they use their Invision Community.

We do love a parlour game at Invision Community HQ and we were playing "6 degrees of separation" recently.

You've probably heard of the "6 degrees of Kevin Bacon". This is where you try and connect any actor with Kevin Bacon in 6 steps or less.

So let's try "6 degrees of Invision Community". This is where we try and connect a person with an Invision Community.

I've had this similar conversation dozens of times in the recent past when someone has taken an interest in what I do.

Person: So what does Invision Community do?
Me: We develop and sell an independent community platform.
Person: Oh. Neat.

I used to say the F word. But this used to cause some confusion.

For too many communities, strategy revolves around two simple pillars: content and engagement. You inform. You engage. And you think your job is done. However, you’ve barely scratched the surface of offering value.

I was fortunate enough to be invited to speak on the Expert Focus podcast,  hosted by experienced community manager and public speaker, Claire Dowdall.

Claire has significant experience in managing and developing strategies for increasing Facebook Group engagement for high profile speakers and entrepreneurs, while my background is with independent communities.

This set us up nicely for a lively conversation to really pull apart what makes for a successful community, and what platforms to consider when starting out.

I interviewed 6 former vBulletin admins who are now Invision Community clients.  Most of these vBulletin admins have 10+ years of experience running successful forums, so their input was especially insightful.

One of the first things I do when visiting a site that I know has a community is to try and find it.

More often than not, it's hidden away in the footer links or buried in several sub-menus and labelled something relatively obscure like "Fans" or "Support".

This is a massive lost opportunity.