The CMX Guide to Community Platforms — Find the perfect home for your community members (ebook)

There are few sources I would trust for this info, but @davidspinks and CMX would be top of the list.

@jasonkeath thanks Jason! That means a lot coming from you.

@jasonkeath @davidspinks This.

@davidspinks congrats on the launch! Excited to dive into this. How did you go about making the book? what would be your advice for those looking to make similar types of books?

@eriktorenberg @davidspinks My advice: this was not easy, but you have to do the work. David can attest there were days where we never thought we'd finish, but we set a deadline and stuck to it as much as we could. It also really helped to have people in our community KNOW we were writing this. It kept us accountable. People kept asking us when it would be ready. That lights a fire under you. As far as the process, we started with our framework for picking platforms and then dove into all the platforms we knew well. From there, as I researched, I found pockets of platforms I didn't even know existed via other community consultants I reached out to, people in our CMX community, veterans in the industry, and a ton of outreach to platform companies. I put all the platforms in a spreadsheet and Yrja created all the tables. She then emailed every single company to confirm all the details, and I had quite a few conversations from there. I double-checked them all, and I tried out every single platform in this book, and I've used a lot in my work, as has David. After we had a rough draft (of about 70 pages), I onboarded a few trusted technical editors (credited in the first few pages) to make sure we didn't miss anything and our information was accurate. They were our go-to's to make sure the format made sense and it was reader-friendly. After that, I sent out a survey to our community to ask who had used which platforms. I emailed back and forth with over 40 members, getting their testimonials and ideas. I reached out to a few pros personally and got pricing information from them that we couldn't locate elsewhere. Finally, I onboarded a copyeditor friend and got a referral to a designer to do the cover. In May, we released it in beta to our VIP community members, Summit attendees, and all platforms included. Then I had our content strategist, Clem, make edits from our beta members. And here we are... We plan to update this every 6 months, since this space is changing so rapidly, so this will be a continual resource to community professionals.

@josuegio slack has been a really fascinating one to watch because it wasn't built for external communities, but people are hacking it. I think they have a big opportunity there, though it may be too far from their core focus.

@nireyal thanks so much Nir. I gave you a shout out at a fireside chat today and a lot of Israeli startups were already familiar with your work. Keep it up.

@allisonveronica thanks Allison! Let me know what they think.