Mature user groups offer users an array of opportunities to learn and engage. Narrow your fledgling user group’s focus on the areas where your customers and company will get the most value. To that end, sketch out the purpose of the initial version of your user group.

a. Building an online community to support your user group to meet can be an effective solution. Your users can connect whenever they want in a digital space, extending the conversation much past an event. Plus, you can easily add in in-person or hybrid events when the time comes by directing users to follow up in the community or even building a dedicated event community. One benefit is even your users who can’t attend in-person events will be able to participate digitally.

b. When conversations happen online in your user group community, your employees can take part or observe the conversations to get product feedback, help customers with questions, or get insights into their needs and the industry.

Think through whether your user group will be a company-run user group or an independent user group. Decisions made about the user group in company-run user groups are made by employees of the company, while independent user groups are autonomous separate companies (usually nonprofit membership organizations, like associations).

a. It usually only makes sense to create a chapter or special interest group (SIG) structure if people use your product in different industries, roles, and geographic regions.

b. Managing chapters and other groups adds responsibility and governance to managing your user group. However, you want the value of participating in your user group to be as relevant to your customers as possible. If hosting separate discussions, resource libraries, and events for different chapters or SIGs would make the benefits of membership more valuable, this model may be right for your user group.