Rosieland Roundup 264 — The CEO², Dunbar's 6 magic numbers, benchmarking community

🌤️ Welcome to another week in Rosieland, I hope you enjoy your community stay.

Remember, I do community research to save you time. It is my gift to you!

🐌 This week in Rosieland:

😲 Designing Communities Like WoW | Çağrı Yalçın

After reflecting on his experience in WoW and diving into research, Çağrı gathered eight possible concepts we can apply in our community efforts.

✨ Dunbar’s 6 Magic Numbers | Csaba Okrana

A team of researchers recalculated Dunbar’s number using his original methods and higher volume and quality data. Their estimates went as high as 520 and were stretched over a wide enough range as to be nearly useless. The authors suggest that the original method used to calculate the number of friends a person can have is also theoretically flawed.

The point of this study isn’t to replace Dunbar’s number, but to dismiss the notion that such a number can be determined in the first place.

🙉 The art of listening to your community: how to overcome barriers and deliver impact | Serena Snoad

Community building starts with listening. But listening isn’t just about hearing—it’s an art and a skill that requires creativity, empathy, and intentional effort. Listening is worth the effort: it builds trust, fosters belonging, and helps you to meet your community’s needs.

👹 The curse of benchmarking in community management | Olga Koenig

When building a community, it’s natural to want to learn from others and take inspiration from their successes. After all, if someone else has already figured out what works, why reinvent the wheel? However, there’s a danger to relying too heavily on benchmarking, or comparing your community to others to identify best practices and areas for improvement. Benchmarking can sometimes do more harm than good.

🛑 Stop "Borrowing": Why Copy-Paste Community Strategies Fail (and What to Do Instead) | Joshua Zerkel

Stop me if you’ve heard this one before: A GTM leader spots a successful community program—like Notion Ambassadors, HubSpot’s Inbound Community, or Salesforce’s Trailblazers—and says, “We should do that!”

I call this the “Why aren’t we doing what they’re doing?” effect.

📚 Books:

Community Building for Marketers: How to Connect, Engage and Foster Growth — Areej AbuAli
Let's Move the Needle: An Activism Handbook for Artists, Crafters, Creatives, and Makers; Build Community and Make Change! — Shannon Downey

Looking for community reads? We currently have 284 books listed in our Knowledgebase.

🛠️ Tools:

Miitra: provides you with the platform to grow, engage, and monetize your community while delivering a seamless experience optimized for every member and channel.
Trova: Transform your workplace with meaningful relationships that drive engagement, innovation, and results.
Siftree: AI-powered intelligence for social media

Looking for community tools? We currently have 325 tools listed to help you build your community.