When I bash against social, automated bots, and organic, it’s not a generic rant where I complain about losing reach and traffic.
It’s a real threat as attention is moving into different channels.
First-party data is key – this includes emails and phone numbers, even though these are getting polluted by cold outreach, app notifications, brand newsletters, or different forms of spam.
Smaller communities are a gateway I see working with the right signal-to-noise ratio; fewer interactions, but more valuable ones.
This example from my Growth Shuttle community (hosting my Strategic Growth Circle clients too) outlines how other channels fall flat compared to the closed community:
1. Organic is cluttered – random affiliate articles with reddit on top (so much spam is going there it hurts)
2. Chatbots hallucinate and provide generic tips fed by old Google content and books written 15 years ago
3. Individual content – a course or a book – takes a while to consume and provides limited perspective
4. Learning the ropes takes years to tell right from wrong
5. Aggregated expertise by multiple trusted parties carries a lot of weight
6. Social isn’t the right medium for some of these conversations – it may have a negative brand effect, get caught by bots, and realistically – won’t reach enough people who can help for deeper discussions
This is the Strategic Growth Circle group, but I see this in larger public groups like RevGenius, Post Status, Efficient Growth, or paid communities like growletter or Marketing Ops.
We’re all bouncing between the scale inefficiencies of 1:1 conversations (and the inability to always reach the right experts) and the lack of scale with noisy social communities or reddit forums.
No channel is inherently good or bad.
But tapping into all sources of truth carries a lot of weight.
