There are two main types of communities: Open and Closed. This article will help you decide whether your community should be open (public) or closed (private).

I am a strong advocate of building communities and firmly believe that every online business should build a community around its brand. In my career as a professional builder, I have experienced the merits and drawbacks of each type of community.

Let’s start digging deeper.

So, What is an Open Community?

An open community is the one that keeps its content public. These communities do not require membership or login before you can view its content.

Users can freely access any content and share it in their network.

Open communities will however need to authenticate users before they can interact with the community content. For example, open communities will maintain records of who has liked the post or commented on the post.

Which means, in order to participate in the community, users will have to create an account and login.

Example of Open Community:

Reddit, Quora, Facebook Groups, Public Forums are all classic examples of open communities. You can view their content without having to login.

Advantages of an Open Community

I am a big advocate of building open communities. When a community opens its content to public - it becomes an organic growth driver.

These communities are easier to grow as compared to closed communities. Let’s discuss some of the advantages of building an open community:

1. Exponential Growth: SEO drives exponential user growth to open communities

2. Broader Reach: Improves reach of your content and brand organically

3. SEO Boost: User Generated Content (UGC) drives backlinks to the brand

4. Network Effect: Larger audience drives better conversations and content

5. Reduced Marketing Costs: Lowers your marketing expenditure

6. Free Advertising: Public discussions get shared on social media for better reach

7. Low Entry Barrier: Simplifies the process for new members to get involved.

8. Growth Channel: Open community is your marketing and growth channel.

But all’s not that good about public communities. There are some important drawbacks to consider. Let’s look at them:

Disadvantages of an Open Community

If you are building an open community, make sure that you have accounted for all of the following disadvantages.

1. Spam: Popular open communities will attract human and bot spammers.

2. Moderation Challenge: Moderation becomes a challenge as community grows in size

3. Privacy Concern: Because content is in public domain, privacy can become a challenge

4. Content Quality: Maintaining quality of content on public community is difficult

5. Security Risk: It’s common to get public data scrapped and misused

6. Limited Trust: Members prefer being anonymous; leading to trust issues on important topics

7. Misinformation: Open communities are top carriers of misinformation.

While these are some serious drawbacks, proper moderation and spam control features can help overcome these challenges.

Modern community platforms like Jatra help you keep your communities safe and useful for your members

Let’s now look at Closed Communities.

What is a Closed Community?

A closed community is the one that keeps its content closed from public eyes. Often, these communities are invite-only or need users to create an account before they can view the content.

An important characteristic of closed communities is that it does not expose any of its content to search engines.

If a user wants access, they will either need an invitation from the community owners or a free or paid account with the community.

Examples of Closed Community

A WhatsApp Group, a Telegram Group, Slack, Discord communities or private Facebook and LinkedIn Groups - all are good examples of closed communities. Here’s an interesting read on choosing between Slack and Discord.

Advantages of a Closed Community

A lot of communities these days are hosted on closed community platforms; behind memberships or paid plans.

Here are some of the advantages of closed community:

1. Controlled Environment: Community owners can select members.

2. Better Privacy: Members share information in an exclusive environment.

3. Focused Content: Community content is focused and relevant on topic

4. Reduced Noise: Closed communities will typically have lesser noise

5. Monetization Opportunities: Private communities are easy to monetize

6. Professionalism: Generally, there’s more professionalism in closed communities

These are the top considerations when you are building a closed community. However, these closed communities are not free from drawbacks.

There are some serious drawbacks of a closed community:

1. Limited Growth Potential: This is big one. Member acquisition is always difficult

2. No SEO Benefit: Because content is hidden, it attracts no organic traffic

3. Requires Intensive Management: The onus of keeping community active is on owners

4. Reduced Discoverability: Private communities are harder to discover

5. Monotony: Lack of variety in content can make the community monotonous and boring

6. Operational Costs: Need dedicated resources for management and operation

7. Not suitable for marketing: Community cannot be your marketing or growth channel

Now that we have talked about the advantages and disadvantages of both open and closed communities, let’s answer the question:

Should you build an Open Community or a Closed Community?

I’ll make it simple. In 99% of the cases - you should build an open (public) community. Only if you have a reason to hide your content from search engines and public; consider building a closed (private) community.

Private communities are typically suitable for course creators. Most creators would want to restrict the content they generate to their paid members / students. Slack, Discord, WhatsApp group can be used to build your private community.

Most business communities should be open and expose most of their content to search engines. Keep in mind that User Generated Content (UGC) is a goldmine for SEO and organic traffic.

Jatra Community Platform offers you the best of both worlds, by letting you build public communities with a few private channels. This means you can expose the content you want to public and search engines for SEO benefits; while offer some of your content only to specific members (private).

If you wish to discuss specific community case and whether it should be public or private; we would love to help. Ask below or contact us through official support channel.