Also, cool on a expansion concept in the wings, having that duck in a row can sure make the concerns of going organic a lot less worrisome. In many ways, the whole concept is “the bigger game”

As far as my plan to go big… I’m playing the dilution game myself with my new site, it will be extremely diverse, albeit individual sections are pretty narrow. From a marketing perspective, its risky and counter to conventional wisdom, yet I looked at depression history, and some of the successful businesses that rose from the ashes, and others which crashed and burned. The fail early and often mantra, combined with diversity of approach was never as true as it was in the 30’s. Today, with the low cost of intenet tools, which require more time investment than capital, pushing the limits of conventional wisdom is a lot less risky than it ever was in the past.

Ron Amundsons last blog post..Production Ready, Enthusiasts, Concepts and Production Notes

Thanks for your very thoughtful comments. I do appreciate them and the distinctions you make.

Looking at your first para I can’t help wondering if you have read Ricardo Semler’s Maverick, or his later Seven Day Weekend, with their amazing stories about the firm, Semco, he took over from his father. If ever there was a story of organic, unpredicted and unpredictable growth, that is it. And that’s an engineering firm (originally anyway).

The home business guide guy’s observation is a distraction for me. It’s not clear whether he is talking about the content of the post or – more likely, it seems – having a swipe at me and what I post here (or don’t).

Coming back to the subject at hand, where you say “defining your target audience”, do you mean the audience of the Social Media Consultants site, or the people we are inviting to be featured and contribute there? In other words, the visitors or the social media consultants? Either way, I don’t believe we know enough to tie that down, make it more specific and still be able to hope to achieve what we had in mind. We don’t actually know – and I doubt anyone does – who is, or is going to be, looking for a social media consultant in Guangzhou, China, or Toronto, Canada, or what particular skillset they might be looking for. Then too, it is not meant to be a job board so much as a stie where people get a sense of who is around, globally (not – with respect – just or mainly in the USA + Canada, as per so many social media sites). And a virtual coffee shop – cf the graphic.

We actually have a more flexible platform than WP in reserve, if the community grows enough to make it worthwhile to roll it out. But that’s more work and we don’t plan to take it on if there is not a worthwhile enough level of interest.

I think I’m saying that, on balance, we will refrain for the time being or forever from defining target groups, whether of visitors/readers or of contributors. And we’ll accept the risk of dilution of value.

However, the home business guide commenter makes a good point…. defining your target audience a bit. It seems everyone and his brother is a social media consultant, albeit the skill level and focus varies a great deal. Ie, running a corp effort with perhaps 50-100 active members is way way different than the 20K+ community siite, just as a site appealing to later entrants, than the more highly experienced folks. Granted the audience is small at the 20K+ level, but those folks are playing pioneer daily…. and a resource site could be huge thing for them, provided it didnt get overrun by others trying to jump on the bandwagon. Define the target, and then create value based upon the target while still leaving lots of room for organic development. Otherwise, its likely the value aspect could end up pretty diluted.