Small Is the New Big

As consumers of content gain access to seemingly endless channels of information, they will naturally gravitate to the sources that best suit their particular needs. 

Their colleagues will do the same, and when they congregate around a journal, a website, a blog, or other type of forum, they form a community.  It may not be well-defined or obvious, but the initial stage is underway and over time will grow into something clearly identifiable - and measurable.

The value of these communities is not necessarily predicated on their specific size.  Large numbers of people don't always equate to power, value, or opportunities.  In the past, many content developers aspired to reach large audiences who were targeted by identifiers such as title, specialty, region, etc.   Now, the identifiers are just the first step in understanding your audience.  From there you must distill down the audience to those who are alike for various and specific reasons.  Their common needs, interests, and openness to sharing information will give them reason to become engaged as an interactive community.  Once you've encapsulated and analyzed the uniqueness of the group, you can provide to marketers knowledge and insight into the types of messages to which this group will respond.  With this highly-valuable knowledge in hand, small audiences have become much more valuable than the traditional big groups. 

You can unlock the value of your communities by making the knowledge about them relevant to the marketers needs.  Going forward, you are no longer selling "reach" along with "exposures," but instead knowledge of highly-targeted groups and their interactive relationships.  This is the point where the sales process transforms from a capabilities-oriented approach, to a more meaningful  consultative approach.

So, along with the sensibility that "Small Is the New Big," a time-worn adage has been flipped on its head:  These days, it's not just Who you know, but What you know - about your community.