Building a community is easy. Building one that people actively participate in — and remain part of for years — is much harder. We spoke with Alina Moskalova from NEXTPredict about the differences between open and curated communities, what makes members stay engaged over the long term, and why the most valuable outcomes of community building often go far beyond business metrics.
1. Which community is more active — Telegram or WhatsApp? Where do the most meaningful discussions happen?
Alina:
They're different by design, and I approach them that way. Telegram is open and anyone can join. People can freely drop their offers. It's higher volume, more casual. WhatsApp is the opposite: invite-only, real names, personal phone numbers. People self-select into accountability just by being there.
The meaningful conversations happen in WhatsApp, without question. The barrier to entry creates the quality. When someone joins knowing it's curated, they show up differently. And because it's not anonymous you're people actually think before they post. But even there, I coach members away from the spray-and-pray approach: the copy-paste intro blasted across twenty communities. I'd rather they write two sentences that say something real. "Hi, I'm Alina, I do X and Y" — that's enough. People will connect the dots. Relationships don't start with pitches.
2. What makes people stay in a community for years?
Alina:
It's being heard. That's the thing most community builders overlook because it's not scalable on a spreadsheet.
When I joined, one of the first things I did was get on calls with members. Not to pitch anything, just to ask: what do you like here? What would add value for you? That question alone signals something. It tells people they're not just a number in someone's growth metric.
Content matters, networking matters, but the glue is the sense that someone is actually paying attention. That there's a human on the other side who, when you say "this isn't working for me," genuinely tries to fix it. I think of the community manager as a middleman — not between the brand and the audience, but between the business and every single department in it. I probably collaborate with more teams internally than almost anyone else in the company, because the community reflects all of it.
People stay because they feel like they belong to something good. And "good" isn't a vague feeling. It comes from small, consistent moments of being valued.
3. What's the most valuable business outcome you've seen come from community — and what's the most unexpected?
Alina:
The expected outcomes are real: partnerships form, product feedback comes in, retention improves. Loyal people are the foundation of everything else — new hires, new clients, new directions. Community is often called a soft function, but loyal people are anything but soft as a business outcome.
The unexpected ones are the ones that stay with me. People who met in a community and became business partners. People who met and became friends in the way that goes well beyond what their companies do — asking about each other's kids, showing up for each other in ways that have nothing to do with a conference or a newsletter.
I even know of people who met through a community and got married.
That sounds extraordinary, but what it really tells you is that when you build something human-oriented, you can't fully predict what it becomes. And you shouldn't try to. Every company should have a community — not because of the ROI deck, but because you are one message away from your people. No algorithm change, no platform shift, no budget cut takes that away from you. That direct line is yours. Use it.
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