Control Your Platform – Don’t Let Your Platform Control You

Why hosting your own membership platform might be right for you

Your audience loves connecting with you—so why let a platform dictate their experience? Give them the strongest expression of your brand! 

Migrating your audience from Substack to your own self-hosted community gives your audience direct, unfiltered, undistracted access to you, your content, your voice, and your information. 

Every platform has its own interests in mind when you and your audience congregate in their space. 

Facebook wants to keep you on Facebook. 
Instagram wants you to stay on Instagram. 
TikTok wants you to keep scrolling. 
Substack wants you to connect with your audience on Substack. 

When you and your audience align with the interests of a platform, those platforms are great! 

But what about when things change?

Maybe you want to change the topic? Maybe change the format? Maybe you’re looking for an algorithm-free space to connect with your fans. Maybe the platform’s values or standards no longer align with your own. 

Here are five reasons why our clients have loved controlling their own community platforms. 

Set the Terms of Your Space

Some memberships have monthly offerings and others have daily offerings. With a community platform customized for you, the spectrum of what you and your audience do together is up to you! 

Boundaries are all really important to our clients. They love having the ability to set their own Codes of Conduct and membership standards for their community spaces without being confined by the rules and limitations of other platforms. 

Integrate Your Favorite Platforms

Owning and controlling your own platform allows you to build integrations with your audience’s preferred communication channels like Discord, email, and podcast feeds. For example, Discord can be synced to automatically add or remove members from your Discord member space when memberships lapse or a new member joins.

Integrating the communication tools that work best for your members can help boost member engagement, and equally important, the joy they get from being a part of your community!  

Track Whatever Analytics You Want

With a custom-built community space, you can track as much or as little information as you’d like! You don’t need to rely on a software’s dashboard to decide what metrics are most important to you or be limited by the metrics they don’t give you. You can use a host of tools that allow you to see any type of data that helps you measure success and reach your goals! 

Create Outside of the Algorithm 

Do you want to share content that isn’t optimized for the algorithm, but is optimized for your audience’s enjoyment? Go for it! Do you wish you could go back in time and write, record, share, or connect like you did before an algorithm? With your own platform, you can! 

Create Recurring Revenue

Allow your audience to support your ongoing creative efforts through monthly or annual memberships. These memberships can be as lightweight or as involved as you’d like. Recurring revenue brings stability to a business, and recurring members mean you’re doing something right! 

Whether it’s customizing your content, choosing your preferred communication tools, or tracking the analytics that matter to you, owning your platform lets you build a community on your terms.

At Wonderly, we help creative entrepreneurs build and host their own community platforms so that their audiences experience the strongest expression of their brands. If you are wondering if a self-hosted community platform is right for your brand, we’re here to help you figure it out! Contact us today to start the conversation.