Building a social cyber community of interest part II - further lessons from the field

14 months of growth continues and meta analysis wins..

Backstory

In 2017/2018 I set out on an experiment to see if I could build a cyber community of interest that provided value to its members initially in the guise of a Subreddit (/r/blueteamsec/) and then latterly a Substack called the Bluepurple Pulse:

The first part of the journey from 2018 to August 2021 is covered in a previous post Building a social cyber community of interest - lessons from the field.

As a reminder for the Reddit subreddit we had seen the following growth in just over three and half years:

• 1 subscriber January 2018

• 3,500 subscribers December 2019

• 8,300 subscribers July 2020

• 15,100 subscribers May 2021

• 17,700 subscribers August 2021

For the Substack we had seen in the first two weeks in August 2021:

This second part brings us up to date on what has happened in the last 14 or so months and the new lessons.

December 2022 scores on the doors

Headline is all the statistics keep going in generally the right the direction.

Subreddit statistics

The core of the community as mentioned is a Reddit subreddit where links are posted and tagged into categories under /r/blueteamsec. This is the closest to a real time channel that the community has.

Members

In August 2021 we had 17,700 this compared with December 2022 31,800. An impressive 79% increase in members in the 14 months. So a good strong signal that new users are discovering and engaging with the more technical side of the community.

Unique readers

The unique number of visitors (i.e. consumption) is edging up in trend terms.

If we compare this with the historic data from the previous post (Reddit only provides one year)

We can see year-on-year that July 2021 (the last full month last time) v July 2022 saw an increase from 17,000 in unique readers to 22,000 or a 30% increase in unique people/bots volumes.

Total views

Growth is similarly occurring on total views:

If we compare this with the historic data from the previous post:

Again if we compare July 2021 v July 2022 we see 90,000 v 130,000 or a 44% increase in total traffic volumes.

Substack

The weekly Substack titled ‘Bluepurple Pulse’ is where the biggest growth has been seen. As a reminder this is where a weekly analysis is produced of both the Subreddit and also some wider reading for a broader set of audiences.

The feedback has been consistently positive as to the value it provides readers. This is an important test and is evidenced by the data through engagement rates and comments.

Subscriber growth

Subscriber growth continues to go from strength to strength albeit not quite expediential. In short up from the 400 or so in the first couple of weeks to just shy of 4,100 in 14 months.

Traffic growth

Similarly the traffic i.e. readers via all sources is positive on the trend lines.

Generally speaking a 10x increase in 14 or so months which corelates with the 10x increase in subscribers.

Engagement

If we look at the Christmas score card it is reflective of a typical month in terms of engagement (it was published on the 23rd - today is the 27th of December).

Looking at the previous weeks we see similar engagement levels.

When I discuss with others that the typical engagement rates is in the mid to high 30% range they indicate it is better than they might expect. So further proof on the value provided.

Effort cost

Now this doesn’t come for free, to give a sense what the level of investment is:

• About 30 minutes a week doing moderation tasks on the subreddit.

• About an hour (or two) a day - generally whilst on the exercise bike, commuting and laying in bed etc. - identifying, reading and publishing content to the subreddit.

• About 4 hours a week writing the Substack newsletter.

In short there is quite a time cost associated with the community’s curation and production. Some have recognised this so at their request I have introduced optional paid for subscriptions on the Substack to allow the mega corps who gain value to offset - still waiting for the first to actually pay.

Reflections and lessons

Some reflections and lessons from the last phase include:

• There appears to be tremendous value in meta analysis to offset information overload challenges i.e. the Substack. This is one of the big anecdotal bits of evidence, below are two quotes from the last couple of weeks, the first was public.

  This is one of my top Monday AM briefing sheets. Thank you.

  The second was sent privately via LinkedIn:

  Congratulations on the new post and thanks for doing the blue purple newsletter, it is one of the most useful subs I have. Have a great weekend

  The Subreddit also gets love.

• There is value in consistency - people appear to value it more than they might otherwise due to being old reliable.

• Communities do build and people are grateful but it takes way more time and effort than you would expect and no you can’t retire on it.

Finally - the real value appears to come from the domain expertise applied to the synthesis in both communities. The feedback on both is consistently around the quality and it is that above everything else that busy people appear to value. This gives me hope that I can’t be replaced by machine learning quite yet…

FIN