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David Spinks founded CMX and has coached hundreds of community builders, so his take on a flatlined community carries weight. His honest move here is to zoom out first and ask whether the quiet is your fault or a real shift you cannot fix (a platform dying, an audience moving on), which is the judgment call before you decide to revive or start clean. Read it to pressure-test whether reviving is even the right bet, then use his cut-and-experiment loop if it is.
How to Bring a Community Back to Life: The 6-Step Process for Growing Engagement
From Enough Already with David Spinks (Substack) by David Spinks ~15 min read
- Diagnose before you act: separate forces outside your control (a platform declining, the audience moving on) from fixable experience problems, so you know whether reviving is realistic.
- Be willing to cut aggressively: kill the formats, channels, and rituals that are not working instead of only piling on new ones.
- Run two or three small experiments at a time and track them monthly, so revival is evidence-led rather than a single dramatic relaunch you cannot repeat.
