Creator Science #295: Community Building Trends for 2026 with Becky Pierson Davidson
203 snips
Mar 3, 2026 
Becky Pierson Davidson, community-driven product strategist and founder of Affinity Collective, helps high-revenue businesses design memberships and courses. She discusses why course businesses are shifting to memberships. They debate transformation versus community of practice. Topics include avoiding bait-and-switch expectations, forum design, the mastermind paradox, in-person retention levers, and why content drops are fading in 2026.
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Define Meaningful Engagement And Model It
- Define what meaningful engagement means for your community and model it with ambassador 'plants'.
- Becky recommends asking what useful behaviors look like (e.g., sharing experiments) and recruiting 5–10 members to seed posts and examples.
Member Reads Community Every Morning
- Becky shared that a Flowermore member scrolls the community every morning with coffee, illustrating habitual usage.
- She suggests collecting stories like this via behavioral questions to show how members actually engage.
Masterminds Boost Retention But Reduce Forum Activity
- Masterminds increase individual retention but often decrease broader forum participation because members get needs met in small groups.
- Jay notes this trade-off and Becky suggests prompting mastermind members to share highlights back into the larger community.