Richard Millington

Richard Millington is the founder of FeverBee. 

FeverBee uses proven social science to develop successful online and offline communities for organizations around the world. Over the past 13 years, Richard has helped to develop over 310 successful communities, including those for Apple, Facebook, Google, The World Bank, SAP, Oracle, Amazon, Autodesk, Lego, The United Nations, Novartis, and many more. 

FeverBee helps organizations use powerful psychology to build valuable communities. These communities are designed to foster greater loyalty, resolve customer problems, generate ideas, drive search traffic, and develop the best possible member experience. 

Richard is the author of both Buzzing Communities, The Indispensable Community, and Build Your Community (Pearson, 2021). Buzzing Communities has been widely cited as introducing best practices into developing successful online communities. Richard has delivered keynote talks in the USA, Canada, UK, Australia, France, Belgium, Spain, Italy, Turkey, Switzerland, Romania, Lithuania, and several others. 

Richard has also trained over 1,250 community professionals through FeverBee’s community management academy.

Founder & Managing Director

Richard Millington is the founder of FeverBee, author of Buzzing Communities, and a regular speaker on building successful communities at events around the world. 

FeverBee uses proven social science to develop successful online and offline communities of customers, fans, and members. 

Richard is the sole author of the world's most popular online communities blog and the highly rated book, Buzzing Communities, widely cited as introducing best practice into developing successful online communities.

Richard's unique focus in on cracking the 'social code' behind successful social groups. FeverBee's approaches combines cutting edge social psychology with advanced data insights and a library of repeatable case studies. 

Over the past 13 years, Richard has helped to develop over 150+ successful communities, including those for Google, The World Bank, Oracle, Amazon, Autodesk, Lego, The United Nations, Novartis, and many more.

Richard has delivered keynote talks in the USA, Canada, UK, France, Belgium, Spain, Italy, Australia, Turkey, Switzerland, Romania, Lithuania, and several others. 

Don't be the community purist; let's open a broad tent instead.

I know some people think they're protecting the industry by criticising those who share a different definition of community than they/we do, but it's only isolating rather than broadening our space. 

Before you criticise an organisation/individual for not doing/offering real community work, jobs, projects etc..., consider this...

A few years ago, we began asking audiences what communities they belonged to and how they felt about them. We soon realised: 

→ They define community far more broadly than we do. Sometimes it's a hosted platform, sometimes it's participating in comments on YouTube videos, and sometimes it's just a broad feeling. 

→ They don't care as much about the distinction between audience and community as much as we do. They just want to solve their problems, achieve goals, and be connected/entertained. That's community to them. 

→ The communities they frequently name as mattering most to them were usually ones that wouldn't match any purist definition of community. 

Ultimately, if people feel connected or are engaging with one another, embrace it, build on it, and determine how you can support their goals and help them grow.

I'd rather we have a broad range of folks from a variety of backgrounds sharing diverse definitions of community than find ourselves stranded and isolated on a community-purist island.

Founder of FeverBee Community Consultancy | Author: Build Your Community (Pearson, 2021) | Join 20k+ subscribers to my newsletter.

'Not having support' for our communities is transforming into 'not being able to support' 

I know a few support folks who don't want to include community answers in support search results for fear that people will get advice that is wrong (or simply hasn't been validated).

The irony is that's absolutely what will happen if the community ISN'T featured in the support experience. 

People will get answers that don't match their edge case or simply don't answer the question. This is already happening, and it will continue every day until the community is featured in the results. 

The key then is to make sure the community appears in these kinds of results - because if it doesn't, both customers and the community are missing out. 

I recorded this video to show what appearing in support means in practice. I hope some of you find it useful.

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