Hi Everyone - We launched a new product and I want to be able to reconfigure our current community to support that. If there has anyone who has had a similar experience, I would love to chat about how they went through that change.
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Did you already have multiple products?
Or is this also coincident with going from being a single product company to being a multiple product company?
What’s the motivator for reconfiguring the community?
I’d recommend working through an “audience venn diagram”. Are your current members the primary users of the new product, or are you inviting a whole new crowd?
What’s the relationship between the two products - are they part of one big suite, or totally separate tools?
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Thanks @mcwumbly for the question - the community was primarily built for 1 product and we are transitioning to having a second.
@noahl - the initial thought is to support both groups in one space. the audiences have similarities but the two different products are intended to have two different audiences achieve the same goal. They are two separate products at this time.
That makes sense, but I think the “right” move actually depends on how these are marketed.
From a user perspective, are these truly standalone products, or is this one company with two offerings?
If they are marketed as separate entities, I’d argue for keeping the communities apart. If you force them into the same space, it can quickly become a case of “what do I post where?”. Users in Product A shouldn’t have to filter through a feed full of Product B questions just to find what they need.
My gut check for you: When a user gets a support email or an invoice, whose logo is at the top?
If they see themselves as a “[Company Name] user,” one community works. If they see themselves as a “[Product A] user,” or a “[Product B] user,” merging them might feel like clutter.
It’s almost always easier to merge 2 thriving communities than it is to perform “surgery” to separate 2 entangled communities.
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I assume this is software?
My community is home to 19 different products and it’s very tricky. Only a small portion of our users have more than one product, which unfortunately results in silos of activity and almost sub-communities within.
Our rule of thumb at the beginning was that it’s better to silo things out like this to ensure people are only seeing/being alerted to content that’s applicable to them. People would quickly tune out if we had only one product news category, since only a sliver of topics would be relevant to them.
Your situation may be more similar to the community that I used to run, which had two products that were similar but very different (on-prem vs saas).
Feel free to ask any questions here or shoot me a DM/chat 
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