Build up what you have or focus on bigger things?

Let's say you have a small community established on your forum. It gets you daily posts by a small group of people who keep coming back.

What's your goals for this?

(1) Work on building up what you have going? Get the community more established and loyal.

(2) Post here and there but focus more efforts on growing the community through marketing means while letting the community build itself in the background?

What are you doing and why?

If I have ten members that always post everyday on my forum, I would like expend my energy to ensure that they stay. I would focus on building with them. I would also keep marketing to get new members, but new members can only stay when they come in to find a strong community already on the forum.

I think building what you have first is the best. Chasing bigger things too early is a distraction. I abandoned a small forum to start another shiny one, both ended weak. This tells you that depth matter before expansion.

Definitely, I’d work on building what I already have. I will make my forum established first before I try other things. Old members will stick if they see the forum as reliable and strong and there is a higher chance that they will share to others how good your forum is.