Community builders, what's one struggle you face when building a community?

Product Hunt
49 replies

Replies

Partha Sarker
There is one! Resolve conflict and make people work with each other, even when they might not like each other, to achieve a common goal.
Phil Rivard
Keeping the engagement high, especially in a "remote" or virtual setting.
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Alexander Thiele
@privard Totally agree! Can you maybe recommend an article about this?
Miriam Dorsett
@privard Where are you gathering your community?
Phil Rivard
@athiele_ There's a great resource from peerboard.com @ https://peerboard.com/resources/... that really goes in dept about online communities, the different types, strategies for building a community from scratch, how to keep members engaged, etc. Disclaimer: I am not related to peerboard.com in any way, shape, or form. I just thought their article was a lot more in dept than most other articles I came across.
Phil Rivard
@mdorsett We're using a mix of Slack, Email (newsletters), and Hivebrite. I don't think it's ideal, but we're still in the learning process.
Miriam Dorsett
@privard cool, for the slack channels, staying on top of posts, whether it's you, or someone on your team - making sure people get a response, and tagging relevant other members to posts to make sure they see them. Actually "making the connections" and making sure people are not spammy. Newsletter engagement - if you are featuring members make sure they see that NL. IDK anything about Hivebritet so suggest engagement ideas. Will look into it. But also this may be silly but do you have goals of engagement numbers, what does high engagement mean for you? Just some Q's. Maybe the real Q is if engagement is low...what does that mean. :) Anyway, like you said its all a learning process!
Julia Doronina
Especially for PH launch (we launched today and will really appreciate your support https://www.producthunt.com/post...) we build our community from scratch because our product is new for the market. The most difficult part is to tell correctly about all aspects of the product, attract interest and keep it.
Pablo Fatas
Being patient. I feel like just spamming everyone and posting to get engagement but a community is more like a plant. You gotta water it and give it sun but then you can’t do much more and wait and let it grow organically
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Shabhi haider
For the community, a key challenge has been developing trust. Other challenges include balancing differences in perspective, priorities, assumptions, values, beliefs, and language, determining who “speaks” for the community and documenting intervention success.
Miriam Dorsett
@shabhi_haider Do you have community guidelines? Great points.
Drew Falkman
Getting people to be in consensus about advancing the community, and getting them committed to spend the time and energy towards this. In my experience, everyone has a different motivation for participating in the community, so finding a unified vision that will intrinsically motivate the whole community takes some effort. But if you can find it, the community will take on a life of its own.
Richart Ruddie
Building out the network of users.
Jill Salzman
Finding folks who need our community but don't know that we exist. Like folks commented here, trust is always an issue (it takes time to trust anyone) and patience is sooooo harrrrrrrd but so necessary. I love our members bigtime and our engagement is great, but I always wanna help more mom entrepreneurs.
Donna Murdoch
Engagement. Getting things started with initial participation, though ongoing engagement and participation are the most difficult. We've come up with a few strategies and it also depends on the company and culture / consumer population targeted. Community also - getting people to find it, choose it, use it. There are so many. I see another questions about healthy discussion forums I am going to jump to that one....
Chris Ramirez
- Changing platforms: gathering one digital community to follow across other platforms, social networks, direct website - IRL: being able to gather community members in physical experiences due to the pandemic and its limitations right now - Over saturation of the word “community”
Ruslan Murin
I don't know where to begin to become a community builder :(
Pierre Kraus
Engaging with people and staying relevant while building and moving forward with your product. It's not easy to find balance between building your community & product as the same time. Both require consistency & patience.
There are many struggles. Some are: *Engagement *Giving people a sense of community. *Moderation *Getting initial transaction
Mitchell Orme
I think the timeline for building a community is often overlooked, people want to create a slack channel or a facebook group and then expect to have an engaged group of people constantly chatting and messaging, overflowing with trust and support. Any meaningful relationship with people requires that you develop it over a period of time, with consistent effort. You can't hack connections with people. People don't enjoy feeling used. A community takes time, and trust within the community takes time to earn.
Alex Gray
Tech stack is a big one - also how to provide value and monetize without killing the trust that's being built
jaka loro
Product, Startup and Crypto Enthusiast Getting people to be in consensus about advancing the community, and getting them committed to spend the time and energy towards this. In my experience, everyone has a different motivation for participating in the community, so finding a unified vision that will intrinsically motivate the whole community takes some effort. But if you can find it, the community will take on a life of its own.
Dhruv Bhatia
Acquiring users is a challenge
Divyansh Patel
Mostly with - Low engagements - Encouragement with new initiatives or exercises - Selecting the perfect Platform and tools for communication
Phoebe Shin Venkat
Where to prioritize your time and resources to make the biggest impact.
Muhammed Ibrahim
Maintaining the initial Engagement and Improving the Retention!