How do you grow a community around the product?
Ksusha
84 replies
We all know that a community can increase sales and grow the product. But it’s hard to make people interested in the product before it is launched. How do you unite people in a community and stir up interest?
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@ksusha_golovchenko sure, I like this one gabygoldberg.medium.com/the-value-of-a-velvet-rope-effects-of-hype-and-exclusivity-on-launch-strategies-8e8061cf517e
@ksusha_golovchenko @mituhin Checked out the article. Thanks for sharing!
By the way, I'm looking for feedback on AnyGo, a tool used to easily compare the cost of driving and flying between U.S. cities. You can find it on my profile page. Thanks Paul!
It is always hard but possible if you start generating and suggesting valuable content in the area you specialize in :)
Community gathers around certain people or topics of interest; if you can bring anything useful and exciting to the table, people will appreciate it and come back for more.
@sonya_key_ good point! so, people need an useful and informative content, yeah?
@ksusha_golovchenko yes, in my experience it's the ony thing that helps!
- Challenge the status quo and have an enemy
- Beat a bush about on socials
- Get folks to your waitlist.
Check out Microacquire, he does it well.
@aazar_ali_shad can you decipher "Challenge the status quo and have an enemy"? How to do that and whats the aim?
@ksusha_golovchenko Microacquire fights VC backed mindset. It is for founders.
They are for folks who are bootstrapping. So Enemy is anything VC backed.
Look at his tweets: https://twitter.com/agazdecki
I built the product on side while I was working full time in pharmaceutical out of curiosity. I didn't think of anything about marketing and sales. Now I am trying and learning all social media and community building around the product.
@pintubecom the product didn't launch yet, yeah? u r planning to build a community before launch or after?
@ksusha_golovchenko pintube.com is up and running. and work in progress. My burn rate is really low so not rushing. you have got great UI and unique idea. Just subscribed and followed you on Twitter. Also advertise on https://stackoverflow.com/
@ksusha_golovchenko please register your company with us as well if you can, that way you will network effect. You can also advertise jobs with us, its free. Happy to provide any assistance or admin work if you need.
Most of the communities I've joined were actually when I was looking for support but then I stayed for other reasons.
@chrystalnicole because you engaged in content?
@ksusha_golovchenko Yes, for example - Squarespace. I used it, had a quick question and found their FB group, and got my answer. However, it still shows in my feed and now I know a lot more about it and I've kept it longer than I would have otherwise. This has happened with other products as well.
Many great answers here already so I will just add to them (hopefully). Making sure people already in the community are sharing success (in whatever form that comes in), this helps validate the quality of the community and whatever the community is built around.
I'd suggest hyper-personalization - by that I mean connecting with people on a human-to-human level as much as possible. Then, you have a firsthand uderstanding of your audience, people's needs, fears, and values. Once you do that, marke - the right content, relevant product updates, engaging social media posts, and so on.
Talk about topics related to your product and industry. Answer their questions, comments and DMS. Educate and entertain your audience on social media platforms. It can help a lot!
@gurpinder_singh which platforms do you use?
@ksusha_golovchenko I mostly focus on LinkedIn, Instagram for social media marketing (that's where our audience is). Medium for blog posts.
As a Solo developer, building a community is exhausting.
Lots of community comes down to having conversations with people and finding ways to help them.
The hard part is knowing what conversations to have and how to help them, much of this is down to researching (community discovery), practicing and experimenting (Minimum Viable Communities).
@rosiesherry The research is *especially* important for existing communities. There can be very different reasons for them thriving (that can be upset if not understood), and norms that are not always obvious but have emerged through group interactions.
There is no magic bullet to get a community.
What works best is a powerful personal network of the founders. It's not smth accessible to any founder - but wee what you could leverage given your existing network.
You can rely on early adopters of your product and help them grow as experts by creating useful content for your audience in the very beginning. This helps you take a look at the content that your audience find useful from the other perspective and reveal something that you might miss
@lipkovskiy cool idea! like micro influencers, yeah?
There are a minimum of three perspectives to think through:
1. yours: what are your product motivations? (looks like you're got a strong handle on this: leverage it to increase sales, grow product)
2. passive members: what makes it worth the effort to visit it?
3. active members: what makes it worth the effort to contribute to it? (comments or posts; also comment & user moderation)
Communities live or die by the interplay of content and member's involvement with it, especially if they generate it. In an extreme but not implausible case, it can get out of hand quickly and shift into something that runs counter to your brand (especially if there aren't people involved with moderation). What's far more likely is that it quietly struggles with engagement, and that happens when those core reasons (#2 and #3) aren't strong.
There's a time-based aspects to these perspectives too. A community of aspiration/hype pre-launch is likely to turn into a community of support post-launch. If you plan for that, great! If you're not ready to shepherd it as such, it might make more sense to find existing communities to participate in.
It's really hard... We tried to use different platforms as Indie Hackers or Product Hunt Discussions to gain the community for our launch (we launched today LeaksID 2.0 and will be grateful for your support). 😀
The best way to grow a community would be to ensure that there's highest 1-1 engagement between the members. Otherwise it eventually becomes a ghost town.
I've been a part of a lot of communities. And the thing I've observed is that atleast in the early stages, the community manager takes a lot of efforts to organize events, activities to make sure people get to know each other :)
It becomes a separate activity apart from the product. But the best part about communities is that they invert the funnel & create exponential sales by word of mouth :)
A channel for the community to interact and learn from each other would help - like slack or circle.
This all depends on the "Practical Value all the Community Members are getting consistently", you could refer to the STEPPS Framework for this-https://www.linkedin.com/posts/s...
@samyak_tripathi I got acquainted with the information and followed you on Linkedin!
it was very helpful
do you use some slack channels for marketing/product/business managers?