I’m Rosie Sherry, I build communities and I'm the founder of Rosieland. AMA 🔥

@aaronoleary My community tech stack for Rosieland: - Discourse - Ghost - Slack - Waves (https://meetwaves.com/) - Butter.us - Whereby - Savannah (https://savannahhq.com/) There's other community tech stacks here: https://village.rosie.land/t/wha...

@codefreechris 1. create their own influencers: stop relying on big names to get traction, build people within 2. focus on outcomes rather than vanity metrics: the more you change people's lives, the more they will come back 3. understand that communities are forever evolving: what works now, might not work in the near future (but also, don't give up too easily and understand that many things take time to work).

@automatedtester Community is a team effort, I think it would be really hard to build an authentic community without the engineering expertise. The best communities are founded and started by the experts and I think it's a big reason communities start to fail, we need those 'passionate' experts to keep driving communities forward. However, the amount of 'operations' required to run a community often goes unnoticed, there's probably a lot of day to day community admin stuff that could be allocated to a community manager rather than an engineer. That would at least start to free up some of their time to perhaps work on more valuable or impactful things. And what should they avoid? Mostly being wasteful and vanity metrics (and in contrast focus on solving problems and being creative/refreshing in the work being done).

@gusev honestly, there is so much on https://rosie.land, I'd start there :)

@robhanna 1. What's different about building IRL communities vs online communities; and what's the same? Nothing beats IRL. It's amazing and creates connections, relationships and friends for life. In a way that online can't. But online is great for other things. And it's not that you can't create connection, it's just different. You don't have to have both, but it's amazing when it does happen. I also think that online can really enhance IRL, not by doing hybrid-events, but by connecting people before hand and as a consequence making the experience irl much better/deeper/meaningful. 2. What tools, techniques, resources do you find very helpful for building IRL communities? Not specific techniques, but most of my efforts for IRL has gone on ensuring that everyone has a great experience. That everyone feels included and seen. It's sadly amazing how many people go unseen at events when usually people do want to connect, it can just be difficult to know how. I've done a few local meetups and conferences (as part of an online community). Often online and irl end up merging to some extent and we should find better ways to help people connect offline through our online tools. Going to irl events can actually be quite scary and intimidating if you don't know anyone, I've often come away not speaking to anyone at various meetups I've attended. That's the worst. Helping people to get to know each other before an event, or sharing an attendee list of some sort before hand, encouraging people to buddy up, etc. Are all potentially beneficial things to do. When I did conferences, we made it a thing (and constantly communicated the fact) that we shouldn't leave people standing alone, that we are all responsible for checking in on people and helping them through the experience. It made a big difference to the community vibe.

@robhanna @rosiesherry Hi. I am new here. I would love your comments on our proposition. It is based on one hour long, small 8 to 12 person IRL events that have a host present to break the ice (single people algo matched and invited to pubs and restaurants.) We launch in about 3 to 5 weeks. getgather app is the ugly info website I put up (Help Wanted LOL!)

@andy_sorensen do you have a link?

@robhanna Hello Rob. Our (soon to be updated) information website is at : www.getgather.app Thanks for your interest.

@umut_sonmez Question whether you actually need a community, most people won't want to join a product community. But mostly, I recommend the Minimum Viable Community way. https://rosie.land/posts/a-guide...

@asthakor51 there is no best, there is only context. Mostly, it depends where your target members tend to hang out.

@alexanderisora Easy to spin up Out of the box tools Not 100 different services to make it work Plenty of ways to make them financially stable Not dominated by big tech

@alexanderisora @rosiesherry I have the prototype MVP built... This answers a question i was going to ask... what's missing in the current formats...?

@tanya_janca I just don't think it's worth measuring ROI. I'm still developing thoughts around this, but it feels so unhealthy, you just can't measure community effectively. I feel disheartened by it all. It's probably better to focus on the positive outcomes that the community creates and to not let marketing/sales take all the credit for the community work that has been done. To get better at this I think community people need to get better at showing their work. Taking credit where credit is due. The positive feedback. The (word of mouth) recommendations. The back channel conversations. The inbound SEO. The innovation. The research we do and pass back to the company. Marketing would kill for the insights community can get. And community. needs to get better at passing back those insights to those that matter.

@maria_kono There's many things at play here. Tools like Savannah (https://savannahhq.com/), Burb (https://burb.co/) and Common Room (https://www.commonroom.io/) make it easier to track community data. They are all new to the market and I'm sure they will evolve over time. I think data from these tools can partially help prove our worth, but we also have to be careful about not obsessing purely with the data. The more we can prove that growth, success, ideas, innovation, relationships, conversations, etc stem from community then the more people will actually see the huge benefits of community. Though I think we need to figure this out better. I feel like there is so much waste in community. So much value that happens in the relationships and conversations that goes unnoticed. The more we can work with this kind of stuff, be creative around it, find ways to collaboratively work with members and other team mates to make stuff happen, then this is where change happens. And ultimately, we want change, not necessarily vanity metrics on the number of conversations or upvotes. We have to believe in community: having to constantly justify ourselves is unhealthy for everyone. I don't think most people truly believe in community, if they did they wouldn't make it the first thing they cut. Business don't practice what they preach: and it comes across in their actions. For example, when ROI is calculated, despite community being 'people powered' all the talk is about ROI for the business and totally excluding how they give back to the people, industry and ecosystem. (https://village.rosie.land/t/cal...) Community is not marketing: but perhaps we can massively reduced the marketing spend by focusing on community. I certainly built my business with zero ad spend and with a pure focus on helping and serving the community. It is possible, we need to create more examples of it.

@sydney_liu_sl I love Front Porch forum, how it breaks the norms and has found a way to succeed with local communities. They do things like delaying the ability to respond to a message to once a day. Facebook would benefit from having this functionality 🤣 I'm also a fan of local communities and feel it is very much an underserved market. https://www.theverge.com/2019/1/...

@mikestaub Honestly, I'm mostly disappointed. 😢 The deeper I dive into community the more problems I see that need to be solved. I really want people to step up. Most of the tools out there are not doing it for me and it's still too hard to do things that should be easy. On the plus side, there's plenty of room for innovation. I love the creator economy, but I also feel it's a bit too influence-y and most of these communities really serve themselves first. It's a bit of a nuance of what community is and isn't, the lines are definitely blurred, and that's ok. I detest the web3 world (sorry) and I feel it was a huge distraction and theft of what community actually is or could be. I'm a big fan of custom built communities (like PH and Indie Hackers) and hope to see more of these appear in the future.

@rosiesherry I agree with you 100%. The gap between the potential and what exists is enormous and I think web3 may have corrupted the term "community" with its get-rich-quick ethos. What do you think is the biggest problem that needs to be solved if you could only solve one?

@mikestaub @rosiesherry It's not quite ready for PH but i'd love to demo what I'm working on,... It is a pure, decentralized, creator economy and meCo is designed to not be a middleman... our tagline is 'Mind your own business; we'll provide the tools'

@mikestaub web3 definitely corrupted the community term, and honestly, I'm so upset about it, but onwards we go. The biggest problem imho is too many conversations and not taking any action on them. People are overwhelmed by it all and they are just not helpful.

@rosiesherry talk is cheap and fun. Idk how to solve that problem? Action requires planning and commitment

@frankie_zhang People don't understand how hard community is. Ask yourself: - why would they go back? - is it worth their time? - Is what exists inside helpful? - what are you doing to build up their habits of coming back? - how are you investing into growth? I find that a lot of communities are just not very interesting or helpful. Often they have *too much conversation and not enough action*. Conversations are key to community, but you have to find ways to make it into something more. No one wants to go to their 'local town hall' and be forever discussing things, they want outcomes and change. It's really hard. ❤️

@ashrahman It's a debate that may never end. There is no right or wrong, though. Discord was built for gamers, it has a different vibe. Slack is more professional and tech focused. Do what you feel happy with. 🤷🏻‍♀️ Personally, I used Discord for over a year and decided I hated it. The UX, the bots, the confusing threads, the spam, urgh. I started an indie founder community (where you get kicked if you don't participate 😅) we started on Discord, but interest soon was lost and people ended up saying they hated it. We moved to Slack and conversations massively increased and have stayed way up. https://twitter.com/rosiesherry/... I also have ethical concerns about Discord, which I wrote about here: https://village.rosie.land/t/i-d... People complain about Slack losing history, but I think that lack of history brings a sense of peace to members who don't necessarily want their conversations to exist forever. There are also tools like MeetWaves (https://meetwaves.com/) that allow you to capture Slack conversations. In addition to the huge amount of integrations, the DMs in Slack are highly under rated. (https://village.rosie.land/t/can...)

@rosiesherry Looks like we have a mutual feeling for discord. A great tool when gaming but nightmare for a community. Thanks for sharing insightful thoughts.

@0xblackbird Focusing on conversations and not enough action. Thinking you need a 'community tool' to have a community Being too transactional in your behaviour. Not doing your research. Do your research!

@shuaib_safeer1 Twitter DM, LinkedIn, contact form on my website - https://rosie.land

@richw build relationships, have conversations, become known for that person/company/community that does x. Do as much as you can in 'public'. People are put off this because it is slow, but the deeper you go, the more relevant you become and the more people will pay attention to you.

@bogdan_negrila if you have a following, then you have plenty of people to reach out to. I'd start by contacting people personally and trying to build a relationship and common understanding. Or maybe host an event, or create some kind of invite and see who shows up. Maybe punters don't want to share their inside knowledge? Maybe coming for the information is enough? We don't need community for everything.

@rosiesherry @bogdan_negrila You can also try and post on https://biztoc.com by Mark Cuban

@vivek_vardhan 1. How to engage the community without being noisy? Esp when the community is made up of professionals like founders & CEOs? Don't be noisy? Focus on being relevant. Saving them time. Bring them new insights and different perspectives. Help them achieve what they want to achieve. 2. Any tools you recommend for good community engagement? Honestly, good conversation and community discovery. There are no tools for this, only your mind and creativity. 3. How do you manage hours to shut down PC and mobile notification as a community manager esp when it is a global community? Create boundaries and live by them. We all need them. Community builders are so prone to burnout because of this. We have to get better at creating boundaries. And honestly, your members will appreciate and understand. Fast responses are not necessarily better ones.