What do you want to learn about community building in 2023?
Rosie Sherry
33 replies
I'm planning out my year for serving people with community building things.
I'd love to know...
Where do you get stuck building community?
And what would you like to learn about how to build one?
Replies
Michaela Greiler@mgreiler
Hi Rosie, I get stuck on tools. I can’t follow discussions especially on discord. no matter how hard I try it always feels I’m too late to participate. I’m not all the time in front of a computer. I check in from time to time over the day, and mostly from my phone.
Whenever I check it seems I’m too late to the party. The discussion is already over. It feels to me, community still happens mostly synchronous, not asynchronous. Facebook group work slightly better for me. Being on a phone also means writing things up take a lot of effort. I type most words twice 😳 and then autocorrect corrects them back to nonsense 😭 very exhausting. So I often stop engaging or do not even start cause of this.
Any suggestions?
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@mgreiler you're not the only one who feels that way. Lots of people struggle to find ways to participate.
I wrote this, it's in the context of forums, but the ideas really apply to community: https://rosie.land/posts/are-for...
The problem, I think, is people see community (and the tools) with such a focus on conversations. That the only way they can participate as a community is to talk/chat/respond.
The reality is community is so much more than this.
Look at us here at Product Hunt. Yes, we're talking here, but it's just a small part of the overall community. What makes the community is the launching and discovery of tools. You could view people submitting a tool is a way to have a conversation.
@mgreiler Totally agree! I'm in Japan, and my company never sold out to VC or paid Guy Kawasaki to endorse us. I hear about events hours after they ended.
Hey, what say more of us say what we're actually thinking...? Like, it's more about where you are and who you bought with equity than what you're building.
@mgreiler @osakasaul
On one hand communities should be able to give people a chance to be heard and be responded to. The thing is people say they want communities that have lots of people so they can get visibility and responses to their posts. The reality is that often responses aren't very helpful because those who do respond don't have enough deep insight into that person's situation.
Smaller communities are actually better at having less but better responses, but then people end up seeing the value in small communities.
Hi Rosie!
We are building a collaboration network for creators, brands and marketing professionals - leali.io
And community is extremely important to grow our business (since we are community based). However, my team finds it hard to narrow down to one channel for engagement. I would love to know how to find the best channel for community building for the specific product, as well as a guide on the essential rules for engagement with users to grow in numbers.
Thank you!
@cleacea The best channel is to aim for your own channel, even if that means it's an email list, it can still play a huge part in your community efforts.
But if you mean more of a social channel, that depends on where your people are. Look for them and go where they hang out. It will be different for every niche.
Hi Rosie,
Here are a few ideas which will help fellow CMs:
1. Community migration strategy
2. How to align community goals and business goals
3. How to automate community tasks
Cheers :)
I think this may be a bit more specific to brand communities, but assistance in "proving" ROI (reduced churn, increased engagement, website conversions, etc.) would be helpful. Aligning community management/growth efforts with company goals and showing that you are/aren't achieving community results.
@jasonbrueckner Yes, this definitely an area that community in general needs to get better at. I think it hasn't done us any favours to not have enough focused strategies on how to prove/show the value that we create.
I want to launch a discord community as an amplifier for my yearly project: interactive design course.
Basically I'm repeating the experience that https://www.joshwcomeau.com/ made.
The thing is that
1. I know nothing about Discord (in terms of features), but that's a matter of learning
2. I have a newsletter base, 12K people. I can technically invite them to my server, but that's probably going to be a mess.
My aim is:
1. To make people discuss UI/UX, advice each other, do reviews, and so on
2. Get beta testers for the course
3. Pre-launch the course probably giving out a discount for the community
4. Listen to the feedback of beta testers
So the question is... how to start? Should I read any guide about discord, invite few friends, slowly start adding new users, or just drop a bomb in newsletter/Twitter and invite as much people as I can?
Seems like the slower is the better choice
Thanks Rosie!
@victor_ponamariov This is so helpful and I love the way you're thinking through. We just launched on Discord and it has been a slow build. It's new to me and so I'm definetly learning as I go. The thing I struggle with the most is keeping up with conversations and questions - because it's so conversationally driven I feel pressure to be present and responsive, but also know it could eat all my time. Still a learning curve for how to balance it.
@brenna_donoghue Yeah, I think that the creator of the community should be very active at first and encourage conversions somehow. It's like building a form in old 2000, when you need to start building it and then you can't stop: everybody makes threads and communicate.
But it looks like it's going to be a long process.
One of the things that I have hopes for is that since my discord will be dedicated to UI/UX, there will be a value in reviewing each other design, but I need to find more ways to encourage communication and provide more value. Somehow. And still have enough time to do other projects :D
@victor_ponamariov Hey Victor!
I would...
- explore what other people have set up on Discord
- learn the basics of Discord
- start with the smallest amount of channels possible
- invite people in slowly, maybe have a barrier (a form to apply) to begin with
@victor_ponamariov @brenna_donoghue Hopefully in time other people will chip in on the conversations. Longer term you can seek to create content around repeat questions/pains.
Hi,
I'm wondering what tools would you (or anyone else) feel are missing in the currant community building apps...? If you could build all the tools in one suite, what would be the must haves...? What seems to me to be a problem is first you must manage a landing page, then a community engagement app, and then a marketplace and more... and they all need to be redirected and require separate management. Anyone else feel it is too fragmented...?
@vincent_meco1 it's my main frustration atm. There is too much fragmentation and there needs to be tools that offer more-in-one.
I ranted about it here - https://twitter.com/rosiesherry/...
I also wrote a thing about community tools in general - https://rosie.land/posts/what-is...
Great question, Rosie! Been building my community for over a decade, and I still struggle with how to serve without overserving. Folks join a community for different reasons, as we know, so it's quite the juggle. Hard to answer but always asking that so appreciate your thoughts!
@foundingmom I suffer from this too. Part of it is just embracing it as part of the job, another part, I think is doubling down on (identifying) what actions matter the most.
@rosiesherry it's reaaaaalllly nice to hear that you suffer from this too! Agreed on doubling down. Off to try! ;-)
Hey Rosie! I think data tracking and dashboards for communities are pretty bare right now. Depending on the tooling you use it's clumsy to combine all your efforts into a centralized system.
ie.
App data, 3rd party chat data (Discord or Geneva), SMS data, email data, CS data. We create our own solutions but would love to figure out a way to build a no-code/low-code solution for others to take advantage of!
@rosiesherry wow, these are awesome Rosie! I've been looking at Threado thanks to @5harath , will check the others too <3
Do you personally have a preference @rosiesherry? I love data, so maybe I could go with the "less than we think" reminder 😅
I get stuck on where my team can post. In Twitter, it's about who you know face-to-face. In Reddit, God help you if the the subreddit has it's own Discord Server.
Everywhere else, you get rubbish.
That's where I'm stuck. (And I love to hear from those with a community where people actually speak with each other. You know, in speech?)
@osakasaul well cared for communities often host events, but even then it can be hard to find direct connection with people.
I would probably focus on one-to-one conversations, helping people, DMing where possible. You can do this on Twitter, or Slacks. The key is to keep showing up in a human way.
@rosiesherry Hi Rosie, no particular question as such. Just wanted to thank you for answering all the questions related to community building that members have posted here. Much appreciated.
It's easy to build one, but difficult to keep it active
Such an interesting thread, thanks!
My main problem right now is basically trying to keep up with the million channels (just take Reddit, they are soo many sub reddits and keeping track of all the comments is hard with a user unfriendly notification system)
How to keep it engaged and interested in some topic, better by itself without external attention
It is difficult to say exactly where someone might get stuck building a community without more context. There are many different factors that can influence the success or difficulty of building a community, and the specific challenges that one might face will depend on the goals of the community, the resources available, and the specific context in which the community is being built. Some common challenges that people might face when building a community include finding and engaging members, establishing and maintaining clear communication channels, establishing and enforcing rules and norms, and ensuring that the community is inclusive and welcoming to all members.