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How do you grow a community around the product?
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!
@mituhin Thank you for the article. I am building the AI startup and marketing is very useful now, as we have product in Beta version)
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). 😀
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.
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!
@ksusha_golovchenko I mostly focus on LinkedIn, Instagram for social media marketing (that's where our audience is). Medium for blog posts.
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.
- 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
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 :)
Here are some tips for growing a community around your product:
- Talk about the problem you're solving
- Publish content frequently about the problem
- Invite early adopters who identify with the problem
- Ask them to share their experience about the problem
- Identify your top community contributors
- Ask them to invite their friends
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.
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?
@ksusha_golovchenko There's a great book and guide that I found very useful: Traffic Secret by Russell Brunson.
The key messages are:
- first, search for and discover the potential users and customers of your product. They are already congregating somewhere, e.g. FB groups, Twitter chats, Blogs, Communities, Forums, Instagram, ... Product Hunt :)
- Cultivate and build relationships in such places where your potential audience is congregating, without marketing: provide as much value as possible to help them with the problems or requests they have
- After the relationship and your trust are consolidated, you can start to "invite" them to "your party", by promoting your product to that audience
- find and build relationships with top influencers, asking them to help you to promote your product (again, after you have built trust with them).
It's a long-term play, not immediate we know. But once done, it opens a lot of doors and changes!
@all: Book Reading (if not done) is highly recommended.
@ksusha_golovchenko @all @giuseppe_di_nuccio Even if you can't get the book and read it, there is an audio version in YouTube. Hear it while on the move :)
Send out goodies if you have a budget.
Make an exclusive community and give them deals they can't get elsewhere.
Make your users a significant part of your content strategy.
Be there when your users come across an issue.
Reward them with gifts whenever there comes a special occasion.
Etc.
@senthil_nathan9 excellent idea
its interesting to make some followers to be like influencers in the community
they are pleased and others are involved
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
Most of the communities I've joined were actually when I was looking for support but then I stayed for other reasons.
@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.
Hey Ksusha. You inspired me with your topic and I decided to write a post based on my experience https://medium.com/@andreylipkov...
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.
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