1.   Community Engagement

2.   Tit-Bit Community Hacks

3.    The Community Onboarding Experience

On the other side of the community world, august has been a great month. I was having a hard time keeping my excitement and why? Well, because the workshop held in August was all things community and more.

A huge shout out to our speaker Dani Weinstein, who gave us insights into the B2B world of communities, his journey in the community space and how his MCEE model helps de-code the way communities are built.
It was an interactive, insightful session. Thank you, Dani.
 
For those of you who missed the workshop, in this week’s edition, I will be sharing the workshop summary deck along with the recording session of the entire workshop.

Glynk Community Ppt Aug 30, 2022

1.56MB ∙ PDF file

Download

Download

Below is the video link to the recording:

Community Building 101 for every SaaS Business

Passcode for access: Z9zxy=5U

Now onto this edition’s topic, well you must have heard the saying “Everybody wants to be the king of the mountain” and fairly so. Well this saying, basically boils down to the psychological needs that Maslow’sMaslow's theory speaks about.

The way I look at it, through my personal experience I have always found the title “community manager” to be good but, imagine having something fancier or bigger like a “Community Evangelist” it automatically makes me want to work harder to justify that role and keep up with the responsibility that role carries.
It’s about creating a sense of identity.

When building a community, it can be tempting to see your community as a homogenous group without a hierarchy (do not mistake me, when I say a hierarchy it can be a vertical one too!) But this is where you are making a mistake. 

Successful communities thrive when people are encouraged into roles that suit their personalities and skills, making them feel more belonging to their role and community, this helps create an environment that is vibrant, balanced, engaged and sustainable in the long run. 

In this edition, I will make you understand - what are the different community roles that exist, How you can give the right roles to the right people and finally how you can build a successful community with such roles.

The classification of community roles

Communities are in the end, social systems. Whether within a business team internally or with online members, people naturally organize themselves into specific roles based on their personalities and interests.

Some people like to take ownership, while others thrive under leadership. Some are go-getters who strategise and enjoy the limelight, while others like to be spectators standing on the sidelines, getting things done.

So for your community to be successful, you should understand the different roles that can be taken up by members, decode the value that each of these roles can bring to the community. 

Let’s have a look at the different roles your community members can take up, how they can be involved and what value each role brings to the table.
The roles can be classified into three categories:

• Natural community roles – These are roles that people inherently want to take up, without any motivation as they feel they thrive best under this role. (organically, without any prompting or encouragement on your part)
  

• Dedicated community roles – these are roles that you will specifically grant to the right people to scale your community and ensure sustainability. These roles play a key role in ensuring good engagement in your community.
  

• Internal-team community roles – these are the in-house salaried positions within your business, that are involved in the overall community activities.
  

  

  
  

Let’s understand what each of these categories has:

Natural community roles:

1. The leader – These leaders are the organizers of your community.
They take up multiple roles and are usually the most invested in your community’s success. Their role is to contribute, communicate, moderate and encourage other members of the community. They stand up and take ownership when needed. These members are usually the most loyal, long-serving members.

2. The super contributor – They are the facilitators of your community. They play a critical role in creating a thriving environment with engaging and meaningful conversations. They contribute in every way - they usually welcome newcomers, have ice breaker conversations, respond to posts first and take part in all the events. They want to help others and promote healthy relationships among members.

3.The Competitive performer – They are competitive by nature and love being the centre of attention. These people want to be seen, heard and driven by a strong psychological need for approval. They thrive on attention and recognition. They are usually very active and keep engagement high by creating a healthy sense of competition.

4.The spectator – They are the opposite of performers, and shy away from any attention they get. They like to take more subtle approaches and like to take the back seat while someone leads. But they are not members who are inactive, they regularly participate and add great value to the community, but they do so in a way that doesn’t garner attention from others.

5.    The Rebel

In other words, they are the antagonists of the community. They usually trigger strong emotions with other members by challenging their ideas and beliefs. While this is a great way to keep the engagement high, you should be careful to moderate them the right way, without which the environment can go from healthy to toxic real quick.

‍

Granted roles for members:

Allocating dedicated roles is a great way to encourage and involve community members in the process of scaling and managing your community. This is a great way to create a self-sustaining community. But you need to be careful about allocating the role to the right person.

1.    Moderator:

Of all the roles, this is the one that’s most important and hence you need to ensure that you choose the right person for this job. Moderators can make or break an online community!

You’ll need to pick someone you can blindly trust – ideally a loyal member who knows the culture and ethics of the community. They need to be smart enough to understand where they need to step up and where they can let it go. and have a high level of EQ (Emotional quotient).

‍It’s important to make note that moderation requires more observations and less of taking action. Heavy moderation is a sure way to kill your community before it even gets started.
Here is a detailed article on the Moderation Mandates you need to have for your community.

2.Content Creator:

As discussed in our previous articles, User-generated content plays a vital role in your community strategy. Members trust what other people have to say over what you say about your own product.

Usually, anyone in your community can take up this role. However, this official title can be allocated to the most engaging member as a reward or badge.

3. Brand Advocate:

I personally call them the superheroes of the community! They protect and promote your community. They represent the core of your community and are usually the top word-of-mouth superheroes for your business. Their job is to promote your company and products wherever possible, so they need to be confident enough to represent the company on your behalf. There should be some rewards to the job too – tickets to events, early access to product developments, product launches etc. 

These brand advocates can also be called ambassadors. Brand ambassador programs have become a sensation across the community space offsite. Community managers are now launching ambassador programs as a way to nurture and market their community.

4. Onboarder

This role includes onboarding responsibilities of community members. Think of it as a community HR specialist. On boarders are specifically allocated the job to welcome new joiners, answer any queries they might have, and guide them in exploring the community and the interface.

In the end, your community strategy should seek to understand all these roles and encourage the right people into them. If you want to take your community seriously, then have a dedicated team to support and achieve your goals.

Snippets of the week:

Do you have any tips/ suggestions about other community roles that you’d want me to add here? You can reach out to me via mail, Twitter or shoot me a question in the comments below.

Have a suggestion for a piece of content we should include next week? Email us and let us know!

But what if through this entire journey, you had a golden egg and a map of it?
Yes, I’m referring to “community”.

In our previous editions, I had already spoken about the importance of communities for SaaS and how to create the perfect onboarding experience.
So finding this golden egg is great, but the real work begins after that.

Creating a community and onboarding members is the first step. The more difficult one is to ensure members get what they are looking for, and to create a strategy that gets them hooked to your community for the long run.
Building a community is a process with multiple steps. At times, building a community means having more questions than there are answers to. And that’s what I’m here to help you with!

Any community manager who has tried to create a community knows that it's vital to keep members interested and engaged. But understanding how to create a more interactive and energizing experience for your community members is the real deal.

This is why you probably need a good community plan for your community. Imagine if you could ignite a spark in your online community, an environment where members came online to interact with one another and not just with you. An ideal space where people feel empowered and want to engage with others as they belong to the community.

Learning how to empower community members eventually leads to lesser work for you, more interaction between your members, and more growth for your brand.

In this post, I’m going to make you understand why a good community plan is crucial for your new community and what the different strategies you need to get your new members to interact and make the most of your community are.

Strategy 1: Use self-sustaining tactics in your engagement plan

Community engagement refers to motivating members to stay loyal to the community and increasing participation among each other. An engaged community promotes stronger relationships and member loyalty. While the members share a common interest, each community is unique because of its specific experiences, objectives, goals, and expected results. This means that a community engagement strategy will be different for each community and there is no “one-size-fits-all” strategy.

The biggest question you need to ask yourself as a community manager is, Why should my users return or stay longer?

A lot of effort goes into acquiring each new user. But the same effort, if not more energy needs to go into building sustainable community engagement tactics.

A user may come to your online community for many reasons, and return or stay for different reasons. This will always be a probability game but you want to provide them with enough opportunities for them to continuously engage. Their longevity always signals value for your other users which directly reflects on the growth of your community

You need to think about engagement tactics that are self-sustaining that increase the user's longitivtiy in your community, like these:

1. Identify and encourage mentors.

They are the users that build a reputation by sharing their knowledge and expertise, which will benefit other members and the community as a whole.

2. Create feedback posts

Create more opportunities for user feedback and that does not include feedback forms via email or surveys. Create channels and threads within the forum and have discussions around the same. Insights from such discussions are always more valuable.

3. Understand the user journey 

Observe how would interact with your community. Create categories and topics based on their preferences. You don’t want them to get lost through a pile of posts to get to a single topic of interest. That can cause quick attrition.

4. Engage your community around topics

Build conversations based on members’ interests, and even the actions they wish to take. Personalize the experience for members this increases consistent participation from members.

5. Conduct programs on your online community

Events, workshops and product ideations. This not only increases participation but lets members to ideate and engage with others. These programs will be perceived as a great value add to them, hence increased return and retention.

Strategy 2: Encourage user-generated content

Content for community engagement includes discussion threads, blogs, comments, re-shares, white papers, educational videos and more.

Many community managers struggle with writing relevant content that can cater to all the unique personas in the community. Sometimes content can often look very simple. But as the saying goes– the simpler, the better. Members like content that is simple, understandable and to the point. It is important to humanise the content as much as possible, that’s when members can relate to what you have to say.

When planning your content, think of the following:

• What questions do you get asked the most in your community? Collect these questions and try to create content that answers those questions.

• Talk about your product and its latest updates. It’s a great content idea. To get feedback about your product and include features that are recommended by your users.

• Speak about everything that’s happening in your community. This can include posts and videos about upcoming events, trending discussions or weekly group meetings.

• Create content that is most likely to drive engagement based on data you gather from the performance of various posts in the community. For example, content from certain topics can lead to better engagement compared to others.

• Check out the content formats like videos that are more engaging than traditional formats like text and images. For example, you can create online video sessions as icebreaker events.

As your community grows, there will be more user-generated content in it.
UGC (User Generated Content) is created by community members. UGC is a great boost for your community. People are empowered to have a voice of their own. Once they are loyal to the community, they engage on a regular basis by expressing their thoughts and sharing knowledge. They become a voice for the brand, helping promote and market the product. This also promotes acquisition as people often tend to take the words of other members over the brand itself.

According to a study by TurnTo and Ipsos, 90% of shoppers have said that other people’s reviews — ratings, posts, comments, videos, etc, influence their purchases. Almost half of the respondents consider UGC to be more influential than search engines or email advertisements. So the survey implies that, if a person sees a lot of good user-generated content, it’s more likely that they will buy the product.

Strategy 3: Nurture ambassadors and advocates for your community

As you grow your community, you will have users who are super active, I personally call them the superheroes of the community! I mean, I'm not just saying this because I'm a Marvel or DC fan, but that’s precisely what they do. They protect and promote your community. They represent the core of your community and are usually the top contributors with content and participation. These people are the ones members turn to for advice and suggestions about the community. Your key task is to take care of such superheroes as it's crucial to retain and support the existing ones for better community engagement.

They don’t ask for anything in return, they just like ownership and take pride in just helping others in the community. They take on the role of a mentor, a spokesperson and a marketer for your community, so ensure you do whatever it takes to help them feel comfortable and happy to be in the community.

Make sure they are roped in with your internal team, and keep them updated on the latest product and community.

Example: Amex Brand Ambassadors. The American Express payment system has its own brand ambassador program. In this program, people post photos on Instagram depicting the ways they can use American Express services with the #AmexAmbassadorhashtag. e.g. their travel photos. Exclusive event passes and travel upgrades are among the rewards.

Strategy 4: Gamify the community

Gamification, in communities, is about motivating member activity and improving interaction and communication between them. The goal of the activity is to highlight influential and active participants within the community, as well as create groups among members based on their mutual preferences.

At its core lies a reward or recognition system that acts as an incentive to participate. Commonly used tools in online communities include leaderboards based on activity points and titles awarded as recognition. Competition badges also create a sense of community, as they represent a user’s belonging to a specific group.

Participants can receive rewards for various contributions e.g. writing the first post, receiving the highest no of likes and/or comments, answering a question, having the greatest number of shares, etc. In such a way they are motivated to become a more active community participant and thus contribute to the overall success of your brand.

Example: In the Spotify Community Rockstar Program, contributing members are awarded for answering questions, writing blog posts, participating in the Music Room, etc. They can get premium accounts and even audio equipment such as headphones and speakers as a reward.

Strategy 5: Celebrate success

It is important to celebrate the success stories of your members. It can be milestones that they have achieved, their personal success stories or even the virtual leader of the week — through leaderboards and gamification. Celebrate the small successes with the entire community. This creates a stronger sense of belonging among the members. You can also delight your members by appreciating their participation and contribution to improving the overall community experience. For example, a simple thank you letter along with a small gift card for the most active or valuable participants would be a real motivator.

Example: Monument to Game Players by CCP Games. In 2014, CCP Games, a game development studio based in Iceland, built a monument with the names of all active players of their EVE Online game. At the bottom of the monument, they also buried a time capsule containing a laptop with messages from the players and game developers. The capsule will be opened in 2039.

Thriving communities create value through sustained engagement – users joining, engaging, and returning. But always remember when you’re starting out, or you’re working your way up from good to great, it’s tough to know if you have an online community engagement strategy that will create this habit in your users.

Top articles that help with a great community strategy:

1. Divide and satisfy method.

2. Network Effect.

3. Advocacy Program.

4. Pillars of a content plan.

5. How to deal with low engagement in a community.

6. Structure of brand communities.

Snippets of the week:

A Shout out to Dani Weinstein, Director, Community Strategy at SAP who was our speaker for our recent workshop about “Community Building 101 for every SaaS Business”.
Thank you, Dani, for such an insightful workshop on community building for the B2B space. It was great having you onboard with us!

The deck below contains the entire summary of the workshop that was presented by Dani, along with some valuable insights and interesting resources.

Glynk Workshop Deck - Dani Weinstein

1.56MB ∙ PDF file

Download

Summary of the workshop "Community Building 101 for every SaaS Business"

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Stay tuned, as we will be sharing the recording of the workshop in the upcoming edition.

Have a suggestion for a piece of content we should include next week? You can reach out to me via mail, or Twitter.

Hope you guys have a great week ahead. See you all in our next edition until then think community!

If you’re finding this newsletter valuable, consider sharing it with friends, or subscribing — if you haven’t already!

I find it amusing how it went from Jaaaaanuaaaary, Febbbbruarryy, Marcchhhhh, April-May-June-July and boom, now AUGUST!
That’s when I realised now is an ideal time to look at the progress of your community and the goals achieved so far!

As a community manager, I have always aligned my tasks and goals for each quarter, but on a micro level, I have always liked changing my methods with a weekly calendar, experimenting and narrowing down on the best practices for my community.

I pick up small hacks and incorporate them as weekly rituals to see how they change the community's participation levels.

So I decided to introduce the same to you in this edition! You will find some incredible tit-bits that could be a game changer for your community. These amazing hacks can be incorporated into your weekly community rituals and goals!

See more in the posts below and share your thoughts in the comments.

Do you have any tips/ suggestions that you’d want me to add here? You can reach out to me via mail, or Twitter or shoot me a question in the comments below.

Let’s hang out and discuss more!

Have a suggestion for a piece of content we should include next week? Email us and let us know!

One does not launch a community without taking the time to plan.

- Jenny Weigle

Hey there! 👋

This week’s goal is to bring up memories of any tour that you have been a part of.

We all know the value of a skilled guide who can show us the best spots in any new place — where the most activity and value are gained.

While every user has a unique persona, what you are aiming for is an immersive experience for each one of them, right from the beginning.

Channelling these thoughts lies at the core of preparing the ideal onboarding process.

Last week, we spoke about how SaaS communities are a secret, highly-effective Cost Acquisition Strategy. Continuing with the Sassy mood, this time we will help you understand and de-code the ideal way to create a seamless member onboarding process, for your SaaS community!

Onboarding new members is a critical step for your community, and often one that is missed or under-emphasized. That first year is the deal breaker for your organization and has a huge influence on customer retention as well. Hence defining a solid onboarding process will lay the foundation for your community.

The general goal is to deliver an engaging experience from the beginning to make them come back to participate regularly. However, this goal is often left out of the initial strategy.

In this post, I’m going to make you understand why onboarding is crucial and what are the different tactics to onboard new members into your community.

What is ‘onboarding’ and why is it important?

Onboarding of your members is the process by which new people join your community. It can (and should) be both Psychological (how a person feels emotionally about joining your community) and practical (is the member onboarding process appropriate).

For all your members, this will be their first time interacting with you, your community and the organization. They have a fresh perspective on your community. They are joining ready to absorb and learn all that your community has to offer. Of course, then, you want to make sure that they get off to a great start!

If you’re onboarding with the goal of retention — which you should be, it’s all about connecting your members and continuing to engage them at strategic touchpoints. Engagement during their first year of membership, and every year after, is how you keep members around.

6 steps to create an acquisition and retention-based onboarding process:

1.    Create a steady user flow:

‘User flow’ is a term that describes the series of activities and processes that a member follows to complete their onboarding process and get into the zone of platform experience. It is usually best to provide this as a visual representation.

To create the right user flow, it is crucial to place yourself in your member’s shoes and think of all the processes that they would need to get familiar with your platform.

There are 5 types of strategies that can help you create the perfect user flow for onboarding:
(Source: CXL)

i)    Benefit-focused: Explains the core benefits for members and how to achieve that benefit via the platform.

ii)    Function-focused: Explain the platform's core functions and how to use them.

iii)   Doing-focused: Walks members through the first or most common actions taken on your platform.

iv)  Account-focused: Walks members through profile creation, including finding groups, networking or topics to follow.

v)  All: For complex platforms, it may be necessary to combine the four above.

2.  Guided tours

Much like how your tour guides help you get familiar with a new city, guided tours give members a walk-through explaining the most important aspects of the community. The guide must be specific and should help members understand the benefits of each category and the actions that can be taken by them for each of the sections. The purpose of a guided tour is to educate them and avoid any confusion right from the start.

For example, you can use a guided tour to show them the different options of uploading a file onto a post, and the ways you can navigate and engage within different groups and prompt them to engage in such actions.

Since guided tours are more visual, it’s better to avoid long boring videos to explain everything about the community. In situations where they are necessary, create a user manual that members can always refer to.

The manual should cover all the following aspects:

• How to set up the member profile

• How to create content

• Where to find the community guidelines

• How to network with fellow members

• How to join groups and follow particular topics.

• How to engage with content

• How to join events

• Any other relevant features of your community that needs explanation.

3. The welcome video

I’m sure you know that videos are highly engaging and do better than other content formats, so make good use of this format to engage your new audience. You can create a short video welcoming the new members and have a fun introduction to your community.

Glynk’s Tip 💡
Add snippets of introduction videos that include your internal community team and the first set of super users. It strengthens the value of your community and prompts your members to take the community seriously.

4. Emails

Emails are your universal communication solution. You can use it for almost everything — onboarding, notifications, updates, newsletters and weekly activity summaries.

Your email should be as personal as it can get. It should make them get excited about your content. That means having smaller portions of content that offer high value! It should be easy to consume and should help educate the member and encourage them to engage with your community.

Feverbee has some great examples of onboarding email sequences!

5. Introductions:

It's important to have an ice breaker conversation for new members.  The best way to achieve this is by having introduction threads in the discussion section of your community. This has been a common practice for many communities and an important one too. You can also have dedicated features for members who wish to contribute or be part of the super user program ( which I will be explaining in my next point) it encourages more members to actively participate in your community. It helps members to get acquainted with their peers and get comfortable with the community.

Glynk’s Tip 💡
Weekly introduction threads are received well by the community. Tag the newcomers and ask them to introduce themselves to the community along with some fun tasks. Gamify this activity and add a reward system, for members who engage actively or receive the most number of likes.

6.    Superuser program:

I like to call them the superheroes of the community! No, I’m not influenced by the fact that I'm a Marvel fan! :D But they seriously are the game-changers for your community. Your online community superusers can be considered as some of your most valued community members — who take a load off your shoulders as they regularly participate in high-intent activities.

They foster engagement by naturally handling specific tasks for you, such as:

• responding to unanswered threads

• providing expertise

• helping onboard members

• deflecting support tickets

• creating new content

• providing a valuable feedback channel, for the community manager or team. 
  

They are also brand ambassadors for you, so they are social proof to your new members.

As a new member, you are likely to learn through real interactions with such community members who set an example for you rather than just a set of guidelines and tutorials that you need to follow in the community.

This is also a great way to enable members of the community, motivating them to engage better.

An analysis is a must after onboarding:

Once you have your onboarding process and flow in place, the next step is to measure the effectiveness of your process. You will only know the output of the experiment when you test it on real users and gather data to optimize a standard onboarding process — one that focuses on both. acquisition and retention.
It’s usually ideal to follow the 30-60-90 day frequency of gathering data and understand if you are on the right track. Some of the best methods to gather and analyze your data are as follows:

Set up 30, 60, and 90-day check-ins to understand if the members are on the right track and how much your onboarding process has helped them.

Here are some methods you can use for analysis.

1. Establish a feedback channel:

Once your members have joined your community, establish a feedback channel where members answer surveys regularly. These surveys can be specific to certain categories or can also be an overall feedback form. Metrics such as NPS (Net Promoter Score), and CES (Customer Effort Score) can be used to analyze the data that you have gathered.

2. Study the behaviour of members:

There are multiple ways to understand the behaviour and response of members of your community. To know more about the best psychological hacks, you can refer to this article. Use these techniques to see if the new members are going in the desired direction with the existing onboarding process; and if not, make changes accordingly.

3. Analyze member activity

Set up goals and tasks for members with a reward system in place to see if your existing onboarding process is helping them in the right way. These tasks can be something as simple as setting up a profile, or their engagement (likes & comments) in the community. Confirming the efficiency of your onboarding process is as important as creating one.

Onboarding should always be an important part of your community strategy. It’s the fuel to your community! Having said that, you need to understand that the entire onboarding process is a continuous cycle. It requires constant updating as communities keep evolving with time. As your community enters the next phase, your entire flow and process will also change accordingly.

Resource alert:

1. User onboarding tools

Given the number of ways to onboard a new user, there is plenty of onboarding tools that will help you have a seamless onboarding experience. . Here are a few you can use:

• whatfix;

• Tour My App;

• The Joyride Kit;

• Helppier;

• Appcues;

• Inline Manual;

• Intercom;

• Evergage;

• Nickelled;

• WalkMe.
  

2. CMX Connect India

They hosted this workshop where they speak about how they actually implemented some super cool onboarding processes, things that absolutely did NOT work, the processes they swear by, dedicated onboarding, activation metrics and why they seek constant feedback!

Snippets of the week:

Tell us if you liked this week’s edition of The Community Assemble.
Also, Say hi to us on Twitter and LinkedIn! We love to chat :)

See you soon! Till then, let’s love and support our community ✨

So hello from the other side!

Welcome to the latest edition of Community Assemble. In this edition, we will talk about how SaaS companies are building successful online communities. You will also find a guide on building the perfect SaaS online community, my favourite section — Community of the Week, and some other tidbits to read up on.

It has been an exciting month for us and we can't wait to share all that we have been compiling for you. As we bring this edition, we would love to hear your feedback and thoughts so far! Write back to us via mail, or Twitter.

I’m sure you already know that the Software as a Service (SaaS) market is growing exponentially! When we see the numbers, the market grew from $225.6 billion in 2020 to $272.49 billion by the end of 2021 and it’s only going to get bigger and better.

After my interaction with several SaaS founders over the past few weeks, most founders complained that the industry competition is too high and hence the cost to acquire a new customer has skyrocketed. One major input that I received and wanted to share is that some SaaS founders have found a way through this barrier, the most cost-effective way to rapidly build your SaaS product’s audience!

That’s building a SaaS community. 

I’m not talking about a social media page or a Slack channel. I’m talking about a dedicated active, SaaS community using a white labelled platform — a treasured asset that sparks sustainable growth.

Over time, through a community, your customers and followers will become your brand advocates — providing customer acquisition and retention solutions. Let’s dive into the details and understand this better!

Why SaaS communities should be your new CA strategy:

1. Helps reduce Your CAC (Customer Acquisition Cost)

There are many ways to reduce your customer acquisition cost (CAC). One of the most organic solution is to build an online community.

If your community promotes a strong sense of inclusivity, it speaks a lot about your brand. As a result, potential prospects are more likely to buy your product or service.

The more user-generated content and activity within your community, the better your SEO will be — giving more brand exposure. In short, lesser resources are spent on advertising and content.

More members signing in to your community increases the rate of finding potential customers through the community itself.

2. Maximize New Acquisition Channels through Forums

Most of your customer questions and doubts are asked in the community. This user-generated content shows up on search engines when other customers look for similar queries. This increases brand awareness while reducing support costs at the same time.

Finally, prospective customers are bound to trust answers provided by other customers.  

3. Drive Better Retention Rates

Communities keep your members engaged as they network with each other, also helping them form a strong relationship with your business. This engagement makes your brand stay in someone’s mind for longer.

When members receive reliable answers to their questions in a community — whether from other members or the management team, they’re likely to be satisfied and gain a sense of attachment to the community and brand. Ultimately, this increases customer retention rate in the long run.

4. Transforms Members to Brand Ambassadors!

When someone is an active member of a SaaS- community they eventually start identifying themselves with that brand. They will treat it like it is theirs, root for it and end up being your brand ambassador without you having to put much effort into other programs!
More brownie points to you if you give them some ownership of your community, such as the role of a moderator or community head, reducing the investments you need to pour into your community.
It’s all about psychology. People love titles, they like being praised and appreciated for their work. Give them a great title such as a “Community Evangelist” and they’ll advocate for your community with utmost pride!

Fueled by their title, active members are likely to create a ripple effect: they talk about your SaaS outside the community. This brings new members into the community. In turn, the new members will do the same and so on. 

Bottom line: You can have your influencer marketing campaign done without actually having to spend for one!

5. Benefit from Better Product Innovation

The customers who form part of your online community can give immediate feedback on your SaaS products and services. So consider your community as a beta testing ground to receive quick updates and feedback. They’re the ones who are likely to use your product or service often and may be able to guide you in terms of what needs improvement.

An online community encompasses the entire organization in terms of systems and processes. This includes customer acquisition, success and support. A SaaS community will not only help you by solving support tickets through discussions and Q&As, but it also lets you build a powerful acquisition channel that is fuelled by user-generated content and promote a strong bond through networking.

This is easier said than done. Rome was not built in a day and the same goes with communities. So I will show you how to build an online SaaS community with a step-by-step guide.

Step-by-step guide for building an online SaaS community

1. Get Internal Buy-In

Your entire team needs to invest in the idea of the online community, being ready to participate in the same. All of your employees need to commit some amount of their time and resources to scale and maintain the community. 

There needs to be a clear collaboration between departments. For example, your customer success team will have to know how to respond to specific queries in the community and even escalate concerns to the management team when needed.

2.  Set up SMART Goals

It is crucial to set up goals in the form of Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) for your community platform. A commonly used model is the SMART criteria. Your KPIs must be Specific, Measurable, Attainable, Relevant, and Timely. All this should be aligned with your organizational goals. 

Brainstorm and try to list down all that you want to achieve through the community. For example, what should be the ideal size of your community? How many leads are you expecting from your SaaS community?

3. Roles and Tasks Should Be Clearly Defined

There are several different components in an online community just like your product. Online community management includes many different tasks and roles. For example, who will be in charge of moderating comments? Who will manage the content? Who will take care of customer support?
This ensures accountability and keeps the community launch plan as smooth as possible.

4. Start With a Primary Goal

Goals relevant to SaaS communities are majorly divided into:

• Customer support

• Customer acquisition

• Customer retention and loyalty

• Research and development

• Brand advocacy

Although your community will eventually cater to multiple goals, it is always better to start off with a single primary goal and then gradually move towards the others once your community picks up its pace.

5. Choose a Platform (Community centre management software)

You can decide between a free or owned platform. An owned white labelled platform will take more time and resources but this will definitely allow more flexibility, and give an array of additional benefits.

There are plenty of platforms out there, so do your research well and conclude on one that benefits your organization the best. A few platforms that I have found interesting are Tribe, Discourse, Slack and Glynk (And I’m not just saying it because I’m part of it :D ). For me, Glynk works well for an organization that is looking for customization because, in the end, each company has their own identity and a platform should be able to meet those specific requirements.

6. Create a Community Launch Plan:

Now it is time for you to get to the most crucial part of the process. Your community launch plan must cover everything. To make things easy for you I have divided it into three parts:

• Pre Launch:

  Before officially launching your SaaS online community, ensure your team is well versed with the platform and the technical aspects of the software. They may need some amount of Knowledge Transfer. This will be more effective if you take them through a demo of the product. Make sure you conduct all of this before making the community accessible to the public.

• Soft Launch:

  A soft launch basically prepares your community for the final launch. So ensure that you feed your platform with some seed content that will initiate discussions. If needed you can also have seed users that make your community look active. Keep your community open to a limited audience. You can have a few trusted customers and/or all your employees initially. These seed users should be able to create most of the engagement. A soft launch will help to identify and fix any problems or bugs in your community. In addition, it will also help you get clarity on what else is needed for the platform before it goes completely public.

• Global Launch:

  Once the soft launch is done, it’s time to promote your new community platform to your target audience. Use your website, newsletters, social media and sales teams to promote the new community and go all out with it. 

7. Moderation is mandatory!

Online communities revolve around members interacting with each other and feeling comfortable in being their authentic selves, but there needs to be restrictions and guidelines around what can be posted and what cannot be accepted.
To get a deeper understanding of how you can have a great moderation strategy in place, you can look into this article that gives you all the insights - Moderation Mandates!

8. Onboard New Members

It is mandatory that every new member of the community undergoes an onboarding process. It can be as simple as a welcome mail along with guidelines and a code of conduct, or a detailed video explaining all that a member can expect from the community, this gives them a sense of the culture that the community runs on.

9. Integrate the Community with Your Product

The best way to capitalize on your community is to integrate your community with your actual product. For example, community discussions can become support tickets through peer-to-peer conversations that enable you to solve problems without involving the customer support team.

10. Promote Engagement and Implement gamification:

Seeding content is one of the best ways to kickstart conversations in a community. Furthermore, interpersonal relationships with members make them feel like they are a part of something bigger, encouraging them to be more active.
Introducing gamification features such as virtual leader boards and reward systems gives an additional push to be active in the community.

11. Create and execute the advocacy program.

People trust people. Users are more likely to believe another user if they share their personal experience with your brand and your product.

A community is an amazing platform to harness the power of interpersonal communications between members. This works as one of the most solid advocacy programmes your brand can possess.

With most SaaS customers spending significant amounts of time online, leveraging the power of online communities can give amazing results for your SaaS business. Now that you know all the benefits a SaaS community has, it’s time for you to get SaaSy with your business!

COMMUNITY OF THE WEEK:

This one is my personal favourite.

One of the earliest organizations that emphasise the importance of communities. Adobe has connected millions of users across the world through its community. It is a place to ask questions, find answers, learn from experts, and share your knowledge. Their community is used by people of all ages, cultures, and working backgrounds

Though they are mainly a support community, they also have a forum that encourages peer-to-peer discussions and knowledge exchange. They also let you connect with experts to get answers, share advice, and contribute ideas to shape the future of The Adobe Experience

SNIPPETS OF THE WEEK:

Have a suggestion for a piece of content we should include next week? You can reach out to me via mail, or Twitter.

Hope you guys have a great week ahead. See you all in our next edition until then think community!

If you’re finding this newsletter valuable, consider sharing it with friends, or subscribing if you haven’t already!

Being able to measure the value you provide to your members is very important. When we do not measure value, retention becomes difficult and people will not stay in your community, eventually driving them to drop out of the community.

1. What I mean when I say it’s possible to quantify!

Communities are usually measured in more qualitative forms as it is not easy to quantify the value of a community. But here’s my take on how we can measure and quantify the value of your community!

Firstly, community values can be conceptualized at two levels - one, the individual level that focuses on members’ personal values, connections and commitments to one's community. Two, at the community level that reflects the overall shared values and norms in the community.

You should definitely preach about your community in value-based terms because ultimately, your community must have to do one of three things.

• Increase sales.

• Minimise costs.

• Achieve your objective of forming the community  (non-profits).

You need to understand which of the above three you want to achieve through your community. Once you define and understand this, you will be able to automatically define the values of your community.
For example, if you're building an internal online community, you need to talk about how it increases productivity, increases creativity or improves loyalty toward the company. This can all be connected to the first 2 goals i.e. cost reduction or increase in sales.

2. How do you measure the value of your community?

The primary thing to keep in mind is, never depend on a single metric for measuring the value of your community. They can be wrong and it is never good to rely on a single source for such an important aspect.  

For example, if someone says that the community provides them great value but you see minimal engagement and all of them made by very few contributors, that is a bad sign. You may also see a lot of engagement but mostly through seeded content, then the measurement will not be accurate.

So it is always good to implement different metrics and then combine a few together to get greater results.

3.     Methods to calculate the value of a community:

Typically, any organization will always conduct an analysis on a full set of data that reflects and shows the ROI directly. But in the case of communities, their nature of complexity makes it difficult to procure 100% accurate information. In such cases, we use indirect yet efficient quantifiable methods to determine the value of your community.

• Proxy metrics

  A proxy metric is the closest related data that represents or is a “proxy” for direct data points. A proxy metric is indirect data that helps when you do not have direct data that you can use to measure.
  A classic example is when you use social media engagement rate and impression as a proxy metric to calculate your ROI. If in Twitter you get a certain amount of comments, re-shares or engagement this is translated to a metric that reflects the number of potential customers or leads. The higher the engagement or followers, the more lead generation.
  

  Even in the case of websites, we can use the number of visitors or open rate as data points to analyse the number of purchases. For example, you can take an average percentage of visitors who will convert into customers (depending on the business).

• Changing one variable and measuring the impact
  This is a process that works well, especially with larger communities that have different customer segments. In this process, you change one single variable in a bigger static ecosystem to see if it makes a change and measure the reaction. For example, if you want to understand how one customer segment makes a difference in the community environment, you choose that particular segment and isolate it from the community and analyse the reaction and impact it creates in terms of ROI.

  When this experiment is conducted using strong statistic standards, it is a great method to understand the cause-effect nature of the community business values. It helps you discover how the community is providing benefits that the company wishes to seek.  

• Sampling
  Sampling is a process used in statistical analysis in which a predetermined number of observations are taken from a larger population. The methodology used is a sample set from a larger population depending on the type of analysis being performed

  The sampling method is used when it is impossible to study the entire set of members. Usually, in sampling, we can calculate the value or ROI by analysing the behaviour of a smaller selected subset that is called the “sample set” which is usually chosen from the community based on some criteria. It is usually performed for a fixed period of time to get accurate results.
  

• Direct analysis

  The most accurate method to measure the value of a community is through direct analysis. This is usually possible when you have access to the complete set of data of each member and their behaviour (such as engagement, likes, contributions, and sessions per user). Once the complete data set is available you will not have the need to rely on the other indirect methods such as proxy metrics, sampling or variable withholding.

  When the complete data set from the community is available, it becomes super easy to measure variables individually, get accurate results and understand different unique aspects of each variable.

  Getting access to the entire data set is usually difficult, hence it is very important to choose the right community platform. While there are a plethora of platforms available in the market, choosing one that allows you to access member data and provide the right metrics is crucial.

  Direct analysis is by far the most accurate method for measuring the value of an online community.

• Community-qualified leads

  Much like your SQL(sales qualified lead), a CQL is a community-qualified lead. A CQL uses community engagement as a method of qualifying leads.

  When you have a member in your community, being able to analyse and extract the top contributors, their participation levels, number of posts and their engagement in the community helps you understand and gauge who can be a potential lead in your community.
  

  CQLs are a great method to directly measure the business value of your community especially if your company is more focused on customer acquisition.

  If you found the concept of CQLs interesting, Mary Thengvall is the author of The Business Value of Developer Relations which helps you understand the concept of community-qualified leads (CQLs).
  

• Calculating the customer lifetime value
  The customer lifetime value (CLV) is a simple formula that gives you the total a customer is likely to spend with the company during their lifetime. This is calculated by using the following formula:

  
CLV = ((T*AOV)*R)*AGM)

  T - is the number of transactions

  AOV - the average order value

  R - the average retention rate

  AGM- the average gross margin

  Source: Feverbee

These are the different methods you can use to measure the value of your community

Try different things. Keep experimenting and try validating them.

Each community is different and will have its own unique aspects that you should measure. Don’t get pressurized into using the standard metrics that are followed by everyone, understand and implement what suits your community the best.

Do share – we’re all in this together as a community! So I would love to know your thoughts on this and which methods worked for you!

Snippets of the week:

“Metrics only tell a little bit of the story. Internally, you need to go build the rallying cry to make sure everyone understands how this community rolls up into other initiatives that you’re working on.”

– Chris Detzel

“One of the things we start with is what’s the outcome of what we wanted to do. Because there are tons of things we can do within the online community, what outcome will we drive? How will we measure the effectiveness or that we had an impact?”

– Marjorie Anderson

“If I asked you how much your community is worth, could you tell me? Most community managers can't.  If you're not getting the attention or support you need, it's your fault. You're not properly establishing the value of your community”.
- Richard Millington

More perspectives on measuring the value of communities:

• Establishing The Value Of Online Communities, Richard Millington

• Adding Value with Online Community, Social Media Today

• Turning Efforts into Impact: Measuring Your Online Community’s Value, Jeff Breunsbach

• Measuring the value of online communities, James Franklin, Michael Mainelli and Robert Pay

• How to Measure the Business Value of Your Community, Mathijs Vleeming

July Trivia:

Did you know that there's a day dedicated to celebrating the value of emojis in day-to-day communication? Yes, we are happy to celebrate the upcoming “World Emoji Day” on the 17th of July!

#FunFact:
 

Source: Twitter

As a community manager, I have felt that emojis have been a saving grace, especially for content that can get too technical and boring. Nothing like a good emoji to lighten the mood!

This emoji reflects how we intend to keep our week going!

You saw our favourite ;) Do you have a favourite emoji that you often use in your community? Let us know in the comments below!

On the other side of the community world, It's been a great month for us! I am having a hard time keeping my excitement in community assemble because we have our workshop coming up on 22nd June! Just two days left.

We are elated to host this workshop with Céline Riemenschneider, a long-time community professional. Having started her career at Yelp she went on to have her own community and founded "The Community Mentor", she is now also leading the Creators Community for Canva in Germany!

This workshop focuses on understanding member behaviour in a community and how crucial it is in order to be able to empathise, connect, and understand their journey. 

We’ll talk about some psychological hacks and how we shouldn't oversee their psyche — which is a key ingredient for community success.

We can’t wait for it, if you haven’t registered do so right away before the slots are sold out:

Registration link:  https://bit.ly/3Hx1FHF

Now onto some major value add. In this edition, we will be discussing how community rituals are the secret mantra for a successful community! We will understand their importance and also dive into how performing good community rituals can be an absolute game-changer for scaling communities.

Leveraging online community rituals to boost engagement is probably a less talked about aspect of community management. People talk about growth, measurement, and a lot of other things more often.

But online community rituals are less spoken and in this edition, we’ll understand online community rituals in the right depth. 

What is a community ritual?

The Daily actions and choices that we make as members shape the future of any community. Following up on these actions and choices as a routine is what makes it a Community Ritual.

A simple, easy example probably would be the fitness industry. doing a particular number of crunches as a ritual. The bigger picture here is to be healthy. Doing crunches is a ritual for achieving those goals. 

You have a regular regime. And each of these actions can be further divided into rituals. These choices become habits over time. The word “Regime” is key to performing these actions. If this is done occasionally or once a while then you cannot call it a ritual. Performing these actions consistently over a long period of time is what you call a “ritual’ or “habit”. you do it as an event or as an occasion, it cannot be classified as a ritual. But if you do it consistently over a period of time, it will be classified as a ritual.

Let’s look at the 4 important factors that you need to focus on for creating online community rituals:

1. Having the right frequency: You can divide these action items as either weekly, bi-weekly or even daily. The main thing to keep in mind while deciding the frequency is to ensure that you do not cause fatigue to your members. “Online fatigue” is real so be very careful to draw the fine line between a high frequency and overburdening your members.

2. Go all in on creativity: Online community rituals are meant to be fun and interactive. Instead of focusing only on engagement, look at rituals as a way to get your member’s attention and get them excited. Something that makes them want to be part of your community and participate. The psychology behind creating “Online rituals” is that it helps you stand out uniquely from the other communities by providing members value and enabling them to form a deeper bond with the community and their fellow members.

3. Quality over Quantity:   When we speak about rituals, it, without doubt, translates into the content. Whether it’s an activity you conduct, tips that you share or even interactions that are enabled, they all boil down to content. So it is crucial to have quality content that goes out into the community. It is not how much content you pish, but the quality of content you provide for your members even through a ritual. This in turn also helps you with SEO and the hygiene of your community. This further encourages greater quality of user-generated content.

4. Collaborate with your super users: While you are planning your community rituals for your community, it is’’t something you can do alone, it becomes a co-creation plan. The first step is to identify the super users in your community, the members who are active contributors and are super involved in your community. They can be mods, superheroes or ambassadors. Whatever you’d like to call them, in the end, they are your super users. So ensure that you choose a lot of collaborations with them for the rituals while also involving them in your ritual planning.

Giving them ownership of such activities will further encourage them to tag and invite others into your community.

In reality, online community rituals have existed forever, much like how communities existed. So the inspiration that can be drawn into planning them is infinite.

For example, in a lot of social media campaigns, you see trending weekly rituals of “Throwbackthursdays” or “Sundayrelaxmode”. In some communities, there is a ritual to do a weekly poll. Since this is done on a weekly basis this becomes a ritual.

And as a community manager, the objective somewhere is to try and cultivate such rituals in your community so that it becomes a habit instead of a task, which in turn creates a deeper psychological bond for your members!

Now that we know the factors we need to consider,

Let’s look at the different types of community rituals that you can conduct for your community:

In this list, we’ll share a few creative community rituals you can use. We’ll cover the basics such as your regular AMA sessions and consistently seeding content, but we’ll also get in-depth into the lesser-known tactics and rituals to increase engagement and result in greater rewards with the community.

1.     Sharing accomplishments regularly in the community:

Sharing your achievements and significant accomplishments with others in the community is a great conversation starter. People responding to the thread, congratulating, and expressing happiness is a form of community ritual also. 

Online community rituals don’t have to be something very complicated and technical all the time. It can be something as simple as a weekly post, where one member shares his achievement letting others express their happiness for the member, and as a community manager, you can use this to scale that up to a higher level. Once it becomes a habit you will slowly start observing members creating their own community rituals.

2.     Creating events:

The second is creating events. Yes, creating events is another form of ritual, where people know what they can expect. While creating events, it is important to have a mix of both online and offline events on a monthly or bi-weekly basis. While some events can have themes revolving around topics that are pre-planned, having a few events as a surprise and not keeping it predictable while retaining the surprise can instigate curiosity in your members. But you need to be mindful about having stability and consistency you cannot ignore the fact that people also need stability and consistency.

So, if you keep a healthy balance of both, do something regularly and show up for it, people start building that habit too. They start having that anticipation that this particular day is designated for this event and they start participating consistently.

3.     Weekly 1:1 sessions with members who are less engaging:

Having a personal 1-to-1 session with members on a weekly basis not only helps members build a personal connection with you, It also creates a bond for the members to feel more comfortable and create a stronger sense of belonging with the community. As a community manager, it’s only wise to pick members who have been engaging less with the community and motivate them to participate more through a personal connection or even having a rewards system in place for participating in such sessions.

4.     Weekly introductions:

This is a mandatory ritual you must practice as a community manager. Calling out all the new members and introducing them to the community on a weekly basis (either through a post or video) is a great ice breaker for new members to communicate with others in the community.

5.     Seed content:
Seed content is content that is usually posted by the community manager or moderator on behalf of the community members.

Usually for any community, when we look at engagement, The 90-9-1 rule of community engagement is religiously followed! What this rule says is that you’ll usually have only 1% of community members who engage and post content on an organic basis. Let’s understand the 90-9-1 rule a little more in detail:

• 90% of community members are lurkers, they just visit the community to read or observe, but do not contribute actively.

• 9% of community members respond usually to content but do not involve themselves in creating content of their own.

• Only 1% of community members create new content on a regular basis.

  To change the numbers of organic users and improve organic engagement it’s very important to seed content regularly, it is by far the biggest motivation technique to garner larger participation in a community. Also, being able to rely on seed content helps you create more organic engagement in the community.

6.     AMA sessions:

An “Ask Me Anything,” or AMA, is a well-known regular event on most of the community managers’ calendars where users get the opportunity to ask questions and learn from a fellow community member or applicable industry-related expert.

As a community manager, what you need to focus on is identifying potential topics of interest by analysing your community data, including top discussions, FAQs, search terms, most asked for resources, or answers from weekly polls.

Don’t forget to plan this ahead, ideally creating a calendar at the start of every month helps set the tone for the entire month. This can include topics related to the latest product releases being introduced or webinars, and workshops that are planned for the month? An AMA can be a great way to highlight these initiatives while also educating your members and clearing their doubts.

7.     Community coffee chat:

A dedicated thread that is opened once a week with a specific time that is set for members to share both their personal and professional updates. You can also create a separate channel such as “ water cooler talk” to make it more informal allowing members to be more comfortable.

Some example topics include:

o   Weekend hobbies

o   Got married

o   Changed job roles

o   Moved to a new state and need recommendations for stay and jobs.

o   Latest job trends.

o   Current trends in the community space.

8.     Weekly digests:

For those members who don’t usually have the time to visit the community on a daily basis, having a weekly digest is a great way to make them feel included in all the latest happenings in the community.

This could either be a newsletter within the community platform or a brief summary (including all the updates and events)  email sent every weekend to the members.

Some examples of things to include in these digests are:

• Content created by community members

• Member achievements

• Upcoming workshops/ webinars.

• Upcoming events, recordings or previous events conducted through the week.

• Any new joiners to the community, product news, or announcements about the community

9.     Weekly Tips:

A big component of a community is the value add, that is given to members. Ensuring that a member feels that the community is very resourceful is an important factor. Having a day in a week dedicated to some great community tips is one way to add great value. A tip day will be dedicated to sharing technology tips, community tips or anything that helps members take action with their job.
Though it’s a tip, ensure that it isn’t just a dull boring tip. Make it fun and interactive, and ask for some opinions from members too about the tip, this not only helps members interact more but also helps increase engagement.

10.  Community job alerts:

Ensuring that your community has a lot of value to offer other than just conversations is necessary. Giving weekly updates of the top 10 community jobs is a great way to encourage your members to keep visiting your community and help them derive value from the platform.

11.   Rewards system:

Hosting contests and having a “reward system” in return for participation is a great way to get members to participate. Much like the “social learning theory” people will indebted to contribute more when they are getting something in return. this type of engagement touchpoint can come in many forms. Here are a few examples to get you started:

·       Meme contests.

·       Article/blog writing contests.

·       Riddles.

·       Best tag lines for images.

Now that we know the different types of rituals that can be performed, one may wonder what is the benefit of putting so much effort into performing these rituals? Firstly, the biggest benefit is it gives the members a sense of belonging. It creates a sense of community for people. And that naturally increases member participation. People come together for that sense of social identity.

Community Rituals are the best way to encourage them to participate and let them feel part of the tribe. Having community rituals also gives you a structured and reliable content calendar too. If you have dedicated days or dates for particular online community rituals, you’re clear and sorted for those days or dates. You can also increase participation from your members by posting about these rituals and seeking responses from them.

Top 3 articles of the week:

Rosie sherry's guide to curating a community is a must-read!

Richard Millington speaks about the community trends to watch out for this year!

All-Things-Community

Why Community Professionals Should Walk Away From Their Desks

I hear it from just about every one of my clients. “I’m burnt out.” Or “I’m so sick of virtual.” Or “I know it’s important, but I just don’t have any time to think on this.” I’ve felt these same sentiments at one time or another over the last year…

Read more

4 years ago · 1 like · Jenny Weigle

That’s all for this week. Tell us if you liked this week’s edition of The Community Assemble. Also, Say hi to us on Twitter and LinkedIn! We love to chat :)

See you soon! Till then, let’s love and support our community ✨

Communities are now becoming a key asset to every organization.
You may wonder why? Well, simply because they help us connect with each other on a much deeper level, help network with each other, build brand value and drive purpose to the company goals.

The biggest shift we see is the change from individual efforts to group efforts. A shift from “me” to we”. Organisations that prioritise communities are gaining much more than companies that choose not to have one.

As humans, we always tend to feel the need to belong to a group, the validation and approval from a group that allows us to interact, have individuality and let you voice out thoughts, ideas and values comfortably.

As a business when you create such a platform for your users, you end up creating immense profits for your organization by acquiring new customers, retaining old ones and creating brand awareness.

We especially see SaaS companies benefiting most from such expert communities in this race. Having a loyal, engaged community is the best marketing strategy a company can have!

Now that the reasons for building a community are super transparent.
The next question arrives! How can you get started? How do we build a community without all that havoc!

Let’s decode what it takes to build the RIGHT community for your business without any CHAOS!

When we start with the basics, any product for that matter, we lay the foundation by stating the objectives, the goals and the purpose.

We’ll have to keep in mind the objectives from two different ends!

•       The objective for building a community from the company’s perspective.

•       Purpose or reason for members/users to show up for the community.

Once the objectives are set, our next task becomes super simple!
Who are we targeting? What is our audience going to be like?

1.    The WHO has to be as specific as it can get!

We need to make sure that the community will cater to the common needs of the users to create a sense of belonging to all your users, once there is an attachment, you know they’re surely coming back! The math is simple – Give them what they want to hear while keeping your needs in mind (It’s all a game of psychology).

2. You need to choose the right platform!

•       A community platform is a piece of software that provides a “base” for your community. Think of it like the staple you need to prepare your dish! The base on which you build the community! It enables your members to interact with one another digitally while you can sit back and analyse the actual metrics of their engagement and tweak it accordingly to keep it in tune with your business goals! In the end, you achieve the EPIC business model that you had always dreamt of for your business.

The process of selecting the platform is simple:

• See which platform suits best to your business needs.

• Shortlist a few platforms and make sure you choose the best in the lot.
  Some of the platforms I have personally loved are Tribe, vanilla forums, Glynk as white labelled platforms and discord for their gamification.

• Choose the specific type of platform you need for your business model. Example: will my community focus on the product or the support? Does it need only engagement and interaction? Customer retention or acquisition? Build a creator community? Decide what the essence of your platform should be!

• Make a list of the primary features you want for your community, that should give you a clear idea of the kind of platform you need to choose.

3. How do you engage your community?

This 5 step framework becomes the very foundation for building and engaging your community.

4. We need to use the community as leverage to shape the product.

• It is very important to be aware and focused on incorporating community into product development.

• We need to try establishing the community as the product itself, in fact, use the platform for beta testing to fix any errors before it makes it’s big entry into the market.

5. What is the love that the business model and the platform share together?

Well, there needs to be a lot of love there! The community needs to be aligned with the company’s business model. The “community effects” on a business are immense. The influence of a community s super strong! A strong community has an extraordinary impact on a company’s business model.

‘Almost makes it magical’, as they say.

6. how do we monetise these community efforts for the business?

The financial perspective of the community! thought in the end is the most important aspect of building a community.
The growing financial impact of a community can be linked more specifically to the business model. It’s a perfect love triangle.

Great community – Great business model – Amazing returns on the investment.

The math is simple – the returns are directly proportionate to the growth of the community. The most sophisticated community builders are becoming sophisticated business builders as well.

Building a community takes time, effort and consistency. Having a solid framework while creating one, always helps you create a successful community in the long run.

Snippets of the week:

Community of the week:

On the occasion of Pride month, I would love to celebrate one of my favourite communities! The super cool Grindr community is the world’s largest dating and social networking app for gay, bi, trans, and queer people. The Grindr community is focused on a community that honours the full expression of users’ gender identity.

Happy Pride month to all of our LGBTQ+ followers. Here’s wishing there is much more positivity and progress in the world! Let love, peace and happiness prevail :)

Do you have any tips/ suggestions about a good moderation strategy that you’d want me to add here? You can reach out to me via mail, or Twitter or shoot me a question in the comments below.

Let’s hang out and discuss more!

Have a suggestion for a piece of content we should include next week? Email us and let us know!

It’s amazing what love can do to people right? Now imagine this love-hate relationship shared by two verticals in a business.
Yes, “the never-ending love story” between community and marketing has been the most talked-about relationship in this industry.
I would like to think of it as the famous love story between the sky and the earth. They do not have any purpose without each other, yet function so separately — never being able to meet common ground. But in the community-marketing love story, their common ground is hard to ignore!
This week we are going to understand and explore the truth behind their relationship and put things into perspective because we all need some closure from this love story!!
 

Well first, what do we know about community? And how does marketing fit into all of this?

In simple words, David Spinks quotes, “Marketing is how you get them in the door. Community is their experience once they’re in the door”.

No matter how much people debate about which one is more essential, the fact remains that the two of them are at the core of customer relations.

They are two aspects of brand communication that cannot really replace each other but often have areas of overlap. 

To simplify things,

Marketing can be considered as all the processes that go into promotions, advertising and sale of a brand’s product or service. Most of these activities are targeted toward customers — to create product awareness and attract new customers.

On the other hand, 

A community can be considered all the actions that a brand takes to build and improve relationships with their customers or any audience that’s related to the business —such as employees or even vendors. These activities are focused on engagement and providing auxiliary value to customers, increasing the average amount of time they spend interacting with the brand.

The Overlap:

While marketing results in an increase in awareness and acquisition, when customers are satisfied with the value of a community, they naturally invite their network to join.

On the other hand, while the community focuses on relationship building, a large part of the audience are brought in from marketing activities.

That’s why there is a term that has been coming to the forefront, community marketing.

Confusing the two can be devastating as businesses potentially waste a tonne of resources on the wrong activities.

The Ideal Order:

Marketing is the ideal method to spread awareness. They can act as usher in customers to the figurative door. At the same time, marketing can also be used to bring customers to the community, ensuring that the customer journey is flawlessly smooth.

Community takes over from there — engaging customers and guiding them through a drafted roadmap. Creating a strategy is essential as aimless activities will just be tossing effort and resources down the drain. Community can be used to show customers that the deeper the bond they have with the brand (i.e. the time they spend on the community), the more benefit they receive. This can be achieved by providing them exclusive information, competitions, deals or even elaborate guides on the usage of the product/service.

You can have one person take on both — the roles of community and marketing, especially with startups. But it is important to distinguish the goals, objectives, and also track the metrics separately.
Whatever you call it in the end, even if it’s called “Community Marketing”; it does not change the fact that they are separate verticals and should be given due credit for their roles in business.

I’m looking forward to the day when this debate is no longer needed and people start understanding that community is on equal terms with marketing and will soon be an equally important vertical as marketing.

This is only my opinion about the difference and overlap between community and marketing. What’s yours?

Snippets of the week:

🎙Podcasts to listen to:

1. Conversations with Bacon by Jono Bacon.

2. Masters of community by David Spinks.

3. The power of community.

4. Mosaic's Community Life.

5. In before the lock by Brian Oblinger and Erica Kuhl

🗓 Upcoming events:

1. Community conversations: Community design by Rosie sherry.

2. Customer community summit by Community Roundtable.

3. The Community Manager Blueprint For Holistically Easing Anxiety by Carrie Melissa Jones.

4. Community Leader Mini-Wellness Retreat by Carolyn Sick.

Do you have any tips/ suggestions that you’d want me to add here? You can reach out to me via mail, or Twitter or shoot me a question in the comments below.

Let’s hang out and discuss more!

Have a suggestion for a piece of content we should include next week? Email us and let us know!

If you’ve been following our newsletter, then you’ll know that we launched the “Community Unfold Series” last year. Since our debut, we’ve had conversations with thought leaders from different industries and have explored how they leverage the community to win the market.

In this episode of the Community Unfold Series, we have the founder of my favourite podcast Peers Over Beers and a well-known community strategist Christopher Detzel. He is a versatile Digital Community Strategist with several years of experience. He has owned community vision, strategy, and execution. He is responsible for leading the development and execution of community engagement programs and creating compelling content for customer communities.

This episode is dedicated to understanding the journey of a community manager, his take on community and all there is to explore in this space.

So let’s get at it!

1. What according to you is a community?

2. How did you get started in the Community Management Field?

3. What is the best part about the community space?

Stay tuned to indulge in some more interesting conversations next week as well.
I’m pretty sure, you must be having different thoughts about how building a strong community should be placed at the forefront of any business! With the accelerated growth of communities in every business, we’re excited to see what awaits and unfolds this year for the community space.

Snippets of the week:

Community of the week:

MIRO Miro is a fast, free, and simple-to-use online whiteboard built to help you collaborate with others any time, anywhere. Miro provides an engaging, intuitive experience with multiple options for real-time collaboration and asynchronous teamwork on an online whiteboard. Their community is the Miro Community Forum, which focuses on adding value through peer to peer interaction from various industries to validate ideas, share knowledge and expertise, give guidance and insight, and connect with each other. 

Top 5 articles of the week:

• Life as a community manager in Ukraine - Written by Jephtah Abu.

• The Magic Triangle article written by Jenny Weigle is a super interesting read that speaks about where communities truly belong.

• This Article written by Briaana Leever speaks about the four stages of competence and how it helps to onboard members into a community.

• This article written by Rosie Sherry speaks about we need to build a culture of valuing community experience.

• What makes a good community leader? - Written by Hugh Hashbrooke.

Upcoming events:

• Join Orbit at Nexus on May 31 a virtual event for community builders. You will learn some great insights and tactics to engage and scale your community.

• Join Cmx Connect on a virtual event on May 11th, as they talk to deepen your understanding of community using social-scientific concepts like the socio-ecological model to better manage your community challenges.

• Join the CMX Connect Berlin Chapter in a roundtable discussion exploring what the life of a community consultant looks like. If you're serious and want to move forward in this direction, or are simply curious, you should attend the event!
  

Thank you ❤️

Warm regards to Chris Detzel for being such a lovely contributor. More power to him!

Have a suggestion for a piece of content we should include next week? Email us and let us know! You can also reach out to me via mail, or Twitter.

If you’re enjoying our stories and finding them valuable, consider sharing them with your friends, or subscribing if you haven’t already.

As much as we all love listening to the news to keep ourselves updated, sometimes it can be all too overwhelming! It feels like everything is too fast-moving for us to even keep up with the pace! These days there is an explosion of blockchain news that leaves us thinking, “what’s going on here? What are all these futuristic terms?”

When we hear about the web and the internet, all we hear is the transition from web 2.0 to Web 3.0! What’s interesting is how quickly this concept escalated! When I looked into what was the backbone of this massive transition, guess what came up? Their massive community-building process!
Web3 has brought the essence and value of community building into the spotlight. The most successful blockchains, DAOs, NFT projects,  and decentralized marketplaces all have one thing in common. They are all powered by communities.

Wait, before we get into the details, let’s understand what these terms actually mean.

What is web 3.0?

The Web 3.0 definition can be expanded as follows:
Data that are interconnected in a decentralised manner where data is mostly stored in centralised repositories.

Web 3.0 represents the next phase of the evolution of the internet and potentially could represent as huge a paradigm shift as Web 2.0 previously did. Web 3.0 is built with the cornerstone pillars of decentralization, openness, and greater user privacy

The three main foundation pillars of Web 3.0 are Artificial intelligence ( AI), IoT(Internet of things), and blockchain technology. 

1. Blockchain will mainly help in achieving decentralized data

2. AI will help filter online data and offer the most relevant choices to users. 

3. IoT will help the interoperability layer of Web 3.0 to connect the internet to smart devices.

A simple example of this kind of experience is when a user comes across the auto-suggestion of recommending similar items to buy on e-commerce platforms like amazon that shoppers with similar purchase profiles have bought. However, the above approach benefits the internet controlling agencies and makes them the owner of the user's data which is then sold to third-party advertisers for their benefits , since eventually leads to misusing the private data of users. But with Web 3.0 this entire process would be reversed by making the users sole owners of their data,

What is blockchain technology and how is it related to web 3.0?

Blockchain stores information electronically in digital format. Blockchains are best known for their crucial role in cryptocurrency systems, such as Bitcoin, for maintaining a secure and decentralized record of transactions. 

Web3 is the name some technologists have given to the idea of a new kind of internet service that is built using decentralized blockchains — the shared ledger systems used by cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin and Ethereum.

So to sum it all up, web 3.0 is built on blockchain technology and the crypto space is run on these very web 3.0 applications.  

Now one last important aspect of the entire web 3.0 space is “NFT”!
What is an NFT anyway?

NFT stands for Non-fungible token. “Non-fungible” means that it is unique and can’t be replaced with anything else. NFTs typically give the holder ownership over the data, media, or object the token is associated with, and are commonly bought and sold on specialized marketplaces. 

In simple terms, NFTs are blockchain-based digital items whose units are designed to be unique, unlike traditional cryptocurrencies whose units are interchangeable. For example, a bitcoin is fungible — you can always trade one for another bitcoin, but an NFT is like a one-of-a-kind trading card, If you traded it for a different card, you’d have something else altogether.

How can Web 3.0 make use of Online communities?

It is interesting is know that the web 3.0 world is (Crypto and NFT space) leveraging the power of online communities.

With web 3.0, the word of the hour is “Community.”

 Communities create real value for web 3.0 communities. They promote authentic connections and give the opportunity to be part of a shared idea or interest giving complete control to the user. Web3 communities provide a framework for members to contribute to what is being built and to benefit from its success. In turn, community members act as a viral marketing mechanism fast-forwarding the growth of the community.

The core pillars of web3 are:

1) disintermediation - taking away the middle-man by enabling true peer-to-peer social and transactional relationships.

2) meritocracy - rewarding people based on their actual contributions, both financially and through social recognition.

Let’s take a look at how the leverage the power of communities:

• Multi-Platform Community Building

Web3 communities use both public and private platforms (usually Twitter and private dedicated forums) to express their vision, share announcements and attract new members. Communication on this channel is about bringing people together, creating interest and encouraging people to join the community’s primary platforms (social media and dedicated community platforms such as Vanilla Forums, Glynk and Tribe).

The majority of community interactions are happening on such platforms. Platforms like Twitter and Discord allows members to interact and establish a good network, whereas dedicated community platforms such as Tribe and Glynk allows community managers to create an efficient, productive, organized structure for communication. Forums help people connect, ideate and learn from each other, while keeping themselves updated about information in the relevant space. Automated messages and other tools can be used to streamline the experience of new users coming into the space.

New users are greeted and given information about how the space is organized. Channels for topics should be picked and used to promote resourceful information. User experience is key. The faster a new user starts to engage with others in the forum, the more likely they are to stick around and contribute to the community.

• Efficient Storytelling

Web3 communities are brought to life by effective storytelling of the product roadmap. The story paints a picture of what the community might accomplish together, how the product will take shape and what problems it will solve for the users. The story gives life to the product and attracts individuals who feel aligned with it’s vision and purpose.

“NFT projects are the perfect intersection of storytelling and community building.”

There’s nowhere in the web3 space where this is more apparent than NFTs. NFT projects are the perfect intersection of storytelling and community building. If a team can craft a story that creates a strong connection with even a small group, a minimum viable community can grow very quickly around that story.

• Transparency in Product Development

Keeping your community engaged means keeping them informed on the improvements of the project/product. Successful Web3 projects typically maintain and update a public roadmap showing near-term and long-term goals.

• Community Participation

It’s not enough just to be transparent. Building an engaged Web3 community requires creating a structure for community members to actively contribute to the product and ongoing projects.

Many successful web3 communities have a dedicated platform to scale their community and engage their users. The process of building a community for users with a shared purpose creates strong bonds between members. Their potential to make the product go viral and also help improve the product through user feedback makes them a very powerful tool for the company’s growth.

Snippets of the week:

Community of the week:

Boss Beauties is an NFT community focused on empowering girls and women at the forefront of technology, leadership and creativity. The project’s art is aligned with the idea that a woman can be anything that she wants. It is a woman-led global initiative that creates opportunities for girls and women through collaborations.

Top resources we found super interesting about web 3.0 and community building:

1. This article written by David Dvoskin speaks about NFTs and how communities are the secret to the success of NFTs.

2. This article gives a review of the NFT market report of 2021, and its pros and cons.

3. Written by Nuala Cronin this article speaks about how NFTs can be used as reward systems to encourage more member participation in communities

4. This article written by Rohit Malekar speaks about the power and impact of online communities in the web 3.0 world in the most non-technical manner. Super fun read!

5. This insightful article speaks about the importance of having creator communities in the web 3.0 world.

Do you have any tips/ suggestions about a good moderation strategy that you’d want me to add here? You can reach out to me via mail, or Twitter or shoot me a question in the comments below.

Join the Community!

Did you know that we also run “The community makers club”?
A community where community leaders connect with each other and share tips and tricks. Join us to partake in The community makers club.

Let’s hang out and discuss more!

Have a suggestion for a piece of content we should include next week? Email us and let us know!

Hey fam, have you checked our LinkedIn space yet?  We have released our first snippet from the latest episode of the Community Unfold series with Jenny Weigle. Had some super insightful discussions with Jenny about the current community career path. Stay tuned as we have more snippets coming up this week!

This Month’s issue circles around DevRel communities. In this edition, we will be speaking about all the buzz that is surrounded by devrel and the community space! Every software company now wants to have a community first!
Wait, I think they should rather have one. But then one can ask why?
DevRel is usually responsible for the entire developer journey, whereas a DevRel community is responsible for the journey from awareness to advocacy.

So how important are the roles of each in the developer’s world? Let’s dive in to find more!

What do you mean by Developer Relations?

DevRel is the marketing technique used to ensure that one's company, products, and developers establish a good, continuous relationship with external developers through mutual communication.

In simple words, DevRel or developer relations is a way to nurture a mutually beneficial relationship between product/organizations and software developers. It is an array of methods or strategies that help software companies to have a better relationship with software developers.

Having said that, the goals of each devrel team are solely based on the needs and objectives of each organization and hence will differ accordingly.

Are DevRel and community really two sides of the same coin?

Developer Relations is, at its core - community management for a technical audience. The purpose of Developer Relations, similar to community management, is to build relationships with and enable our communities, who happen to be technical individuals. Developer Relations professionals act as a liaison between their company and these communities, communicating feedback, advocating for the community’s needs, and making their experience with our product as smooth as possible.

You’ll notice I said Developer Relations professionals - not Developer Advocates. That’s because Developer Relations is the umbrella term for the team whose primary responsibility is building a community, both online and offline. This, of course, includes Developer Advocates, as well as Community Managers, and Technical Ambassadors (also known as Developer Evangelists). Some larger companies also include folks responsible for documentation, events, and social media, in addition to other roles, on the Developer Relations team.

All of these roles together form a healthy layer of connective tissue between the company and community as well as between our co-workers - connecting product and marketing, sales and engineering, customer support and product, and more, all for the sole purpose of further enabling our technical audience.

Why should every software have a developer community first?

So, when you’re launching a new software product, the first question that pops up is where will you onboard your new users, how will you target them and whom will you target? That’s when a community comes into the picture! A one-stop solution for all of the above needs! Well, of course, the important step is marketing the community to the masses no matter how specific your target user is.

1.   The main reason having a developer community works wonders is due to the fact that developers are often the best people to identify flaws in the product and hence you can improve your product at the early stages before regular users get the opportunity to use it. They’re also ideal to help the organization onboard less tech-savvy users through the journey.

2.   Ideally, we all wish that our minimum viable product will be perfect without flaws, but the truth is far from that. So the wise move is to create a developer community surrounding the product which will act as a beta testing program and will help produce contributors and ambassadors along the way, while also helping bring the product to perfection.

3.   Having a developer community for your software product, can help reduce support costs. Having a lot of users in your community results in a lot of questions and conversations through the community itself.
A developer community can take the burden off support through a community usually in two ways:

i)      Documentation Writing Programs: Reward systems are the best way to get your users to write product documentation.

ii)    Open Community Forums: Invite users to take ownership of your community giving them important roles that make them belong to the community. It could be the role of a moderator, contributor or community head, as long as they feel like they have ownership they are bound to be more proactive!

Communities are the most effective way to achieve a number of goals linked to developer relations. After going through some of their key benefits, it's not an overstatement to say that communities are core to nurturing devrel in an organization.

Snippets of the week:

 Community of the week:

Women who code is a developer community that thrives on building a world where women are proportionally represented as technical leaders, executives, founders, VCs, board members, and software engineers. Their mission is to inspire women to excel in technology careers.

Once you become a part of Women Who Code you gain access to programs and services that are designed to help you step up your tech career. They have over 290,000 members who are career-aged tech professionals operating at each level of the industry.
As they quote “We are committed to ensuring that Women Who Code is an anti-racist organization and recognize the power of our platform to be a force that affects change. Until we all experience justice and equity in our daily lives, none of us can”.

We are in awe of their vision and are super happy to celebrate their community.
Definitely more than just “community of the week” for us!

TOP 5 ARTICLES we found super interesting about DevRel:

1.    This article written by Tessa Kriesel speaks about how you build a trust model for developers in a DevRel community.

2.  Another insightful article that speaks about why any software needs a developer community more than a marketing strategy.

3.    Written by Jean Yang, In this article, he speaks about some truths that both enterprise software buyers and builders can embrace to dispel harmful myths and improve the developer experience for all.

4.     Sohini Pattnayak speaks about how you can be a developer advocate and how to break the stigma behind it.

5.     Written by Mary Thengvall, this article gives an overall jist of DevRel and the various components of a DevRel online community.

Do you have any interesting DevRel communities that you know, that you’d want me to add here? You can reach out to me via mail, or Twitter.

Join the Community!

Did you know that we also run “The community makers club”? A community where community leaders connect with each other and share tips and tricks. Join us to partake in The Community Makers Club.

Let’s hang out and discuss more!

If community is at the core of your strategy, then click below to find out more:

Glynk - The community platform

Did you attend our discussion with Jenny Weigle last week? In case you missed it, we are releasing the recorded videos this week, so make sure to go access them.

Jenny had an interesting take on the community career roadmap and all the infinite possibilities that the current path has to offer! Come to think of it, I’m glad we’re in this community ecosystem at the right time!
So for all, you community enthusiasts, we will be putting up the video soon, so watch out for our Linkedin and YouTube Space to access the videos!

Now onto our new edition!
This one is super exciting, wait for it!

We have Todd Nilson in conversation with us to pick on the unexplored world of E-learning communities. Todd is a globally known Digital Strategist, Online Community Consultant and Entrepreneur. Over these last 10 years, he has helped dozens of customers to build thriving online communities and digital workplaces. He translates digital strategy into specific and measurable actions for customers.

So sit back and slide through this edition as we understand the revolutionary shift that has been happening with  E-learning communities with the community explorer himself.

In the wide-ranging video interview that you see below, Todd has categorically explained the power of online E-learning communities! We discussed the benefits of having a white-labelled community in the E-learning platform, how Ed-Tech businesses are now leveraging online communities to have a competitive advantage!
Some super cool tips and tricks you can use for your E-learning communities and much more!

1. What is your take on online communities replacing social media platforms for e-learning?

2. What are the main benefits of having a white-labelled community for any E-learning site?

3.  Does having a forum keep your learners engaged?

4. How can online E-learning communities keep engagement and retention high?

5. Should you use Gamification to engage learners and involve them more in your E-learning?

6. What will be the biggest learning shift for students from an online E-learning community?

The best part about E-learning communities is that we empower and equip teachers with technology that will help them automate the boring work and enhance education thereby having a greater impact. Teachers can spend more quality time on what they are here for i.e. teaching instead of constantly worrying about making their classes interesting for students.

SNIPPETS OF THE WEEK:

COMMUNITY OF THE WEEK:

• COURSERA

This global community is a forum space for every enthusiastic learner to ask questions and help each other. Anyone can access and read the discussions.  In the Coursera Community, you can find study tips and chat about different subjects. It helps learners across the world to inspire, support and learn from each other.

Coursera was our favourite pick! If you have a favourite, do let us know in the comments below! :)

TOP ARTICLES WE FOUND USEFUL FOR E-LEARNING COMMUNITIES:

1. This article by Todd Nilson gives a great understanding of how gamification can be great for E-learning communities.

2. This insightful article written by Praveen speaks about why discussion forums help with educational training.

3. This article was written by our Glynk marketer Sheldon, this blog gives great insight into how having online communities for E-learning platforms makes all the difference.

4. This article speaks about the benefits of E-learning online communities.

Have a suggestion for a piece of content we should include next week? Email us and let us know! You can also reach out to me via mail, Twitter.

Thank you ❤️

Warm regards to Todd for being such a lovely contributor. More power to him! If you’re enjoying our stories and finding them valuable, consider sharing them with your friends, or subscribing if you haven’t already.

> From community managers to strategists, the changes we have observed in these job roles and their impact on the health of a community.

> The emergence of community growth specialists and their importance in the current community space.

>Emergence of new job roles to achieve specific goals within the community and its pros and cons.

Hope you can join us!

Community Assemble is a bi-weekly newsletter about creating and growing communities that add value to both customers and brands the right way. We feature tweets, quotes, blogs, and ideas from our experts and various community leaders across the globe.

I’m a community manager, so that might be one reason why I keep having conversations about engagement and understanding member behaviour trying to be a cool shrink, but I don’t think that’s the only reason! The community space has realized that behaviour change and engagement are directly tied up to the success of a community.

Ok before we get carried away with psychology, Let’s understand the real concept better! Is it just me or is every community head speaking about user behaviour in a community? Such an intriguing subject Psychology is!

I mean who wouldn’t want to become a community therapist? I might have just created a new job profile in the community space! ;)

When we speak about a community we all know that it is not just a group of people who gather together. A community requires a deeper connection – A psychological bond that helps us create a sense of shared purpose within members and a sense of belonging towards the community.

In simpler terms, Understanding this psychological connection and how we can apply this socio-psychological science to problem-solving is what we refer to as community

“Community psychology is concerned with the community as the unit of study. This contrasts with most psychology which focuses on the individual. Community psychology also studies the community as a context for the individuals within it, and the relationships of the individual to communities”

This means understanding the community, as well as the members within the community, are both equally important. One thing that comes to my mind when I think of understanding community psychology is how do we apply this science to increase productivity for an online community?

What this really means is yes community psychology helps us understand our members and environment better but it all boils down to how well you can make use of this psychology to not just understand but change the behaviour of members to achieve the objectives and goals of your online community.

For instance, the concept of the social exchange theory (SET) framed by American sociologist George Homans says that people make decisions by consciously or unconsciously measuring the costs and rewards of a relationship or action, ultimately seeking to maximize their reward and reduce the cost.

Applying this theory through the Gamification feature in online communities is actually an amazing way to get new members to join your community through extrinsic motivation. Adding rewards and badges for their participation will always help members feel they are getting a lot more in return for minimal efforts, making them want to belong to the community. One great example of this is the DUOLINGO community that has made learning fun even for the laziest folks! ;)

Like the SET, we have numerous theories that play a vital role in understanding and creating an environment that modifies the behaviour of users in a good way to increase engagement and create a sense of belonging in an online community.

Now in order to apply this science to members, we need certain influence areas in a community that members usually observe and learn from.

What are the major influencers for members of an online community?

A shout out to Richard Millington for his insights on influencers and behaviour in online communities, you inspire us to explore the impossible!

In any online community, it’s normal that people usually do not like being instructed. They like to believe that they can take decisions for themselves, especially in a customer community. But what’s interesting is that people take action based on what are other people do. In fact, the biggest influence on members is their fellow members!

For every member as such, there are influence areas in every community, through which they express themselves and indirectly influence others in the process.

There are typically 4 influence areas/ motivators that every member usually observes and learns from, we call it the MERC-4 SERIES!

• Moderation

• Events and Activities.

• Relationships within the community.

• Content.

1.     Invest time in building relationships with your super-users, these key users will be the ones who take up the desired action required from the community. Once this core group of users start taking action, others will soon follow.

2.     Flexible moderation controls that do not micro-manage communities are great motivators to allow members to freely express themselves. Encourage more positive contributions and avoid undesired actions made by members. This will positively (without demotivating users) steer them towards the goals you want to achieve.

3.     Events and activities motivate members to enhance and increase their participation leading to more proactiveness. Challenging your members through activities will be a great way of steering participation as well.

4.     Content is the biggest influence area among all 4. You can use content to provide focus on the actions you wish to take. Though indirect it is the best way to achieve your community goals. You can give more voice and rewards to members who are leaning towards the agenda thus encouraging more members to make positive contributions and causing a ripple effect to achieve the goals of the community.

Snippets of the week:

Snippet 1:

Communities are stronger when they oscillate at the same emotional frequency. They're stronger when members see others reacting in the same way as they are. 
- Richard Millington

Snippet 2:

“A brand is no longer what we tell the consumer it is – it is what consumers tell each other it is.”
– Scott Cook

Psychological cheat codes for community managers!

The following hacks can be used for your community efforts with very little effort!

1.     Apply the rule of social exchange.

If you want a member in the community or even your entire community to do something for you, then try doing something for them first.  Each person wants to give something in return for the interaction or insight that they receive. This rule always has profound results!

2.     Make a pledge/ Ask for commitment.

Every time new members join, invite them to a discussion and ask them to take a pledge. This is a persuasion tactic in which members who agree to make a commitment to the community, usually end up being proactive to keep up their word to keep up their promise, thus, resulting in an increase in member participation and an attachment that is usually far stronger comparatively.

3.     Highlight posts that favour the community.

Members who are usually hesitant or confused will look for what others are doing and soon follow. Pinning posts that are community-driven, publicizing positive examples, and mentioning members who favour the community will always set the right example for other members in the community.

4.     Provide power and recognition to groups.

Providing attention to groups within the community is super important to boost engagement. One way to empower groups is to create group heads for each group and further ask these leaders to motivate the individuals within the group. Groups play a key role in onboarding new members as it promotes personal interaction, making new members feel comfortable around the community. Giving group recommendations based on the new member’s personal interests will always create a powerful impact and let members know that their interests and needs are taken care of. Making content around group topics and mentioning the group names in the posts will encourage further participation.

5.     Develop leaders within your community

Use your most loyal members, we call them the “heroes” of the community. Make them the authority figures. People tend to comply with authority. So, when you need to send a message to the community, you can use these leaders to subtly do the job without forcing the agenda or hurting the feelings of any member of the community.

6.     Respond positively to early contributions.

It is a normal tendency for any online community to lose a lot of newcomers right after they have made their first contributions to the community. This usually happens due to a late response system that deflates their enthusiasm and makes them feel unwelcomed. So, it is super important that at the early stage, you respond quickly and positively (Be at par with their enthusiasm) to their first contribution. Have a thread of discussion that involves other member participation as well, this makes their first post feel worthwhile and inspire them to make more contributions.

GLYNKER DICTIONARY:

COMMUNITY RECIPROCATION (Sumimasen – “It will never end”)

A psychological persuasion method for members of online communities – It is a developed system of creating indebtedness in users, by catering to the needs of the users, thus creating the urge of repaying back to the community that has provided to them.

This term that Glynk has coined comes from the fascinating “The rule of reciprocation” obtained from the book “INFLUENCE” written by Robert Cialdini. This method is one of the best ways to pursue a member into repaying to the community thus increasing member participation, creating a sense of belonging and contributing to the community.

TOP 5 ARTICLES we found super interesting about community psychology:

Kudos to Todd Nilson, Jenny Weigle and Richard Millington for writing such important and insightful articles about online community psychology!

1.     https://www.feverbee.com/compliance/ written by Richard Millington speaks about how to influence members subtly and indirectly without forcing an agenda.

2.  This insightful article was written by Yolanda Suarez-Balcazar; Vincent T. Francisco; and Leonard A. Jason, who speaks about understanding how behavioural approaches have been used in Community Psychology.

3. This article written by Sean Young speaks about how you can leverage the power of online communities to modify the behaviour of humans

4.     https://tinyletter.com/tnilson/letters/a-view-from-the-clocktower-33-tactics-to-grow-community-interactions written by Todd Nilson is an insightful article that speaks about the simple tricks that can be used to increase community interactions.

5.     https://www.feverbee.com/increasingparticipation/ written by Richard Millington speaks about some great methods that can be used to increase member participation in an online community.

•   Reference book: INFLUENCE by Robert Cialdini is hands down one of the best books you can read to understand online community psychology

Do you have any tips/ suggestions about online community psychology hacks that you’d want me to add here? You can reach out to me via mail or LinkedIn and Twitter, or shoot a question in the comments below.

Join us for the first webinar of 2022 as we discuss the “Rise of the Career Path” in the community space with Jenny Weigle who is a great community consultant, chief community officer and amazing Community Strategy Speaker.

We will speak about how the community career opportunities have changed since the pandemic, the amazing job roles that the online community space is open to and the results of these opportunities in creating a better community.

REGISTER HERE!

Have a suggestion for a piece of content we should include next week?
Email us and let us know!

A lot more in store at The community makers club! Let’s hang out and discuss more!

When we think about community and community health for a successful community, how can we create a strategy that helps us tackle community health?

One thing that came to my mind when I think community health is a good moderation strategy!

What this actually means in a community is that yes of course you can have optimal community health, but to achieve that, first you need to understand your community well and create a good moderation plan that is expected from your users.

Community Moderation is the practice of managing comments and discussions from members/users on your platform so it aligns with your Terms and Conditions and Code of Conduct, usually done by a community moderator or team of moderators.

Good Moderation controls for any community is super important to maintain a positive atmosphere in the community and ensure your members feel safe and comfortable to express themselves.

Typically, the kind of moderation controls you will need for any community are:

• Filter out inappropriate content that makes any user uncomfortable.

• Resolve issues and conflicts between members.

• Observe and resolve inappropriate behaviour by members.

• Maintaining moderation transparency and clear communication with members to promote a healthy community.

• Enabling members to become moderators within the community.

Maintaining a community that motivates users to engage in open but appropriate conversation is crucial. We live in a world that respects privacy and safety on all levels. Community platforms like Glynk, tribe and influitive highly focus on providing great moderation controls for the community to create a safe space for members in a community.

If you want to check out the moderation controls that glynk offers to its users.
Click here.

What are the moderation mandates you need to follow in a community?

1) The first mandate is to establish ground rules for member participation by having a set of community guidelines to be followed along with a well-structured code of conduct that is so clear that members themselves can become moderators.

2) Moderators can make or break an online community! So, it is important to build a moderation handbook or a document to ensure that your moderators stay consistent in their roles. Usually, moderators tend to drop their motivation due to the constant pressure of having to morally police the community. Ensure that you have regular weekly meetings with them to keep track of their duties, motivate them and have updates about the health of the community.

3) If you are building a new community, even before you get into planning a moderation strategy understand the community. Get to know what the user expectations are. Experiment with them using real-life examples. Understand their backgrounds. This may seem like a super huge task initially, but the results are worth it. You can never be a great moderator if you do not know how your community wants you to interact with them.

4) You always need to follow the four-step NMRA rule as a moderator!

1st step: You NOTIFY the member that the content posted by them is inappropriate and for that reason, it is sent to the admin/moderator for further action.

2nd step: As a moderator, You MODERATE the content that has been reported as spam or send it to the admin to take a further call on the reported content, while making sure the user knows that their post is under scrutiny.

3rd step:  You REMOVE content that is deemed inappropriate for the community, and you notify the user that the post or content generated by the user has been hidden from the community.

4th step: You can also APPROVE the post after the moderator chooses to edit the content and make it suitable for the community. The member can be notified of the respective changes that have been made and can be published as a post in the community.

It is interesting how overdoing or underdoing it adversely affects the health of a community. Moderators need to be aware of the control they exercise as it seems to be a very fine line between letting communities go wild and providing a safe space for the members of a community.

SNIPPETS OF THE WEEK:

“I tell people how you respond to a question in a community is the important thing, not deleting it, not moderating it, but responding to that. I try not, as best as possible, to delete anything, but I am not saying that there are no reasons to delete certain content, but this should be a rare case.”
- Chris Detzel

“Through studying where communities have gone wrong - we can work towards building a better web for everyone! By keeping a few key principles in mind namely trust, moderation transparency and honesty. You too can keep your community from going wild! ”
-Erin Staples

COMMUNITY OF THE WEEK:

The super cool Grindr community is the world’s largest dating and social networking app for gay, bi, trans, and queer people. The Grindr community is focused on creating inclusive and forward-thinking moderation policies that honour the full expression of users’ gender identity. They strongly believe that having inclusive policies is necessary for all businesses – not just those that focus on LGBTQ+ people – so that all users can feel supported, included, and welcome.

We love such moderation policies that respect every user’s voice. Let us know in your comments below if you found any community with such awesome moderation policies.

If you found this interesting, then you can read this article where their policies are explained in detail: Grindr Moderation Policy.

Top 5 articles we found super useful for a great moderation strategy:

1. “How to Moderate an Online Community. A-List of Skills, Tips, and Tricks”

   written by Corina Stirbu is an article that speaks about her experience in the community space and a few tips to keep a clean, respectful, and insightful community engaged.

2. “How simple moderation rules can create worse communities!” written by
   Carter Gibson speaks about how simplicity can be an enemy in welcoming communities and having more specific defined guidelines is a must.

3. “Moderating tips you should know!” written by Alexandra Bowen gives insightful tips to moderators who are new on their journey.

4. “What we can learn from communities gone wild” written by Rosie Sherry is a delightful read about how communities go wild without moderation transparency and what is needed to prevent communities from going wrong.

5. “Important online community moderation tips and tricks” written by Chris Detzel speaks about the methods a moderator should follow and how micro analysing user-generated content can be wrong for a community. He also shares great tips to work around it.
   

Do you have any tips/ suggestions about a good moderation strategy that you’d want me to add here? You can reach out to me via mail, Twitter or shoot me a question in the comments below.

Join the Community!

Did you know that we also run “The community makers club”?
A community where community leaders connect with each other and share tips and tricks. Join us to partake in The community makers club.

Let’s hang out and discuss more!

Have a suggestion for a piece of content we should include next week? Email us and let us know!

Become a community expert

In our last episode of Community Assemble, I had a wide-ranging video interview with Carmen Taubman where she explained the power of building customer communities to me! We discussed the strategy for how B2B businesses can leverage online communities to drive competitive advantage, super cool tips, and tricks, and much more!

This week’s newsletter is a guest story written by Carmen Taubman. She’s an experienced community manager helping people and businesses launch & manage their own communities. In today’s story, Carmen will be addressing these topics in detail and will provide us with some insightful tips for founders looking to build customer communities.

How can B2B founders leverage online communities?

• How can you help your own customers achieve the most success with their own customers? Community can help B2B companies understand their own customers’ goals, motivations, challenges they face for their own customers. You get a front-row seat to understand your customer base! 

• Identify gaps in training: are there common questions in your community that is being repeated over time? Consider updating your training/ onboarding process to improve the experience for new customers

• Product/service improvements: do your customers mention pain points, frustrations, or confusion around using your product or service in the community? Consider this real-time feedback and look into how you can improve your products and services. Highly recommend including your community members in this process or at the very least being transparent over updates/ future changes.

• Improve customer retention: If your community members feel they are receiving greater support, access to additional resources, better training, and developing deeper relationships, they are more likely to renew memberships and subscriptions.

• Learn more about your competitors: If your members feel safe enough to have authentic conversations, you may learn more about how your business compares to competitors and how they are perceived by your customers.

• Upselling opportunities: If you build better relationships with your customers, you’re building greater trust which is essential in the sales process. They may refer other contacts to you based on their positive experience in the community. Your customers may also be learning more about your products/services from discussions/events/resources made available in the community, which could result in upgrading their subscription or membership tier. 

• Brand perception: The way you manage your community can become a great opportunity to flip negative sentiments around current product/service offerings and your brand in general.

Tips for B2B companies looking to build communities 💡

• Be clear on your business goal for building the community: do you need to increase referrals, improve retention rate, etc? This will help you build a long term vision for how the community can help your business

• Once you are clear on your business goal, you can develop relevant metrics around this to ensure you are measuring the effectiveness of the community in helping your business over time

• Really get to know your members: what are their goals, motivations, challenges, roadblocks, etc. How is your community helping them with these? You should truly understand how you can help the people and businesses in your community

• Don’t focus on vanity numbers: What do 10,000 members in a community even mean? Refer to my first point and ensure your business goals are aligned with the community goals

• Community is not sales or marketing. The teams may work closely together, but don’t think of community as “just another sales channel” or another way to push business announcements. Community is so much more than that. It’s a two-way platform where you can connect members in the group with each other and have authentic conversations with your customers, developing trust is key.

• Listen and adapt to your members. Community is not a “static” play, you will need to listen to the voices in your community, have transparent conversations. If something is not working, look for alternative solutions, adapt to meet their needs.

  ---

  Thank you ❤️

  Warm regards to Carmen for being such a lovely contributor. More power to her! If you’re enjoying our stories and finding them valuable, consider sharing them with your friends, or subscribing if you haven’t already. If you have any feedback, questions, or thoughts, I’d love to hear them. Feel free to say “hi” in the comment or reply to this email. Happy to chat :)

An engaged online community is probably one of the most used terms that get thrown around a lot in the community space. And it can have multiple meanings depending upon the context and who you are talking to. But, in customer communities, it can be defined as a method of making customers interact with each other, with the genuine intent that their needs are met within the community. 

Everyone wants more engagement in their online communities. I have seen people getting impatient as soon as they launch their online community because of the low or almost zero engagement. But what you need to realize is, engagement does not come instantly after launching a community. It takes its own sweet time to make your customers come, stay and then even make them keep coming back to your community. While all of it doesn’t happen automatically, building your efforts in the direct direction can spark engagement in your community.

For starters, keep in mind that the kind of content you create in your community is a key part of your engagement strategy. But what’s more important is - maintaining a strong feedback loop with your customers.

Do you want to know how? Let’s dive in:

Invest time in 1:1 conversations

Talk to your customers about their challenges, pain points, expectations, etc. Channelize this feedback into creating rich content that would help them and other customers/ prospects joining the community.

Leverage community platform features like “create polls”, “ask a question”

Use these features to get the data from your customers on what kind of content they would like to consume. Observe thoroughly to understand what brings the most value. While asking a question, avoid asking open-ended questions and ask questions around different community ideas and check what they say about that. You could also do that over the zoom call and check their reactions live. 

Engagement hacks - The Community Stoplight method

To spark your community, you got people together and helped them start talking. STAY WITH IT! But as your community starts growing beyond its early memberships, the real challenge will be to make sure you’re constantly attracting new folks while maintaining the engagement quality. It doesn’t happen so smoothly. Because new folks need to be genuinely excited about your shared purpose or they’ll never want to come to your community.

Here, I’d like you to have a look at the community spotlight method to get more engagement in your community. You can start off by doing this activity for at least a month and then keep evolving accordingly.

🔴 = 10 “silent members” in the community, ones who never participate or interacts

🟡 = 10 members who do not initiate a conversation, unless tagged or mentioned

🟢 = 10 most engaging members in the community who you may refer to as “role models”

You can track these in excel or google spreadsheets. The focus for the next one month should be very thorough. Keep in mind, this method is a great way to kickstart your community when you see the early members coming in and contributing in multiple ways already! Because this is exactly the time to build relationships. Now, your next action item should be:

🔴 Activate = Send personal messages. Try to indulge in 1:1 conversations and find out what excites them in the community, their expectations, and feedback

🟡 Engage = Turn the spotlight towards role models. Ask them to tag these members in relevant posts, share their stories. Personally invite them to community events and rituals.

 🟢 Scale = Reward these members. Make them feel special. Let them take impactful initiatives in the community.

At the end of the month, have a look at the spreadsheet and see what worked and what didn’t. Some members would definitely move up the spotlight. And if they don’t, there’s nothing to worry about. You can control what’s in and what’s out but you can never predict how things will grow. Your job as a community leader is to curate the community and nurture the different voices within it. So, try out different strategies and keep at it. 

You should create space for healthy debates, compassionate support, and constructive criticism. That’s how you’ll grow along with your members and collectively make an impact.

Now, you might be thinking, “Anukriti, what are you saying! I am just starting out. I don’t even have enough community members or engagement to get this kind of feedback. What should I do now..?”

Don’t worry! Check this out..

• Try to find similar communities that are larger in size and read through the comments/posts etc. You will get to know the struggles of users. Make a pattern and define a value proposition that appeals to your target audience and will help attract them to your community. If they see/feel that their pain points and needs are getting addressed with your community, members will start joining in.

• Define your ideal customer persona and try to find them on social media. Check out their content and understand them better. This will give you a lot of insights in terms of what type of content will bring the most engagement to your community.

Glynk’s tip 💡

In any community, there will always be a small set of extra-passionate people who will do the majority of work to push the community onward and upward. And with that, you also get an added set of responsibilities. Growing a community isn’t only about management, btw. It’s about developing leaders. With their help, your community will affect more people and sustain itself longer than you could have managed on your own.

☝How does your community engagement look like? Do you have any tips/ suggestions that you’d want me to add here? Get to me on Twitter or LinkedIn, or shoot me a question in the comments below. You can also write to me about what's driving you crazy in your community—engagement, control, metrics, visibility..anything. I’d love to chat. Thanks! See you next week.

And she fell into the world of community ❤️

She founded an e-commerce business in 2013, and at the same time, built up a Facebook group with over 5k members with zero marketing spend. The group wasn’t focused solely on her business but did consist of many members who were in the target market. That community became a major source of traffic generation for her business, without it feeling like she was hard selling her products (she wasn’t). In fact, over time the members in that group became some of her best salespeople as they had purchased her products and then would tell the rest of the group about how great they were and educate others on how they use the products.

You don’t need a marketing budget to build communities, and they can be incredibly valuable. I built that group with zero marketing budget and had thousands of people joined within weeks, all through the power of member referrals. - Carmen

Since then she has built communities for global multinational companies with a variety of goals, including to develop new products/services, develop external partnerships in the industry, increase employee retention (internal communities), and educating communities to increase the customer base longer-term.

In the wide-ranging video interview that follows, I turn the tables and ask Carmen to explain the power of building customer communities to me! We discussed the strategy for creating UGC in a community, how can B2B businesses leverage online communities to drive competitive advantage, super cool tips, and tricks, and much more!

Subscribe now

How can B2B companies leverage customer communities?

How can B2B companies build a robust system for user-generated content?

Quick note: For those of you who prefer text over videos, we will have this entire episode in the text format next week. Carmen, herself will be contributing to the next week’s newsletter where she will talk about these topics in detail. Till then, I’d like you to watch these videos. Trust me, you won’t regret it! :)

Do you have specific tips for B2B companies looking to build online communities?

Hope this episode was insightful for you because, for me, it’s a winner already! A big thank you to Carmen Taubman for being a wonderful contributor and providing such amazing insights. 

Today, I am going to talk about how you can leverage the idea of community to build something bigger than yourself - a business that values people, not just profit. It’s going to be super actionable as I’d also bring along insights from some incredibly inspiring community builders.

Community is a long-term bet

Communities are meant to encourage connections, not just transactions. Therefore, you might have some resistance at the beginning. The benefits of community are not often immediate, it takes time to build. But the rewards are high. And you really have no choice anyway. Well, that is if you want your customers to be happy. The days of push marketing are numbered. Companies can no longer push one-sided ad campaigns and expect customers to blindly accept their message. The digital age has turned marketing into a two-way conversation where customers have a powerful voice and they want to be heard.

The online community has brought such transparency to the customer relationship that businesses have no choice but to respond and tailor their communications. Companies that do not embrace this new landscape risk alienating customers and losing business to savvy competitors. This is why a good community management initiative is so important. But what’s more important is - PATIENCE and FOCUS to build an engaging community.

Know your “WHY”

As community builders, we all yearn to give our customers a greater sense of belonging. While this directly translates to loyalty and retention in the longer run, the purpose is much bigger than that. Making customers feel like they are part of something bigger is vital to giving them that sense of belonging. How do you do that? 

• Define your community’s purpose and communicate it very clearly. 

• Hand-pick your early customers - choose people who really relate to this purpose

• Start building your community with them, not just for them. 

The only rule to follow in the first early days - be patient and pick your members carefully. 

Value. Value. Value

If you want your customers to spend time in your community, ensure that they are getting a positive ROI on that time. To understand this, you must be able to answer the following 2 questions confidently:

• What is the reason your customer should join the community?

• Why should they stick around?

When you think about your community, think about your customers, always. You need to constantly think about what is best for them. This means staying alert, keeping your ears wide open, and constantly listening to your community. You will know what they need right now. To create a true community and be relevant, you need to stand out and stand for something that your customers connect with. You can combine multiple value propositions. The core value of your community, may be, is to provide product-related information to the customers. While it’s important to keep the consistent flow of this information, what’s even more important is to create a warm and enjoyable environment where customers find a sense of belonging and actively build relationships amongst one another.

Numbers don’t matter as much as you think

It’s not how big your community is, it’s how much your community members care - Tom Ross, CEO - DesignCuts

You aspire to get more and more customers in your community. But, let’s take a pause and understand this - numbers don’t matter as much as you think. To be more precise - the “number of members” in a community is not the metric that most folks are chasing. This metric might make you feel good at the start, but it has very little relevance to the actual success of your business. Anyone can go and buy 100k followers on social media these days, but this has literally no real substance to your business. Instead of building a giant audience of members who do not care, build one where they genuinely do.

Glynk’s take

Tom Ross is the founder and CEO at DesignCuts.com, a community of amazing creatives. In his spare time, he loves sharing his passion for community building with others. In one of his books around community building, he explained how his tiny community outperformed a massive community. 

At my company, we’ve done tons of partnerships over the years. One partner boasted about their huge community numbers - over a million users! However, when they shared the agreed campaign, the numbers were beyond woeful. There were literally a tiny handful of sales. The engagement on their massive email newsletter was practically non-existent. By contrast, we partnered with a small, niche community of just 5000 members. This campaign performed literally X20 better than the results we saw from the larger campaign! That means that on average, the smaller community’s members were worth 4000 times more to our business, compared with the larger community. 4000!!! This is an extreme example, but I see this play out all the time.

He literally didn’t have revenue goals. Or member growth goals. All he knew is that after building a giant audience of folks who didn’t care, he wanted to build one where they did. The number of followers or volume of traffic didn’t matter to him. He just knew that he wanted each and every person on his platform to give a crap! What followed was the most rewarding and intense period of his life. His company flew, it went like a rocket. Entirely bootstrapped and with no funding, it spread like crazy. Community was at the heart of it all. Whereas before he had an empty vessel, he had now built truly the most engaged community. Community members raved about them. They told their friends. They purchased it repeatedly from him. They were vocal and supportive. They were their biggest cheerleaders. They became genuine friends. And it didn’t happen overnight. Let’s look at what he has to say about the process of building a community:

I won’t say it was easy. In fact, it was the hardest, most grueling, and intense period of my life. I even ended up hospitalizing myself from overwork, and a naive resistance to delegation (but that’s a whole other story). However, it was undeniable that community was, and remains our secret sauce. That is why I’m so committed to helping others to harness the power of the community. That’s why I want to leave a legacy of entrepreneurs who care more about their people than the ego-charged numbers we all chase on social media.

That’s it for this week. If you have any feedback, questions, or thoughts, I’d love to hear them. And if you’re finding this newsletter valuable, consider sharing it with friends, or subscribing if you haven’t already.

See you next week! Till then, let’s love and support our community. ✨