In this essay, I explore the product-based community from my personal experience as a builder and my learnings, hence it’s not exhaustive. I wrote it to formulate for me first, and ultimately for you, what a community is, why a business needs one, and how to build its structure. Let’s dive in!
In my view, a product-based community is a group of people who share a common interest in a specific product and stay connected via a private (online) space. In this endeavor, the channel is less important than the action, and a co-creation flywheel is what paves the road to success.
A Square One Priority for The Business
A successful startup needs growth and profit. I believe community is a pillar for both
Since [ startup = growth ] and the runway is always short, we need validation, traction, and revenue fast. Therefore, starting a community at the beginning is essential. Here’s why.
On the one hand, this implies product-led growth. So, the product is enhanced by user experience and feedback and is the primary driver of customer acquisition, expansion, or retention. Consequently, product-led growth works exponentially better when propelled by a strong community. Think of Salesforce, Notion, or Product Hunt.
On the other hand, if this approach is well executed, it ultimately brings profit through brand loyalty and subscriptions, ads, affiliates, or any other channel depending on the business. That’s because in the community are the first promotors, evangelists, and ambassadors. They are the ones to spread the word and when momentum is built, it generates network effects. In this way, the product and the company are evolving rapidly, via direct input from the users, and this leads to product-market fit. As a result, community-led growth is a go-to-market strategy full of potential.
Structures to Uplift the Community
The Minimum Viable Community (MVC)
At this moment, it makes sense to start a community but how? The right way to proceed, in my opinion, is to “get out of the building” and gather a handful of beta testers, early adopters, and tech enthusiasts. It’s fundamental to find those who are fit for the product, create the Minimum Viable Community, and give it a spin.
To kick off, choose a platform, automate the onboarding, create a few initiatives, and add an AI bot, but keep it simple. In this phase, channels, aesthetics, or brands are unimportant, but offering value from the get-go is mandatory.
Let’s say a handful of trailblazers are already in, it’s now time to expand the community slowly while focusing on conversations. Here, I am talking about emails, surveys, DMs, voice calls, video calls, chats, one-on-ones, user interviews, members-only sessions, public webinars, in-person gatherings, events, and so on. A lot of work! It’s imperative to do things that don’t scale at this point. Push and pull information as often as possible and build rapport with the members. The human touch on top of many layers of automation is always positive. Start small, build steadily, and the results will follow.
Logic & Reasons
The MVC runs on conversation and human touch. That’s the game, but for the next level, switch to Vulcan mode (🖖) and follow the logic to put things into perspective.
Community is
- A product
- Thad does something
- For someone
- In order to make something happen
It’s essential to learn how the members perceive what’s happening and exploratory conversations should reveal (1), (2), (3), and (4). The community is a vivid ecosystem, constantly adapting and taking new shapes while evolving. Now having these concepts in mind, prioritize channels and transform the MVC into a well-rounded private (online) place.
The Why
To step up, think about why someone would join the community. And, there are (probably) only three reasons:
- To solve a problem
- To satisfy a need
- To earn something
To cultivate a sense of belonging among people, the community must effectively address (1), (2), or (3) first. The ones who already joined, potential members, and ideal personas, will state their motives through discussions. 15-minute one-on-one video calls are probably the best way to go. As well, nurturing relationships is more valuable than focusing solely on transactions. I strongly believe that belonging always follows value in time.
Imagine the community as a Roman forum
When the Romans built a forum, they meant a place where ideas and views could be exchanged. When crafting a community, we need exactly that. We want to encourage people to interact and engage, give us feedback, talk freely about the product, and connect with peers. Out of this, a flywheel of ideas will emerge. That’s fuel for the co-creation process, and we should stimulate it purposefully.
If the users share their input and see it implemented in the product, they are likely to stick with it for the long run. They accept bugs, issues, malfunctions, or even downtime more easily when there is a community based on dialogue, transparency, and openness. These elements lead to skin in the game plus trust between the users and the product team.
If the logic is in place, we know what we are doing. And if the reason is discovered, we know why we are doing it. And above them, a classic forum is needed for dialogue to thrive. Let’s recap. Community is good for business because it’s an engine for growth and profit. We started with an MVC and evolved based on open conversation. Together with the members, we have created a vivid structure and now it’s time to explore beyond.
The co-creation flywheel
At a glance, the flywheel looks something like this. We have built a product that people want and the users are joining the community to share their feedback. The team interacts with them, listens, extracts information, and creates a backlog. Then the development phase starts and a requested feature is released. Now, that the product is in better shape, the users experience it and come back to the community to share their thoughts. When they are happy with the process and the results, they bring their peers and this is how network effects are created. Only one thing left to do. Again! :-)
Product → Users → Community → Feedback → Backlog → Dev → Feature → Product → Users → Community → Network Effects and so on.
The goal is to continuously adapt our understanding to what the users want, where, and how to provide value. We should also facilitate dialogue between them, so they can learn from each other. Plus, by laying the foundation for conversation and transparency, we would discover what they hate and love about the product. Then, we will refine the product to better serve their needs. The synergy between the community and the product team is the backbone of the community.
Success Is a Consequence of People
Engagement per se is value-neutral
Since we are looking for interaction, engagement might appear as the ideal KPI. This is a trap. At best, it's a vanity metric. At worst, it's a ticking time bomb. We could deliver less value with more engagement or more value with less engagement. For example, we can have lots of engagement in our community because everybody is nervous about a very annoying bug. Also, we can experience less engagement when all systems are running smoothly. So, we should be mindful and measure only what creates value.
A transformational initiative
A community provides value to its members when transforms newcomers into power users and power users into ambassadors. To do that, the community team has to push information by creating an onboarding flow, hosting demos, and posting announcements regularly. A fantastic way of interacting is to
- Pull info - open written conversations, one-on-ones, collect feedback
- By doing this, we help users to go through bottlenecks and remove anxiety & inertia in adoption
- Community Town Halls
- State of the business - planned | in progress | delivered | suggestions
- Co-creation
- Collect feedback and push it to the Product Team
- Empower users with info to create content about Sessions
- Referral & Affiliate Programs
- Provide users the tools to make money out of Sessions
- Partners
- Work closely with our Community Partners to forge relations and extend collaborations
- Overseas Communities
- Establish 3-5 local communities in USA, Asia, South America, Africa, and Europe
We had a so-and-so product, started an MVC, expanded from a small group of die-hard fans to a tribe of many, and generated network effects. Together, we co-created a product that became market-fit, and through sustained growth, the business started to make a profit. The story goes on, but the bottom line is that success is a consequence of people.
For a startup, the essential people are the team that builds the product and the community that empowers them with information. The will to succeed is far less important than the will to prepare. This means the readiness to invest time, effort, and resources in planning, building, and strategizing. And there is no better way to start preparing than to initiate the community on square one.
"We had grace. We had style. We had conversation. Not this...[ mimics text message sound ]. Art, films, books were all better. Originality mattered!" The Merovingian (The Matrix)
Take Merv's quote into consideration and don't ruin it. :-)