Making community integral to your company
Tips from Peloton, an event with Patreon and an introduction to a member!
👋 Hey! Alex here, Founder of Community Hacked (as of last week - woohoo!).
We are building a learning institution for community-builders, by community-builders. Since going full-time a week ago I have been focusing on evolving each aspect of Community Hacked to ensure that we are producing high-quality educational content across the board. This new Substack newsletter is part of that.
If you have any feedback or ideas for us, please just respond to this email.
If you like this post, please share it and help us empower community people across the world to develop the knowledge and networks they need to drive business success through community 🙏
Three tips on how to make community integral to your company ✏️
From our recent event with Jayvee Nava, former VP Community at Peloton
1. Building trust and relationship with members from day one is important for scaling a community
Responding to upset or dissatisfied members directly can turn them into brand advocates down the line
Identifying common questions and turning them into blog posts or FAQs can reduce repetitive interactions and show people you are listening
Encouraging community members to help each other out can reduce the workload on community managers
Modelling desired behaviour yourself can encourage members to copy you in order to support others and help scale the community
2. Educate management as clearly as possible about the value of your community work to the wider company
One effective way to do this is to figure out what type of reporting or information the heads of teams (e.g. Product, Customer Support, Sales, Marketing) are looking for and tailor your work accordingly to obtain/create that with community
Build partnerships with those teams to ensure they get what they need from your community is key to demonstrating the value of your work to your manager
When meeting with your management, come prepared with detail on the processes you have created for each team and data demonstrating the value of your work
3. Leverage community feedback to drive product development
To make community integral to your company, involve them in product development by collecting feedback
Share a monthly report with the product team that consolidates community feedback from various sources
Tag feedback to specific features to make it easier for the product team to process
Communicate back to community members about how their feedback is being factored into the product roadmap to make these passionate members feel recognised and to strengthen their connection with the brand
Be sure to beta test new features with all types of community members, so as not to bias the results by only sharing with these passionate community members
Register for our next event ✅
Emily’s role focuses on executing strategies that bring life- and career-changing peer-to-peer learning, connection, and collaboration to creators at scale. Under her leadership, the Community Team was just awarded "Best Creator Community" at the 2023 CMX Community Industry Awards.
Join our event with Emily on March 20th:
Meet a Community Hacked member 👋
Alyson Stemas
Community Leader @ Founders Circle Capital (📣 new role alert - joining 20th March! 📣)
Purpose of your community: A private leadership community for growth stage executives that builds a “personal board of directors” around you. Among a trusted set of peers, you give and get insights, ideas, support & answers
Favourite engagement tactic: Asynchronous low lift icebreaker type questions (ex tea v coffee?). It gets people typing/engaging. From new community members to the seasoned ones, a lot of joy can come from a meaningless thread on personal preferences
Open to connecting with: The community is interested in connecting with CHROs and CFOs of Series B or later companies with >$20M in annual revenue. I’d love to connect with community leaders of other VCs, folks who have an in house community platform, and those creating community along executive leaders ➡️ Connect with me on LinkedIn