Communities are becoming a key competitive advantage for start-ups in creating and delivering their value proposition. Being their true authentic selves, and putting connections before transactions, community-led startups are changing the way we do things and fast.
Entrepreneurs, influencers, independents, and businesses alike are proving that having a community-first approach is the fastest way to build and launch their content and products. When done correctly, having an engaged community also keeps the team motivated and at top speed.
Community is no longer a 'nice to have'—it's critical to modern companies.
Many see community operations as part of the marketing efforts, however, especially for entrepreneurs and start-ups, leveraging the power of word-of-mouth and advocacy provided by your community quickly becomes a whole new world, separate from that of marketing.
Communities are not just a great way to sell your products to customers who are truly passionate about what benefits you’re offering them but also an extremely valuable asset when building on what you already have. Turning to your community to look for answers to questions such as product benefits, new features, brand image, usability, experience etc. provides genuine intel that you would not possibly be able to gather through classic research methods.
Community is a way to connect with your audience, clients, or customers and ultimately cultivate a relationship with them that will help build or improve your product.
Marketing vs. Community
The main difference between marketing and community operations is that when you’re marketing, you’re building an audience. Whereas when you’re building a community, you’re connecting your audience with each other and giving them a space where they can collaborate. In marketing your focus is on one person and selling your product to that one person. Imagine focusing on hundreds of people who want to talk to each other about you. The power that brings is immeasurable against what marketing will ever provide to your company.
Community in the Tech World
Generally speaking, the concept of community is, in fact, not a new term. Companies like Apple, GitHub, and Salesforce have been prioritizing their communities for a long time through support forums, well-hyped events, and more. Many of these companies would definitely agree that they value their community and everything that brings benefits to the businesses.
These companies, however, at least in the beginning, were not intentional in the way they positioned their community operations. What changed is, that instead of the main attraction being the product and the community supporting that product, communities have become the main attraction customers choose to buy a product.
Going back to where we started, putting connections before transactions is exactly this. In the start-up world, we are now seeing more and more of them investing in their community operations as much as their products, because they want to create that space where their members can connect to each other, not just transact from the brand.
The simple idea behind all of this is: customers who feel like they belong to a community, are more likely to make purchases and bring their friends along the journey. Those who do make their friends purchase from you as well become advocates, ambassadors, and evangelists of your offerings, which is essentially free, authentic marketing for you.
For start-ups, especially early-stage ones, having a community from day 1 provides a reliable focus group as well. Successfully engaging this group will provide invaluable feedback to improve product offerings, which combined with all the other benefits of having a community-led approach, result in growth 🚀
So Why is Community Operations Getting So Big?
Communities have always existed in the social world in some form: industry conventions, exclusive clubs, religious groups, and more. It is a human instinct to find similar-minded people and connect.
For a very long time, customers were just customers. A one-way relationship would suffice to scale business operations. However, with evolving technology, and the pandemic, this is no longer enough to retain a business. So why not start with a strategy that will keep your customers loyal?
With a community strategy, you’re not just providing a service or a product, you’re offering a sense of belonging, which is intrinsically human. In doing so, your product is being elevated to something bigger. With more and more tech companies and start-ups investing in their community operations, talent in the industry is also getting more diverse.
Many skills learned when in business can actually be applied to community operations; project management, product development, social media marketing, executive leaders, HR functions, etc. And with these people converting to community operations, the industry is seeing rapid growth. The main reason for this seems to be similar to that of the customers buying into the communities: human interactions.
At the end of the day, community is going to become an inevitable, and necessary part of any business very soon.