Community for business: How not to f*ck it up

Community is certainly a current buzzword right now, but it’s been a societal construct since life began. However, in the age of the internet, community means something different and is manifesting in new & interesting ways. We see the opportunity for massive impact on people and bottom lines coming into the fray but without guidance, we can misstep and as I’ve personally witnessed (and experienced) this multiple times, more increasingly now, I wanted to share some insights & advice to help you maximise the value of community, in your business, without f*cking it up.

Cheap plug before I continue → as someone who has spent the better part of a decade building, managing, understanding, and scaling business communities, I’m now helping others do the same through?Suuuper, a consultancy for companies looking to leverage the power of communities and ‘Super-fans’. If you’re looking for help with yours,?book a free chat with me.

What is a community, where business is concerned?

Newsflash: if your business has customers, you have a community. A community, where business is concerned — and in general — is a group of people with something (ideally multiple things) in common. If you are selling a product to people then your product and the problem it solves are the primary commonalities that bring your community together. Not only this, but your workforce is also a community; a community working together towards a common goal: your company’s success. Everywhere there are people, you’ll find community. Whether the common factor is as macro as the political party you support or as niche as a?society for cardiothoracic surgeons, community, and its power are undeniable.

What can community do for your business?

The reason for ‘community’ gracing our screens, news articles (and indeed this blog) is because people are now truly realising the power that community can provide, both for the overarching vision of your company and its financial success. Not only can community rally an army of ambassadors to your cause but it can also ensure results that vastly outperform normal market expectations too.

Take?Ecologi, for example; a client I am working with via Suuuper to help launch their new?Ecologi Zero?product, but a company I’ve been lucky to watch grow from just an idea to where it is today — planting 75,000 trees?every day?and rapidly approaching it’s 50 millionth tree, in under 3 years of trading. However, not only has their ability to rally a community behind the mutual aim of “collective action” been remarkably impactful on the planet, it has also helped them achieve genuinely hard-to-believe results as a business too. My favourite example of this is their churn rate which, vs. an?average SaaS churn rate?of 3–8% is?just 0.4%.

This isn’t luck; it isn’t happenstance, it’s a community strategy, centered around a collaborative mission — in this case, to save the planet — which drives people to not only sign up but stay. And the good news is that you can employ the same strategies to do similar things for your business too.

How to ‘do community’ for your business

So where do you start? Well, as mentioned,?I’m more than happy to help. However, in a bid to help you get going with the key considerations to make, here are a few things you should factor into your community strategy as you start or scale your business.

Unconditional expectation

While it’s ‘expected’ that, if done correctly, community will impact your business positively, it shouldn’t be pushed as such. Contradictory, you might say, but stick with me here…

The moment community feels forced to its participants is the moment it breaks. Communities are organic beasts, that are formed through delicate understandings of social psychology and micro-actions that create action. While exposure to the community is vital to discovery in the first place, people must opt in to feel genuine value in being part of it. One of my favourite visual metaphors for this is?this video.

The person dancing does not do it on the requirement that others will join. They do it, purely to dance. However, they likely expect others to join but this is not conditional in their dancing in the first place. Consider this when building a community around your customers, your partners or your workforce to ensure participation, enjoyment, and retention.

Deep vision alignment & managed expectations

Find the “why” of your community. Much like?Simon Sinek’s famed TED talk?suggests your business requires a?why,?your community needs one too. If people do not clearly see the common point of connection between themselves and the others in the group you form, they will not know?how?to engage effectively to give & get value. Ideally, you’ll find something powerful and ‘go deep’ on it, allowing for an emotional connection to form, bringing about passionate engagement and the retention we’ve already discussed.

In doing this, though, it’s also important to manage expectations. People like to be surprised with value when it comes to business and business communities are no exception. Promise sufficiently to gather people in the first place, the. provide them with more or a better experience than expected and they will stay. This may be as simple as ensuring clear communication of what is happening in your community or as obvious as more events, opportunities or hands-on support, but rest assured that these are the aspects that will not only bring about Super-fans but create word-of-mouth ambassadors who will form something of a free sales-force for you to grow too.

Finding the elusive ‘community-product-fit’

If you intend to sell something to your community, then ‘community-product-fit’ is something you’ll want to consider deeply & thoroughly. As discussed in?this previous article, ‘community-product-fit’ can easily be harder to find than the more popularly known ‘product-market-fit’.

Bringing a group of people around a niche subject matter and product that already exists can be a lot easier to do than building the community first and trying to find the rest later. The reason for this is simple: People are complex. Their wants, needs, passions, and emotions differ, yet if you already have the catalyst that bought them together in the first place then you already have your common denominator. Finding the common denominator after the fact is not impossible, but is indeed far more difficult than the alternative. I know this deeply, as I spent 5+ years searching for community-product-fit myself, through my company,?Dffrnt.

Benefits vs. Costs

Building community doesn’t need to be costly. In fact, one could argue that?not?bringing community into your business strategy would be far more costly in the long run. Of course, I’m going to say that, I’m biased, but just as social media marketing became a renowned aspect of growing a business in the modern world, community is rapidly becoming non-optional, and arguably has been a factor for longer than we care to realise.

Any great brand should consider community. At the very least, this should be done at a high level, i.e. without the practical applications of events, online forums, and such. Apple is a brilliant example of this. While they are very much transactional when it comes to business practices, it’s hard to argue that they’ve not leveraged the power of community to build a cult-like brand that now sees a tongue-in-cheek online war between Apple and non-Apple product users.

Android vs. Apple memes are prevalent on social media; arguably an inadvertent brand protection strategy that understands the power of a cult-like community and ensures the retention of Apple customers for fear of being rejected.

How to successfully implement community

The full answer to this requires its own article. Arguably a whole series of them. The reality of losing time & customers to incorrect community implementation is why?brands work with me to build their communities. However, if you want to make a start then follow these core rules and you’ll be pointing in the right direction at least:

• Go where your community is?— taking people away from where they’re already hanging out (physically and online) isn’t only difficult it’s potentially destructive to the benefits of community strategy in the first place. Attraction, retention, and commercial capitalisation are all easier if your community is comfortable and not having to learn new habits.
• Manage expectations & overdeliver?— build a community of raving Super-fans by surprising them with unconditional value and they’ll not only stay & play, but they’ll also tell their friends and bring more into the fray for you too.
• Be a genuine part of your own community?— you shouldn’t just serve your community, you should be in it, genuinely. I built Dffrnt by being its first community member. The Ecologi team started out as their own first customers, impacting the planet. Build your community because you passionately care about the vision/product/experience you’re working on. End enjoy it! Others will notice if you do.
• Less is more?— do something simple and do it?unbelievably well. If you overcomplicate things you can come to resent the initiative which will hamper your passion for it; not helpful if you want to see your community succeed which it will do far more easily with you in it.
• Get started?— overthinking community is one reason communities don’t work. Dffrnt started as one meetup of 5 people in a bar and eventually grew into a global community of events for 5,000 people a year across 9 countries.?This Mum Runs?started as a Facebook post by founder, Mel Bound in 2014 and now boasts over 200,000 members around the world.
• Agree clear metrics, but remain adaptable?— you may start out thinking that community will be your product, but it may well be a value add or lead gen for your next product, or vice-versa. Understand what impact you’d like to see from your community but stay open to change, as people, technology, and the world change (the covid-19 pandemic being a clear example of this) the purpose of your community may well change too.

Hopefully, these tips can ensure your community journey as a business gets off to a good start, for you & the brilliant humans you’re bringing together. Building a community can be an amazing way to improve your business's overall experience and reap rewards such as greater customer spending, client retention, staff happiness and many more opportunities. However, it can also be a proverbial pandora's box that, once opened, takes on a life of its own. Don’t let this put you off; I challenge you to go do it and get started and, of course, if you need a hand,?just ask.