I had a coaching session recently with a product leader whose product could benefit from a mutually supporting community of users and developers. This conversation made me think in a structured way about the importance of communities to many products. Key takeaways from the conversation:
Building and managing a community can be the difference between getting traction the hard way or the easy way
Building a community takes time so requires previous investment to provide value when you need it
Community management takes a significant amount of time and effort
Clear objectives for building and maintaining a community must be defined to help prioritize community-related work
An incremental approach to community building tends to yield the best results
This last bullet is particularly important as you initiate community-building. You should think of leveraging the same Agile principles you are likely using to develop your product. Start small and actively engage with participants to maximize early learning. The first "group" you address will require significant hand-holding to ensure they're receiving value for their investment in time and effort and to maximize your learning.
While PMs are accountable for articulating the potential value of a community and getting the ball rolling, it is difficult to manage a product and a community at the same time. At scale, your organization may require a dedicated roll accountable for promoting the health and value of the community.
I've directly experienced and witnessed organizations falling into the following "traps" when attempting to build a community:
Lack of Planning
Throwing up a Slack workspace or a forum is relatively easy and inexpensive these days. The community will not build itself and produce the results you expect in your head.
Underestimating the Required Effort
It takes time to keep a community engaged. If you're lucky, it will reach critical mass and the members will generate most of the interaction. Getting it to that point and keeping their attention, however, will require a lot of work.
Failing to manage continuity
Many communities start with a bang and drift into obscurity because insufficient consistency is invested in maintaining them. Planning can help you ensure you reserve the necessary cycles to keep the community thriving.
So what’s your experience with community-building? Please share what you’ve learned.