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Community builders, what's one struggle you face when building a community?
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Pablo Fatas
Being patient. I feel like just spamming everyone and posting to get engagement but a community is more like a plant. You gotta water it and give it sun but then you can’t do much more and wait and let it grow organically
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Especially for PH launch (we launched today and will really appreciate your support https://www.producthunt.com/post...) we build our community from scratch because our product is new for the market. The most difficult part is to tell correctly about all aspects of the product, attract interest and keep it.
I view the task of community building similar to building a marketplace.
When building a marketplace (e.g. AirBnb, Cragislist) it's known to be difficult because you have to satisfy both sides - buyer & seller, renter and rentee, etc.
When building a community, though your audience might be seen as "members", you are essentially making sure someone posts something interesting and there are people who get interested in what is posted.
This means as a community builder, you have to make sure that "interesting" things are always being initiated (e.g. engaging contents are posted, thought-provoking questions are asked etc) and then also there is enough audience for it to engage with.
Having this perspective helped me and my tools (https://www.newsy.co, https://www.hellobox.co) to focus on different areas depending on where the growth is required. For example, you are getting good traffic but not many people are posting. It's probably time to invest in tools that allow people to easily post (build a feature to post a poll? ask a question? do an AMA with a famous person?). People are posting really interesting things, but not many people are engaging? Time to share it on social media?
Hope that helps!
When there are too many similar communities on different platforms and people have more options and hard for them to decide to stay. Trends and people change.
Mostly with
- Low engagements
- Encouragement with new initiatives or exercises
- Selecting the perfect Platform and tools for communication
Personalization
In any successful community, personalization is the key and therefore it has to be well executed. Delivering contextual customer experiences is an expectation for community members.
Individuals today are gravitating toward communities that feel like they listen to them, understand them, and pay attention to their specific wants and needs. This is where Personalization plays a major role.
@dsarkar
I agree... excellent observations. But i have found from my own work on my organizer on Google play (EZ Notes - developed by Alexander Madani) that the Facebook Community members in my private group rarely if ever engage with any posts that ask for their opinions or feedbacks. Its like they are all (heavens forbid) either on vacation, or simply dont care ... i think you know what I mean.....
So I have pretty much given up on my Facebook private group even though I continue to keep updating news and events and upcoming features, launches etc...
My biggest gripe is I don't know how to market my App properly. Even when EZ Notes (say last Friday) won a Tech Review Award from Android Headlines (which you can Google and find my work there)... this had Absolutely ZERO impact on my sales. And its not like my App is totally invisible on the Google Play Store either. If you search for Notes (here in the US play Store)... EZ Notes is like about half way down the page... which is not great but not terrible either. Yet, downloads are extremely slow. I was hoping to be getting like dozens a day... but its nothing like that
@alexander_madani Hi Alex, the popularity of apps is related to a large extent on word of mouth marketing. In case you haven't done it already, here are a couple of things you may choose to do:
1.If you have a website use that to expand your app's reach. Users are using search engines to learn about an app. Ergo, use SEO strategies to target specific keywords and search terms.
Launch and relaunch your app several times. Aggregate places to launch and/or list products. You will find one such list here https://www.indiehackers.com/pos...
2.Instead of generic Call to Actions (CTA) use CTA's that get users thinking about downloading your app.
3. Use an app review plugin and leverage products like Helpshift to provide direct support to your users. The intention here is to increase app review because the number and value of reviews influence the app’s position in search results.
4. Advertise on social media to increase your app downloads. Focus on in-app ads.
5. Guest blogging will help you to build an audience.
6. Utilize the services of mobile app marketing agencies like Appspire.me
7.Get your app featured in media publication. Approach writers, journalists with information and ideas for stories they might be interested in. For instance is your app disrupting the industry?
I hope this helps.
@dsarkar
Thank you so much for you very kind links and information above.
I have some questions please.
From your "Indiehackers" link above that you kindly shared for "Launching and relaunching"
In our case with our SaaS Android Organizer (EZ Notes)....
My product was launched 10 years ago. And one of the things I urgently of course have started doing after all these years of ongoing R&D is that I MUST (In 2023 and going forward) find more and more help and ways to Market and Promote.
As a SaaS business, our company is really relying on Subscribers to VIP (Premium Pro subscription features). This (along with in-app Ads) is what we are using to bring in revenue to operate and stay in business. However, like I say, I have been far more focused in the past decade on first developing a Niche, Reliable, and robust product. But now I am realizing that with costs being super high, I need to shift more focus to marketing.
So here is the question regarding that awesome "Indiehackers" link you shared with me dear friend...
It talks about Launching and Re-Launching on various platforms. But in my own case... I am a little confused because my App was launched in May 2014. So we are way past the Launch phase.
So can I still use all those platforms that it lists under Launch communities (places like StartupBase, BetaPage, etc...) to still post about an App that is already well into its lifecycle? Or do you believe those communities would see that EZ Notes was launched in May 2014 and somehow have an issue and remove the post?
My hunch is that they should not be too strict and would allow me to regularly post there...
But that leads to my next question. Which is that... suppose I do post ( "launch") on those Launch Communities
So is one post enough , or would I have to regularly re-vist those Launch Sites and keep posting something (some updates or what have you) ... in order for more and more people out there on the internet to see and hopefully support EZ Notes?
Thank you!
Engaging with people and staying relevant while building and moving forward with your product. It's not easy to find balance between building your community & product as the same time. Both require consistency & patience.
Finding folks who need our community but don't know that we exist. Like folks commented here, trust is always an issue (it takes time to trust anyone) and patience is sooooo harrrrrrrd but so necessary. I love our members bigtime and our engagement is great, but I always wanna help more mom entrepreneurs.
Getting people to be in consensus about advancing the community, and getting them committed to spend the time and energy towards this. In my experience, everyone has a different motivation for participating in the community, so finding a unified vision that will intrinsically motivate the whole community takes some effort. But if you can find it, the community will take on a life of its own.
I think the timeline for building a community is often overlooked, people want to create a slack channel or a facebook group and then expect to have an engaged group of people constantly chatting and messaging, overflowing with trust and support. Any meaningful relationship with people requires that you develop it over a period of time, with consistent effort. You can't hack connections with people. People don't enjoy feeling used. A community takes time, and trust within the community takes time to earn.
There are many struggles. Some are:
*Engagement
*Giving people a sense of community.
*Moderation
*Getting initial transaction
Engagement. Getting things started with initial participation, though ongoing engagement and participation are the most difficult. We've come up with a few strategies and it also depends on the company and culture / consumer population targeted. Community also - getting people to find it, choose it, use it. There are so many. I see another questions about healthy discussion forums I am going to jump to that one....
Building the Community (meaning encouraging support). That's been my experience plain and simple.
I am the deveooper of: EZ Notes on google play store.
You guys would have no idea what I continue to go through after 8 years, to gain visibility, do marketing, keep engagements high etc. It is absolutely a nighmarish amount of work (especially for one single lone developer trying to do all that on his own like I have been).
If any of you fine folks are developers, and have some ideas of how best to grow a promising (useful app)... please feel free to share those here with me and for the benefit of thers as well. I have been approached many times over the years from marketing companies from India... claiming they will boost my sales and put Google Ads for my Application on Google Play Store to help me get downloads etc... But I never seem to trust that their fees would compensate for the slow downloads. In other words, if they charge hundreds of dollars , there is no guarantee that just because your App appears a the top of the search list on Google Play Store, and has one of those Google "Ad" signs next to it and is at the top of the list... this by no means guarantees anything right? Especially if the App is a PAID app like mine. So that leaves me wondering, how are paid app developers supposed to improve their visibility, growth, downloads etc? Looking at my play store you may think it has been EZ, but trust me it has been anything but EZ and the downloads and revenues for a paid app are extremely slow from my experience. This is why I have come and joined this community to see what I may have been doing right or wrong all these past 8 years (as a single person who has not only had to develop, but market). Literally my entire back and arms are in pain and my health is deteriorating from all this insane amount of desk work and sitting down. So any suggestions and support is greatly appreciated.
Keeping the community nourished in the form of value to the members. This requires time and effort especially when first starting out. Community will not grow when they see no value or do not feel comfortable engaging. Once it catches on with engaged members, it can become easier because everyone is then contributing more (and they will start inviting other like minded people).
Mine is an offline trade...just initiated a whastapp community.
My constant struggle has been how to keep engagement with customers with topics apart from limited product variety I have to offer or price & offers?
Staying relevant! People get really excited to try something new once, but figuring out how to be useful again and again, and keep people engaging over time, that can be so much harder!
For the community, a key challenge has been developing trust. Other challenges include balancing differences in perspective, priorities, assumptions, values, beliefs, and language, determining who “speaks” for the community and documenting intervention success.
@athiele_ There's a great resource from peerboard.com @ https://peerboard.com/resources/... that really goes in dept about online communities, the different types, strategies for building a community from scratch, how to keep members engaged, etc.
Disclaimer: I am not related to peerboard.com in any way, shape, or form. I just thought their article was a lot more in dept than most other articles I came across.
@mdorsett We're using a mix of Slack, Email (newsletters), and Hivebrite. I don't think it's ideal, but we're still in the learning process.
@privard cool, for the slack channels, staying on top of posts, whether it's you, or someone on your team - making sure people get a response, and tagging relevant other members to posts to make sure they see them. Actually "making the connections" and making sure people are not spammy. Newsletter engagement - if you are featuring members make sure they see that NL. IDK anything about Hivebritet so suggest engagement ideas. Will look into it. But also this may be silly but do you have goals of engagement numbers, what does high engagement mean for you? Just some Q's. Maybe the real Q is if engagement is low...what does that mean. :)
Anyway, like you said its all a learning process!
Haven't started building a community yet, but I'm keen to hear thoughts on community building for an app only company versus app and website. I have heard it's easier to build a community with a strong web presence.