@maryann_superlano
If they even speak back at all. I started a Facebook Private Group for my App some 8 years ago. And I only have 200 members, and they rarely ever (with the exception of a few) do anything to lift a finger or help encourage or support their Dev. It is devastating. And worse of all, they do nothing to help share the App. My product EZ Notes (developed by Alexander Madani) has been grown totally from scratch and organically... and I have never been able to make a descent living from 8 years of damn tough work. So it remains to be seen if I will get any break throughs to help speed up the support.
I don't know where to begin to become a community builder :(
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@randexdev You've come to the right place to find out!
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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.
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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.
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Where to prioritize your time and resources to make the biggest impact.
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!
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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?
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Finding the first persons that spread the word and influence others.
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EZ Notes
Invitehouse
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EZ Notes