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David Spinks

I'm David Spinks - I've fostered communities for 10+ years & wrote The Business of Belonging. AMA 📖

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CMX
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Hi everyone! For over 10 years I've worked at the intersection of community and business. I cofounded CMX which hosts a network of over 20K community-oriented professionals that we support with training, events, and research. CMX was acquired by Bevy, a platform that powers all of your virtual and in-person community events, where I am now the VP of Community. I also recently published my new book, "The Business of Belonging" where I share over a decade of knowledge on what a winning community strategy looks like, from metrics to techniques. I'm happy to share my experiences and answer any questions you may have on how to successfully build community, host events, measuring community business value, and building startups.
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Utkarsh Bhimte
Hey Dave, I went through your book and I really got good insights from it, My question is How do you think SaaS builders can encourage their users to engage in the community? also, should they try to encourage? I understand the benefits of community building for a products, but should it be an active effort or a passive? If it's active then I have a small follow up question: In what ways can you promote your community to increase activity there and make it more valuable for your users?
David Spinks
@utkarsh_bhimte It has to be active. "If you build it they will come" is never true in reality. You have to take a proactive approach to connecting with people, creating connections between members, facilitating discussions, hosting events, etc. For SaaS specifically, you have two options: - build community around your product (this only works if you have a lot of customers) - build community around the larger category Examples of building around the larger category are Hubspot's Inbound, Branch's Mobile Growth, Salesforce's Trailblazer community, etc. General rule: you can never force people to take actions. Figure out what they're intrinsically motivated to do, and make it as easy as possible for them to do that.
Younes Al Hyar
Hey David, I'm launching a platform to help Small Creators make money without Ads & Sponsors, simply by connecting with their Community. What niche should I address and how to convince them to use our Website ?
David Spinks
@younes_al most successful communities are built by people who were just solving their own problem. Start with the niche you have experience with.
Daniel Bustamante
Hey Dave, thanks so much for doing this 🙏 My questions: what are the right metrics to look after and keep track of as community builders? Is there a quantifiable way to know whether or not you're doing a good job? I find it very hard to quantify things like belonging, affinity and engagement, which are essential to build a thriving community. I'd love to hear your thoughts!
David Spinks
@dbustac first, you have to know what your business objective is. Don't fall into the trap of just measuring community engagement without understanding how that engagement leads to business impact. A useful tool I share in the book for measuring the business value of community is called The Spaces Model. You can learn more about it here: https://cmxhub.com/the-spaces-mo... Then, when you get into community engagement and health measurement, I look at three things: 1. Are members consistently participating? 2. Are they getting the value they expected? 3. Do they feel safe and welcome in the community? For participation, we look at things like total posts, comments, likes, and stickiness (DAU/MAU). For 2 and 3, we use surveys and interviews. Here's how we run community health surveys: https://cmxhub.com/how-we-run-co...
Abhishek Kejriwal
Hey David, love your tweets on community building. The question and challenge that I am facing is how to retain members in community? I have been able to achieve member acquisition for the community, but they just don't retain. It's a leaky bucket as you would put it. How should I think about making strategies on retaining them?
David Spinks
@abhishek_kejriwal i would recommend diving into the data to understand exactly where they're dropping off. Are people joining and then dropping off right away? Then you might have an onboarding problem. Are people joining and then dropping after a few months? Then you might need to work on the content in the community and kick off some new rituals to keep people engaged over time. Or start hosting regular events to bring people back. Are people joining and then dropping off after a year? Then you might need to create new ways for people to engage in the community and take on leadership positions.
Audrey Lo
Hi David! So great to see you on here! Thank you for taking the time to be a part of our AMA. I wanted to see if you could offer any case studies, stories of your own, resources, or advice on integrating gamification strategies around your community framework.
Arun Kodaganti
I believe this is also sort of community building activity!! My question is to build a community there should be a string that attaches the people in the community of people to the organization and some sort of bond in b/w community members.. How could one can nurture those two in general?
Md Salam Khan
Great indo Thanks
Gloria E Juarez
good
Ashit sharkar
best
Ashit sharkar
wow
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