Community Marketing, Illustrated in 3 Charts

Community Marketing is a good way to fuel a sustainable growth. Here are few doodles pondering what is Community Marketing and how to do it the right way.

1. The Holy Grail of Community Marketing

Examples of what the Holy Grail of Community Marketing is:

• HackerNews by Y Combinator: find anything that good hackers would find interesting.
• DocSearch by Algolia: the easiest way to add search to your documentation.
• CB Insights’ Newsletter: stay a step ahead on technology trends, venture capital, startups, and the industries of tomorrow.
• Unsplash by Crew: Free (do whatever you want) high-resolution photos.

2. The Ambition Hierarchy of Community Marketers

Stay connected to your community through social media

• Product Hunt on Twitter: with a mix of automation and personnal interactions, Product Hunt excels in engaging their community.

Create compelling content for your community

• Buffer blog: one of the best source of content about Social Media Marketing.

Invite key influencers to participate in your community

• 500 Startups’ Blog: 500 Startups is really good at leveraging their community to create great content. They often ask their accelerated entrepreneurs, mentors and friends&family to write for them.

Create short term community projects

• SuperSearch by Algolia: A side project built for the Super Bowl allowing find and watch every commercial ever aired during the Big Game. A perfect way to go viral and show to a lot of people how good is their technology.

Organize community events

• Couchsurfing Meetups: Couchsurfing was created to create the largest community of travelers in the world. To keep their community alive, they organize many meetups. A good way to meet their users in-person.

Long term community projects

• Pablo by Buffer: create beautiful images easily to make your posts pop. A good (free) tool for all Community Managers.

3. Community Marketing in the Customer Life Cycle