Building a Product is Good, Building a Community is Better
Here at Covailnt, we believe that a community is much more than just “a group of people living in the same place”. We like to focus on the definition that a community “is about or having a particular characteristic in common”. Regardless of your beliefs and interests, a community is a safe place where you can feel at home.
I myself am apart of many different communities — the UX design community, Barcelona community, tech community, and the list goes on. What is it that I get from being a part of these groups? Value. I learn and grow by surrounding myself with those who have more experience than I do.
Companies have the opportunity to a) build a product and/or service, or b) option a + build a community that fosters mutually beneficial relationships and encourages conversation.
Building a community takes time. Whether you are starting from scratch or already have an established base, here are a few points to consider:
Find Your Channel
Before you commit to building an online community, think about where your users spend most of their time. Do they hang out in Facebook groups? Do they religiously use WhatsApp or Instagram? If needed, take the time to do some research. You’ll thank yourself later.
Covailnt decided to create a Slack community because a huge number of freelancers turn to Slack to connect with each other to share work, seek opportunities, and offer support.
Don’t Just Push the Product/Service
Sure, it can be very easy to view the channel that you just selected, as promote your product/service, but be careful to not come across as spam. Remember that without users, your product/service will not sell.
Last year we kicked off our Focus on the Freelancer blog series, which is dedicated to highlighting the amazing work of the freelancers in the Covailnt community. To date, we’ve had a chance to pick the brains of project manager Patrice Embry and product designer Mario Rocchi.
This year, we were constantly reminded just how tough it can be being a freelancer. Finding clients, working late, no one said it would be easy. Sometimes we have to laugh to keep from crying, so we created Freelancers in Real Life (FLIRL). Be sure to check it out, see if you can relate, and even submit your own meme.
Have the Community Participate
Instead of having passive conversations, encourage your community to take an active role in the development of the product. People always like to feel like they are a part of something. One example of a company that I believe is doing a good job of this is Adobe with their XD product. As Adobe seeks to build a robust Creative Cloud product for UX/UI designers, they created this page to collect feature requests and file bugs.
Users can submit their own feature request and vote on other features that the would like to see in an upcoming monthly release.
We too want to make sure everyone’s voice is heard. Currently, our Slack group is the go-to place share one’s thoughts about how we can improve. We even created a dedicated channel for collecting feature requests. As we approach the launch of our beta this Spring, one can only expect for us to provide more ways for the community to help us create the product that they want.
Conclusion:
The adage “if you build it, they will come” is dead. Users expect companies to do their homework and create a space where they can connect with other like minded individuals. If businesses take the time to research where their users are, focus on their needs and empower them to actively participate in the creation of the product or service, then they will be able to create a community within no time.
Any community building tips that we missed? If so, be sure to share them below!
The Covailnt community is growing and we want you to be a part of it! Join the conversation happening right now on Slack and add yourself to our growing Freelancer Directory.
