Recap of Podcast Hangout on “How to Build an Online Community” with community-building expert Bailey Richardson
A summary of the conversation with Bailey Richardson of the Get Together podcast and People & Company
On May 5th, we hung out with community-builder extraordinaire Bailey Richardson of the Get Together podcast and People & Co, to chat about the podcast playlist she curated on “How to Build an Online Community”.
In case you weren’t able to join us, here’s a recap of the podcast hangout conversation that happened with a group of community-builders. We were also joined by Laura Nestler, the Global Head of Community at Duolingo, who was was an interviewee in one of the episodes on the playlist.
🎧 Bailey’s Podcast Playlist
To listen to Bailey’s podcast playlist, visit “How to Build an Online Community”.
✌️ Event Recap
A summary of the key topics and questions that were discussed during the conversation. Identifying information has been removed for privacy reasons.
On purging inactive members from communities
One attendee pointed out how users being purged from the “100s Under 100” designer Slack community (a.k.a Hundos) when they were inactive was interesting. There were questions about how this would work practically between inactive people versus lurkers. Someone else pointed out that that it’s like when you purge subscribers from a newsletter.
Bailey highlighted that the community manager and founder of Hundos, Carley Ayres, communicated expectations to the community members. It allows you to be more human and pay attention to the people who come every week and the people who stop coming. Designers are very deliberate in designing spaces including community spaces.
🎧 Related Podcast Episode: Community inspiration for those stuck at home 💌Creating a meaningful online community with Carly Ayres of “100s Under 100”
Does the purging approach work for communities at scale?
Follow-on question about whether this purging tactic would work as the community scales up its users beyond a few hundred people. In the 1–9–90 rule of social networks, 90% of your users are lurkers and only 10% are contributors. How does that reconcile with the purging approach?
Bailey says it depends on the community you are trying to build. You are looking for people that are very passionate to build a community with you. You won’t be able to track all users, but you can pay attention to your supercharges (i.e. the 10Xers who participate a lot).
🎧 Related Podcast Episode: Community inspiration for those stuck at home 💌Creating a meaningful online community with Carly Ayres of “100s Under 100”
On bad actors in communities
One attendee mentioned that you can have very active members who are also bad actors. How do you deal with them especially when you don’t have the platform tools to moderate properly?
Bailey suggested thinking of it in the frame of “What would the host of a good dinner party do?” They would set expectations and follow through with those expectations. Celebrate good contributors and good contributions.
Another attendee suggested that platforms need to be involved in deliberately designing and creating moderation tools that allows moderators to enforce those expectations.
Does the audience size of your community champions matter?
In the episode with Erin Wayne of Twitch, she mentions that she nurtures both streamers with small audiences in addition to those with large audiences. “Small pebbles can make big ripples”. Pay attention to all users.
Bailey reinforces the message with the key observation that the magic of community-building is recognizing that passion is more important than raw numbers. A passionate champion who might have a small audience, but advocates for you everyday, may be better than a disengaged influencer with a huge audience.
🎧 Related Podcast Episode: Erin Wayne (@Aureylian), Head of Community Marketing at Twitch 👾 Bringing Twitch streamers together around the globe
How do you get to know who your podcast listener community is?
(General discussion topic addressed to the podcasters who were in the discussion)
One attendee who was a podcaster said the episode with Erin Wayne of Twitch reminded them of the experience as a podcaster cultivating community. Podcasts get to know their listeners by collecting data through surveys and meetups (like podcast hangouts!). Find out who these people are and what their stories are.
The beauty of podcasts is that you can niche down to a defined demographic of listeners too.
🎧 Related Podcast Episode: Erin Wayne (@Aureylian), Head of Community Marketing at Twitch 👾 Bringing Twitch streamers together around the globe
Throughout the episodes on Bailey’s playlist, the interviewees positioned the events as an engagement and community retention strategy, but can it also be an acquisition strategy?
No! Math doesn’t work, and it’s easier for the business and the users to discover you via other means (e.g. performance marketing).
The exception was Google developer events where they were able to lower the cost of onboarding as they were able to onboard many new users at once.
Events attract superchargers (i.e. power users) and give them love.
Another potential issue of using community as an acquisition strategy is that on the extreme, it can turn into MLMs and pyramid schemes if there are bad intentions.
🎧 Related Podcast Episode: EP1: How Duolingo Hosts 500 Events a Month And You Can Too and The Dream: Wanna Swim in Cash? (on MLMs)
In an organization with product and community people, how much do and should product people interact with community people? What are some ways to get more product people engaged with the community side of the business?
Product people who care or are deeply involved in UX generally care about community. They recognize the value proposition of community as easy-to-access users for UX research purposes too.
Soundcloud is an example of an organization that embeds a community person in each team. However, there are products within organizations that don’t need to have a community voice, e.g. subscription payments team.
😎 Podcast Recommendations from Attendees
We closed off the event with podcast recommendations from attendees. Check out the playlist of recommendations here.
🔮 Future Podcast Hangouts
For upcoming podcast hangouts, check out https://podyssey.fm/podcast-hangouts
