Episode Summary
Lately, we’ve witnessed the rise of community-led growth — a go-to-market strategy that relies on the impact, influence, and inputs from a strong, supportive community as the main lever for product and business growth. And having a strong community creates a win-win situation for your users and your business.
But many have difficulties creating a good community because they do not understand what it means. If you really don’t understand your customer or your audience, you’re probably not going to be able to create a good community because a community is not just a place; it’s much more than that.
Joel Primack is the social and community specialist at Lattice, an advisor at Charla, and the co-founder of Revenue Era, a private community. He believes that community is less about what you actually see and more about how people feel in it.
In this episode of Content Logistics, Joel gets into communities and when and why we need them. Joel and our host Camille Trent discuss community-led growth — what it is, how you go about it, and how it can benefit a company or entrepreneur.
Guest Profile
- Name: Joel Primack
- What he does: Joel is the social and community specialist at Lattice.
- Company: Lattice
- Noteworthy: Joel is based in Chicago and has been involved with building communities for three years. Besides being a social and community specialist at Lattice, Joel is an advisor at Charla, the platform of record for community-led sales and marketing. Also, he is a co-founder of Revenue Era, a private, invite-only community that serves marketing teams obsessed with driving revenue.
Key Insights
- The feeling that a community evokes is most important. Community building is becoming more popular and widespread as a way to increase income and growth. With social media, online communities have expanded, but as Joel points out, you shouldn't think of a community as just a place. As he explains, places can be different, and the feeling is what is unique and important to the community. "If people feel safe and they feel comfortable sharing, then you're going to see those elements of high engagement. You're going to see those elements of people attending your programs. You're going to see those elements turn off in your content. Whether you have a podcast, whether you do blog posts, et cetera, people are going to be open and happy to participate in it. Inversely, if they feel unsafe or unsure or any sort of negativity or uncertainty associated with your community, then you're really not."
- Open conversation makes a community successful. If you are looking to build a community, you might consider a Slack channel. And, you can have micro-communities — where you can have discussions and open dialogue — within any social site. Speaking of bringing the community to social, Joel points out that Twitter marketing is an example of community in every sense. "People talk about all sorts of things related to marketing there. There are a ton of people. People use the hashtag to keep their posts within the community. So it's like getting that group and network effect. And it happens similarly on LinkedIn too. You follow who you want to see content from, you engage with those people. People — if they're creators — hopefully engage with the comments in a post, so it does become more than a discussion base. I think that there's a really big difference in terms of how people think and perceive content and value. If someone's talking at you, it kind of feels like you're being talked down to in a way. And no one really loves that feeling. So have a conversation, make it friendly, make it enjoyable, celebrate other people, allow and hold space for different points of view because, who knows, you can change and your opinions can change."
- Why should a SaaS company start a community? Every Saas company has three goals: product-based goals, marketing or sales goals with revenue metrics, and customer satisfaction goals. According to Joel, those are all ways the community can positively impact the business. "I think, as a community professional, it's your job to figure out which one — maybe two at most — you really want to impact through your community program at a SaaS company. And then how you're actually gonna build that program and make it something more tangible — and not just have a Slack channel and think that, 'Oh, we get people here and it's gonna explode.' It's not the reality. I am certainly here today to burst that bubble for everyone who thinks that. So I'm sorry, but it just won't go well."
Episode Highlights
Who Should Own the Community?
“It’s less about who owns it, and it’s more about their commitment to creating a space that people want to be in. That’s valuable. That’s helpful to achieve the mission that it set out to achieve for its audience, whether it’s a community of practice, of customers, or of products. Therefore, it really just depends. I honestly don’t care who owns it. I think it’s just more about the other things like, ‘What do your numbers look like in terms of engagement? Are people active? Do people engage with you and want more and give you feedback?’ Because then that shows that they’re engaged with you and kind of have bought into the shared mission that you are trying to rally people around for the community.”
Lattice’s Mission
“It’s mission is to help our members navigate the new world to work together because it’s just evolved so much in these last few years alone. Even five years or so ago, remote work was starting to kind of creep in a little bit, and people were starting to talk about four-day work weeks, but now it’s like here. Things are different. People want to be digital nomads. People want to work in countries that are halfway around the world in different time zones for three months out of the year. It’s a completely different field today. So that’s really the mission, and so that centers everything that we do for the community around our members — helping them be successful in their roles, grow professionally — versus one that is around product or customers. So that’s really our mission and goal.”
Prerequisites for Starting a Community
“One is: what’s the goal that you’re trying to achieve or impact? Next is: what makes sense for you today and in the future? For example, super early companies, like Gong, Dooly, Outreach, Sendoso, Alice, Chili Piper, et cetera, have all achieved community growth, I feel, and they would probably argue that that’s through sponsoring third-party communities, like Pavilion, Sales Assembly, RevGenius, RevOps Co-op, et cetera. So I think that that’s one way you’re learning more from an existing community. Yes, you’re spending dollars in terms of sponsoring it, of course, but it’s not the same as actually owning it. It’s not the same as being responsible for maintaining all of it.
So that’s one way to go about it. There’s the community of product or customer that I touched on. And then there’s also the community of practice, which we are at Lattice. So I would say to them, ‘Time your goals, figure out where you are today and what makes sense for you today. And then where in the future — should things continue to go well for your business and for the current community program that you decide to go with — what do you want this to grow into?'”
