Why should startups have their own communities?

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Editor's note: This article, written by Feast co-founder and CEO David Spinks, describes the potential help and benefits of an online community (community) for startups, in addition to focusing on product building, Spending some time and resources creating a highly viscous community can help you accumulate more loyal users.

I know it's a bold requirement for a startup to turn their sights on products or growth.

As a founder of a start-up company, I also know that time is our most valuable resource and we often reject many things to keep our focus and rationality.

So why do I have to write an article now to turn your attention to the community? Because I've felt a lot about the benefits that startups get in the community in the first place, and even most of the time they grew up in the community at the earliest.

Lyft, Airbnb, Eventbrite, Lift, Foursquare, SoundCloud, Skillshare, Udemy, Github, binpress, Yammer, HootSuite, Buffer, etc. I can spend a day talking about all the startups that have invested a lot of time and resources in building communities that have built their own communities around their corporate brands and products in areas such as social networking, business-to-business, Business-to-consumer, and hardware devices.

Why are these startups so preoccupied with so many things that they are not left out of the community?

Creating a more participatory preacher

The simplest and most valuable thing a start-up can get from a community is a highly participatory user or consumer.

As long as the process is not wrong, your community can create a sense of belonging, users will feel that they are part of the important things, they will be proud, feel special. They and your brand are no longer just product and function relationship, around the brand is an emotional accumulation.

My mentor, Aki Sano, once said, "When you can find someone who really loves your product, you know that what you're doing is going to work."

and creating a highly cohesive community is no doubt that many people fall in love with your brand, the most direct proof, this user's high participation will also give your business more benefits ...

More grounded gas

Perhaps the most important value is to be able to mingle with the user, your community = your users.

By creating a community where you can interact, communicate, share, and help your users, this helps you to better understand your user base, which is completely different from doing the survey.

When such a highly participatory community is formed, you can even sample individual feedback inquiries, functional tests, or any other places you want them to help.

Supporters Camp

For many companies, users are important to the product's review, such as the App Store rating, where users in the community are the source of your support, and they can stand up to support your product.

Community users are also a source of Word-of-mouth, and when your product home page needs some user-generated evaluation descriptions, you can easily reference the content in your community.

At the same time, for almost every product there will be unintentional or intentional defamation attacks, and community users are likely to stand up to protect you.

The foundation of Future Movement

The community actually has many forms, and some people always say that the most powerful form of community is a movement.

As an entrepreneur, most people have a big vision, and you don't come for instant utility, it's about changing the world.

All the big companies you know now have a small but loyal community in the early days, and the community has become the basis for their later high growth rate, looking at Facebook, Instagram, Ebay, Pinterest, Craigslist, Couchsurfing, Meetup, Yelp, and so on, their communities have developed into a larger form of movement.

Improve the user experience

Humans have always needed communities, a form that has emerged in the early stages of human evolution, satisfying the most basic human needs.

When we feel that we belong to a certain community, this sense of belonging makes us feel happy. This also applies to our products, when the community around the product gradually formed, the sense of belonging will let users feel warm and united.

Defense

Anyone can fake your product, your brand and your design, but the community can't replicate it.

No community is fake, because the community is based on sincere interaction and mutual trust, although it may take some time, but the loyalty of community users will help you invest time to strengthen the brand's influence, which no other company can use for reference.

realizable Resources

Finally, the community is a good business strategy, and the high degree of loyalty and participation of community users makes them potential paying subscribers or repeat customers.

So much, I'm not saying that all startups should start building their own communities immediately, you have to understand why you need a community, and it's important to connect it to your goals. So think about what you really want to accomplish without being able to do it with the help of the community.