Back in the mid-to-late-nineties, there was a toy released by by Bandai (at least in the US) called a Tamagotchi. It was reminiscent of the classic handheld games of the 80s with a monochrome LCD display that had very rudimentary graphics.
The interesting part about Tamagotchi’s was the “gameplay” (I put this in quotes because there wasn’t really a concept of winning in the traditional game sense). In order to play with your Tamagotchi, it had to be continuously cared for. It needed attention to make it happy and feeding to keep it healthy. Failing to properly feed or even clean up after your Tamagotchi could cause it to get sick and even potentially die.
Many (Most?) Companies Do Community Wrong
I’ll get back to Tamagotchi’s in a moment, but, first, let’s talk about how many companies (at least in tech where I work) handle community. In my experience and observation, many companies delve into or even try to establish communities because they see opportunity to advance company objectives.
- Community will accelerate our top-of-funnel outreach through amplification of our social and content efforts.
- Community will exponentially increase our support capabilities by building on expertise from our customers.
- Community will increase our development pace through contributions to our open source software and projects.
And so on…
Look, companies are naturally self-interested – I get it. But I have rarely seen a company jump into community efforts with any sense of what they intend to give the community. Throughout my career, I have infrequently heard discussion of or much thought given to what the benefit to the community is from the company’s new investment in their community efforts.
Community Needs to be Fed
Communities function like that Tamagotchi. You can’t play with them until you feed them and care for them. Unless you keep those health and happiness meters high, they will not behave in the ways you’d like them to, potentially undermining your efforts and investments.
This goes for any community. Whether it is one you created and managed for your product or open source project or one that previously existed (though especially the latter). All the goals I discussed above are potentially achievable, but they are all withdrawals. By that I mean, they are all things you hope to get from the community, they don’t speak to the deposits you need to make first.
When you don’t feed the community, it’s easy for them to see through those efforts. Your community interaction comes off as self-interested and/or inauthentic. At best, your efforts end up ineffective and, at worst, they actually harm your image within the community you intend to reach.
Communities Can Be Unpredictable
One of the fun aspects of the Tamagotchi was that it could be unpredictable. They had personalities and they evolved in stages, which also affected their behavior. You had to invest time and effort to care for the Tamagotchi, but the outcome was unpredictable because the personality was intrinsic to the specific Tamagotchi and not something you could control.
In much the same way communities tend to have a personality. Existing communities will have already established one that you need to invest time to understand and adapt to. New communities tend to establish a personality over time. If it’s a community you started, you can help guide its tone, but, if you are successful growing it, eventually it will evolve in ways you cannot entirely control.
This is a good thing though, it means you’ve built a community that will be self-sustaining and survive.
You Only Get What You Give
As the New Radicals once said, “We only get what we give.” That’s especially true for community. So how do you do it?
- Give community efforts time! The biggest issue I see is that companies want to see results of their community efforts and see them to quickly, but the community isn’t working for them and, therefore, not on their timeline. The process of feeding and caring for a community is time consuming and often has no easily measurable results at first (for new communities, growth can be one of the few easily measurable metrics). Instead of tracking the outputs, track the inputs. What are the activities we did to foster the community this month?
- Don’t withdraw before you deposit. If you are just starting your community efforts, take the perspective of a community member. What are you going to do for them? How does this community benefit them? It can be money. Meetups and other groups are often reliant on the generosity of whomever manages the group, so money can be a huge help. But it doesn’t have to be money. You could answer questions (without pitching your solution), contribute to mentorship, create programs to empower community members to learn or find jobs. The “what” depends on your community.
- Be a good community member. As Sy Sperling used to say, “I’m not only the Hair Club president, but I’m also a client.” Whether this is your own community or someone else’s, don’t just show up when you need things. Join conversations that have no specific outcome (to you). Be a part of the small talk. Build connections between members (be a connector). Just generally be a good citizen, however that is best achieved in your specific community.
These efforts are a perfect place to utilize your DevRel team, if you have one. This is the kind of interaction they know well and comes naturally to any good DevRel. Where they tend to go wrong is when the DevRel team is burdened with unrealistic goals or timelines around community efforts that are overly focused on output metrics that benefit the company (usually a combination of all of these).
However, community should be a company effort, not exclusively DevRel. First, this helps reenforce that the community commitment is real rather than a DevRel OKR. Second, maintaining a community or even a presence in an external community can be a lot of work.
Done right, community efforts can pay off immensely. It’s why companies see so much opportunity there and, when done right, everyone wins.