The Art of Creating a Community

I admit it: I’m a user-group junkie. I got my first taste of user groups when I worked for Apple—speaking at their meetings was one of my great pleasures. Their members were unpaid, raging, inexorable thunderlizard evangelists for Macintosh and Apple II.

These folks sustained Apple by supporting its customers when Apple couldn’t—or didn’t want to—support them itself. Now that Apple is the homecoming queen again, there are lots of people receiving, taking, and claiming credit for its success. The Apple user-group community deserves a high-five tribute too.

Now that I gotten that off my chest; I can move on to the topic of this entry: how to create a kick-ass community. I anticipate many comments to this entry, so I am warning you in advance that I am going to modify and supplement this entry frequently. RSS readers beware! :-)

1. Create something worth building a community around. This is a repeated theme in my writing: the key to evangelism, sales, demoing, and building a community is a great product. Frankly, if you create a great product, you may not be able to stop a community from forming even if you tried. By contrast, it’s hard to build a community around mundane and mediocre crap no matter how hard you try.

2. Identify and recruit your thunderlizards—immediately! Most companies are stupid: they go for months and then are surprised: “Never heard of them. You mean there are groups of people forming around our products?” If you have a great product, then pro-act: find the thunderlizards and ask them to build a community. (Indeed, if you cannot find self-appointed evangelists for your product, you may not have created a great product.) If it is a great product, however, just the act of asking these customers to help you is so astoundingly flattering that they’ll help you.

3. Assign one person the task of building a community. Sure, many employees would like to build a community, but who wakes up every day with this task at the top of her list of priorities? Another way to look at this is, “Who’s going to get fired if she doesn’t build a community?” A community needs a champion—an identifiable hero and inspiration—from within the company to carry the flag for the community. Therefore, hire one less MBA and allocate this headcount to a community champion. This is a twofer: one less MBA and one great community.

4. Give people something concrete to chew on. Communities can’t just sit around composing love letters to your CEO about how great she is. This means your product has to be “customizable,” “extensible,” and “malleable.” Think about Adobe Photoshop: if it weren’t for the company’s plug-in architecture, do you think its community would have developed so quickly? However, giving people something to chew on requires killing corporate hubris and admitting that your engineers did not create the perfect product. Nevertheless, the payoff is huge because once you get people chewing on a product, it’s hard to wrest it away from them.

5. Create an open system. There are two requirements of an open system first, a “SDK” (software development kit). This is software-weenie talk for documentation and tools to supplement a product; second, APIs (application programming interfaces). This is more software-weenie talk for an explanation of how to access the various functions of a product, and it’s typically part of a good SDK. I’m using software terminology here, but the point is that you need to provide people with the tools and information to tweak your product whether it is Photoshop, an iPod, or a Harley-Davidson. Here’s a non-tech example: An open system school would enable parents to teach courses and provide a manual (SDK) for parents to understand how to do so.

6. Welcome criticism. Most companies feel warm and fuzzy towards their communities as long as these communities toe the line by continuing to say nice things, buying their products, and never complaining. The minute that the community says anything negative, however, companies freak out and pull back their community efforts. This is a dumb-ass thing to do. A company cannot control its community. This is a long-term relationship, so the company shouldn’t file for divorce at the first sign of possible infidelity. Indeed, the more a company welcomes—even celebrates criticism—the stronger its bonds to its community.

7. Foster discourse. The definition of “discourse” is a verbal exchange. The key word here is “exchange.” Any company that fosters community building should also participate in the exchange of ideas and opinions. At the basic level of community building, your website should provide a forum where customers can engage in discourse with one another as well as with the company’s employees. At the bleeding edge of community building, your CEO participates in community events too. This doesn’t mean that you let the community run your company, but you should listen to what they have to say.

8. Publicize the existence of the community. If you’re going to all the trouble of catalyzing a community, don’t hide it under a bushel. Your community should be an integral part of your sales and marketing efforts. Check out, for instance, this part of the Harley-Davidson web site dedicated to the HOG (Harley Owners Group). If you search for “user group” (with quotes) at Apple’s site, you get 112 matches. (The same search at Microsoft’s site yields 16,925 matches—I’m still pondering what this means!)

Comments

[Christian Sarkar]

Guy- I enjoyed your post and I must say I totally agree with your eight points. Here's some more food for thought. You've described what I call a "product" community, i.e. the ecosystem of users and abusers that forms organically around a great product.

My question is: "Is it possible to build a community around an interest or a topic, and then use it as a platform to develop products, services, and experiences -co-creating value with your community members?"

I've been thinking about this for a while. I've discussed it with John Hagel and the late John Rheinfrank. I even have a sketch for it here: http://www.christiansarkar.com/2006/02/building_a_digital_business_pl.htm [click on the diagram!]

Finally, for companies that don't have the resources to build a full blown community (and believe me, Guy, it takes more than one dedicated geek) the quick-start way to community is blogging.

I spoke about this in some detail in the book "Blog! How the Newest Media Revolution is Changing Politics, Business and Culture" by David Kline and Dan Burstein...
see article at http://www.doubleloopmarketing.com

[Ken Keller]

Several years ago, in 2000, my brother and I were in Cupertino taking a week-long class given by 4D, a pre-cursor to re-writing the application that his business runs on.

While we were there, we noticed that the 4D User Group meeting was being held that week at Apple's campus.

This gave us a chance to do two interesting things while out there. We went to the UG meeting and found that the president of 4D, Brendan Coveney was there to provide a briefing of future developments. It was a lot fun. As an added bonus, numerous people went out for dinner afterward at a nice mandarin restaurant and Brendan picked up the tab.

Everybody was very gracious and we had a good time.

[Sean Tierney]

Guy, good stuff. I would add a few important pieces though. I helped start the Coldfusion Usergroup in Phoenix back in '99 and learned a great deal about building communities from that effort (http://www.azcfug.org/). Some lessons I learned from that project:

1. delegate early on - by chunking the roles in the group and handing responsibilities to people not only do you offload some of the tasks from yourself but you get buy-in from others and build inertia with multiple people aligned towards the same goal.

2. schwag always helps- as funny as it sounds, you cannot underestimate the value of giving away free stuff at meetings. making a raffle out of it just became standard policy for our CFUG.

3. get good speakers but also invite speakers from within- it's always good to have prominent speakers come but the show & tell meetings (where we encourage a few people within the group to show off their talents) have been some of the most memorable and productive meetings we've ever had.

4. your meetings are only as good as how they change people- remembering this fact is probably the single thing you can do that will most improve your group. Align everything you do with the question of "what can we do differently tonight that will ensure this info gets used and makes a behavioral change for the attendees?"

other than that, i think you nailed it with your list. Check out the latest initiative I'm involved with-> http://www.Grid7Labs.com. According to my business mentor (her words), "you guys realize you are going to change the way _work_ is done."

-sean

[Mark H]

Great post.

One suggestion I might add to this is to provide a framework to let discourse happen, and for the host to fully appreciate the boundaries of that framework. This is especially important for corporations who want to create communities.

By framework, I'm suggesting giving people an idea of where the boundaries are. Some companies frankly really aren't interested in a true open dialogue. That may be OK, but set that expectation up front, in terms of guidelines and rules that help people know what's open for discussion, and what might be moderated. If you set expectations early, that helps.

A lot of the companies I previously worked with to set up sponsored communities didn't really fully appreciate this, and were sometimes disappointed in the results.

Granted, putting a tight framework on your community might create a chilling effect, masking potentially dangerous issues affecting your company or brand. It might also scare off influencers, who you really need in any community, to help get it going, and to drive discussion among the community while bringing new people to the table. The companies I worked with that fully embraced openness, warts and all, found great customer insights, and were able to convert skeptics and build evangelists as a result.

The last thing I'd suggest is making it really freakin easy for people to participate, and to be alerted when there's relevant/interesting content to participate in. In my time building community products for Yahoo, it was really easy to see when a community product was successful, not just in the stength of content, but in the measure of retention.

[Dustin Robertson]

Hello Guy,

The amount of absolute truth you write every week is astounding Seth turned me onto your blog so I guess that would be reason 1001 how Seth makes me smarter.

Being a retailer http://www.backcountry.com we thought it would be difficult to create a community but as you point out in idea number 2 all you have to do is ask. http://www.backcountry.com/store/horde.html

We are still in community infancy and just beginning to allow the community to flip the funnel. However before we ask the community for too much we need to have an excellent plan to raise the importance of community members. Face it we all want to feel important and I believe this is vital to community success. I think you brushed this topic in point number 8 but it is worth mentioning that making individuals feel important we ensure long term health of the community.

[Guy Kawasaki]

Christopher:

Thanks! "Toe" it is.

Guy

[Johan Hjelm]

When you work with user communities, you learn something: Swallow your pride.

Why do you think companies react with surprise to the formation of communities? Because they had a definite idea about what their product was for, and users told them differently. If the company is really about satisfying developer dreams, rather than customer needs and wants, goodbye market, and hello angry community.

Second thing: The community may not be the customers, it may be the customers customer; or the vendor of the adapted product to the customer (The community which careas about earth movers are not the resellers - which are the customers - but the guys who dig the trenches with them; and the community which matters to Microsoft is not endusers (obvious), but developers - as was noted in another comment).

//Johan

[met]

A few more years and you'll find more user groups at apple and maybe lesser at microsoft ;)
Times are changing.

Apple isn't nice to its community. Yes they do churn out great products - but they treat their users as novices.

[Christopher Mahan]

Item 6: it's "toe the line", not "tow the line".

coming to you from Grisanzio's blog.

[Sean Ammirati]

Great post!

In addition to #5 where you ask the community to build something, you should also show them what you built based on their input.

I believe the person responsible (#3) should report into the product manager.

[Alper]

I am just about to start on an effort to get my company on board of the Cluetrain and build a community around our customers.

Your post is great and gives some valuable talking points around the subject to rally people with.

Keep up the good mojo!

[k-ro]

Nice post. Another great example of a community formed around a product is:

http://virtualweberbullet.com/

If you ever want to get into smoking your food, check it out!

Karl

[Didier]

Guy,

The first think I want to say is that It's quite rewarding to see how the people involved in a community can react and be happy to contribute.
(see the faces of Alain and his soon athttp://www.macinside.be/galerie/v/reunions/20051206/IMG_2286.jpg.html)
A lot of others are just consuming it but they will hopefully one day be an active part of the stuff.

You are probably right but the 112 results are general documents using the terms "user group" (try "users group").
It's not refering to the numbers of MUG (Mac Users Groups) at all (see http://www.apple.com/usergroups/find/).
It's also quite difficult to count the MUG users groups in the world.
The MUG Center is another good starting point for the ones intersted in this kind of engagement (http://www.mugcenter.com/).

"If you search for “user group” (with quotes) at Apple’s site, you get 112 matches. (The same search at Microsoft’s site yields 16,925 matches—I’m still pondering what this means!)"

Good luck to the fools ! Didier (Belgium - MacInside.be)

[Mark Sylvester]

Guy, we have been working with people who want to build Communities using our Social Networking Platform, introNetworks.

This platform is the basis for over 70 Communities right now, from Intel to Adobe, AD:TECH to The Holocaust Museum, we have been creating customized Communites to serve the exact ideas you mention in this information blog.

Building a Community is easy. Growing it, nurturing it, communicating with it is where you really have to focus your daily efforts.

Cheers
Mark Sylvester, Co-Founder, introNetworks.com

ps. We enjoyed your talk at UCSB a couple of years back - and seeing you at DEMO last year.

[Jon Schwartz]

Thanks, Guy! I've spent the last 7 months (and still am) building global community around our Kid's Programming Language - educational freeware whose success has pretty much been defined and driven by volunteer effort, support, and word-of-mouth. This post is most encouraging and useful, thanks!

[Chris Brogan...]

The first and only time I ever saw you in person was at the first (that I knew of) Mac user group meeting at MIT in Cambridge. Even then, you had great presentation chops, and you kept a room attentive and happy they came. When I read this post, I felt nostalgic. Thanks!

[Jan]

Re the question of what it means that Microsoft has many more references to user groups than Apple on its site:

A) Maybe Microsoft has a lot more text on its site than Apple… ;-)

B) More seriously, there are different kinds of user groups. Some, like BMUG, exist to celebrate the greatness of the product, as it were. Others may be more alike to multiple sclerosis self-help groups*, offering advice and consolation to fellow sufferers.

My own prejudices (yes, I’m a Mac user…) lead me to believe that Microsoft user groups may be closer to the latter type of user-group than typical Mac user groups. (Although Omer, above, certainly has a point about developers.)

For the company making the products it may not matter that much: In both cases it makes good sense for them to support the user groups. Either you help spread the joy, or you alleviate the pain. In both cases, total user satisfaction goes up.

[olivier blanchard]

... You had me at one.

[Faruk Ateş]

9. Keep your community on its toes. It's great to have a close relationship with your community, but keep a sensible distance. Don't share too much information about new products or features with them. Communities love to speculate, but surprise them every so often and prove their speculations wrong and they'll love you for it.

[Deepak]

I just forwarded this post to all my product marketing colleagues

[Damon Billian]

My personal Rule#1:

Don't forget that community is about your customers (or potential customers) first.

[Mark Curphey]

Great post. I am about to start embarking on building a new community based on information security policy, standards, regulation and compliance. The last one I built was OWASP (http://www.owasp.org) and is referenced by the FTC and many others. It was a great learning experience. One thing I learnt but didn’t see discussed the topic of balancing quality, quantity and openness.

In the beginning OWASP flourished as I labored 80 hour weeks to produce documentation and we brought together all of the bullet points you describe. Perfect storm ! Quantity and originality were the key factors. However as projects become successful you often start to attract the wrong kind of person; those pushing an agenda or those that are not really leaders in the field. Conventional wisdom says meritocracies win out but in reality sometimes "he who speaks loudest and most often wins". The result is often a lack of quality and you become a victim of your own success.

When I do this again (doors open to next community on April 1st) I will pay careful attention to a balance of quantity and quality and try to balance business motivations and altruism. OWASP is somewhat suffering today as a result of missing this and as a result is the defacto standard today due to its historic position rather than thought leadership. Maybe this is a natural evolution (this was the perspective of Ward Cunningham when I spoke to him) but I think had I understood the organic nature of communities more the project would be an even greater success.

Summary; understand the needs of your audience. Is quantity important (completeness of topic covered) or Quality (depth of knowledge in specialist areas). And understand the organic nature of human interaction !

(Of course this all applies to non-company evangelist communities)

[karibu]

great blog but what's wrong with the MBAs ?!?

[kevin]

Great insight Guy. BMW motorcycles has a similar user group site that is a perfect example of what you are talking about here. Another thought on user groups is that most people in today's society have a fundamental need to belong to some sort of community. Great Brands/Products always form that sense of belonging in their said space.

[Ted Smith]

Networking: Laggards and 'freaks'
CHICAGO, Feb. 13 (UPI) -- Are you a laggard cubicle dweller? An early-adopting connectivity junkie? Or a PIM -- personal information management -- freak? Whatever the situation may be, developers of networks are increasingly stratifying their marketing as they target these mobile professionals, experts tell United Press International's Networking.

The objective: providing the right technology and solutions to the next 100 million global users who incorporate mobile networks into their work lives. By Gene Koprowski