Breaking Down The Finest Strategies for Building a Successful Community
The gap in community relations is often visible in every company.
Building an excellent Community where members contribute freely is very crucial!
Community builders and advocates are the voice and the human element behind the company brand, product and technologies.
They can serve as the face of a company and are responsible for bridging any communication gap and ensuring adoption through high-impact-driven strategies, programs, initiatives and demand generation campaigns.
As a Community builder in the tech ecosystem, you might want to focus on developer relations techniques such as content creation, events, community relations, social media campaigns et al, but it goes far beyond this, there are key steps that are vital to facilitate this process and produce great success.
Especially in the tech space, having a great product isn’t enough, in order to have a successful product, you need to build a strong community around it.
Do not underestimate the power of a community, if properly watered, they will blossom and flourish, a community can serve as a global representation, and advocate that can help 10x your product adoption. Otherwise, they can serve as a threat or destruction when ignored, disrespected or not properly treated.
Starting by knowing your target audience and focusing on gaining their trust, creating roadmap strategies for different buckets and connecting them through a funnel.
You must establish a community by ensuring the most efficient, supportive, and trusted place for developers to connect with each other, learn and grow personally or professionally while improving brand perception and driving developer acquisition and engagement.
Create a community where Users/Developers feel belonged.
Here is why people joins community!
Cognitive benefits — Value, Learning new skills, learning about new tools, resources etc.
Social benefits — Connection, Recognition, Appreciation, Trust(Feel belonged) etc.
Personal benefits — Job, promotions, etc.
Hedonic benefits — Entertainment, positive feelings, fun
People join the community either for Upskilling, Opportunities, Networking, Resources, or even freebies like Swags Count. It is important to pay attention to every detail and have a listening ear from your community.
Regardless of why they join your community, what matters is ensuring you are providing value to them and this can be done through Acquisition and Engagement strategies as well as Benefits provided.
Developer Relations Strategies to consider first:
Building a successful developer community requires a strategic approach to engage, support, and empower developers. Having worked in this field for the past 8 years, here are some successful strategies to consider:
Create a Value Proposition Plan:
A clear Value Proposition is very vital, this clearly communicates the value and benefits of joining your developer community. Highlight how developers can learn, grow their skills, collaborate with peers, access resources, and potentially gain recognition or career opportunities.
Focus on the Foundation! Ground Floor before building a tower.
Developer Experiences(DX) like Documentation and other educative resources like (demos and videos) are also part of the foundation you build the community.
People as a Tool:
A lack of strong leadership and clear strategy can be detrimental to a DevRel team. It’s important to give team members the freedom to experiment and iterate in order to drive long-term success, rather than expecting immediate results.
Give your new DevRel program time, understand the return timelines of developer relations, and do not expect quick miracles and then fire the whole program before they even had a chance to show results.
It’s a process and sometimes needs time to actualise before evaluation.
This will help ensure a solid foundation and long time consistent results.
Documentation:
Fundamentals like Documentation and clear Communication with the developers' community should be attended to first.
“People won’t make it to your videos or demos most times if they can’t get past the “Getting Started” section of your docs”.
Ensure you provide High-Quality Resources and Documentation. Develop comprehensive and easy-to-understand documentation, then tutorials, quick guides, and API references. Offer code samples, SDKs, and libraries that help developers get started quickly and effectively.
Foster Collaboration and Networking:
This can be the funnel and communication channel where you connect your developers. This will facilitate opportunities for developers to connect, collaborate, and share knowledge in a close group.
This can be done through forums, developer meetups, hackathons, online communities, or dedicated communication channels like Slack, Telegram or Discord.
Always encourage active participation and provide a supportive environment for developers to exchange ideas and help each other.
Build your community like a linear family.
Offer Developer Support:
Design a responsive support system to address developers' questions, issues, and feedback. Provide channels for direct communication with technical experts or community managers who can offer guidance and assistance, iterate on docs and work on code examples.
Regularly engage in open and transparent discussions to build trust and rapport.
Invest in your Community:
Support your developers in educative resources and items. Invest in their growth by providing paid courses and materials. Give them physical tools like laptops, flash drives, Raspberry-pi et al that will help aid their learning.
Provide financial and mentorship support for individuals who are building projects or startups using your technology or product.
Recognize and Showcase Developers:
Acknowledge and celebrate developers’ achievements and contributions within the community.
Feature successful projects, highlight outstanding developers, and offer incentives like badges, certifications, internships or rewards to motivate and engage participants.
Demand Generation and Community Building Campaigns/Programs :
Launch Demand Generation and Community driven Campaigns and programs like Ambassadors programs, Key Opinion Leaders(KOLs) Campaigns et al. These are ways to incentivize users and ambassadors to promote a Product/Project to their communities.
Ambassadors are typically given access to exclusive resources and rewards and are tasked with spreading the word about the project and helping to onboard new users locally.
An example is Atlassian Community, the GDG program and a lot more.
Organize Events and Workshops:
Engineer out workshops, webinars, hackathons or conferences focused on skill-building, industry trends, and best practices. Offer opportunities for developers to learn from experts, participate in hands-on activities, and network with like-minded individuals.
Provide Beta Access and Early Adoption Opportunities:
User and Developer testing is very vital to products before going live or public.
Grant developers exclusive access to new features, beta programs, or early releases.
This creates a sense of belonging and allows them to provide valuable feedback, shape the direction of your offerings, and be the first to leverage new functionalities.
Encourage Open Source Contributions:
Embrace open-source principles and encourage developers to contribute to your projects. Provide guidelines, resources, and mentorship to help them contribute effectively. Recognize and reward notable contributions to foster a collaborative and vibrant ecosystem.
Story Telling:
Storytelling is a powerful strategy for community building as it creates a narrative that resonates with individuals and fosters a sense of belonging and engagement.
Craft a Compelling and Captivating story that illustrates the journey, challenges, and aspirations of the community. Incorporate relatable characters/representations, their struggles, and how they overcome obstacles to achieve collective success. Highlight the community members and their unique contributions. Showcase success stories, personal experiences, and the positive impact they have made within the community.
Storytelling is the easier way for the community to connect and resonates with the value and problem you are solving.
Partnerships:
Partnerships are a quick way to build your community in numbers quickly. You can also spread awareness, visibility and adoption through partnership.
Data Metrics, Feedback and Continuous Improvement:
Regularly evaluate and analyze community engagement, feedback, and metrics. Use this data to identify areas for improvement, refine your strategies, and iterate on your developer community initiatives.
Be Open to feedback and the sentiment from the community.
By implementing these strategies, you can foster an active, engaged, and passionate community that contributes to the growth and success of your platform, product, or ecosystem.
Thank you!
