Marcus RichardsWhen you are building an ecosystem for your business, be it a product or a service—you need to figure out how to build a relevant community. Community building, especially for tech-oriented business is a big part of branding, marketing or whatever else you may call it in business vocabulary.
A community in the tech business domain, and also in other niches, helps foster growth, new ideas, and innovation and also takes center stage in a thriving ecosystem. A community engagement platform is more valuable than you thought of, some years back.
Here is a brief look into how you can go about creating a strong community for your tech business. Of course, the pandemic tag is well in place and the tips are designed keeping in mind the same.
Why Build A Community?
- For starters, a community for tech is a platform to simply support developers and transcend through multiple obstacles. Additionally, this operates as a first defense line in terms of debugging or testing a developer solution before the latter hits the market.
- A community for tech enthusiasts also brings together so many minds in the same domain. All this makes participants get inspired to grow and learn together.
Top Pegs Of Building A Community For Tech Businesses
Take a look at the top things around which to base your mainstream community on. This is mostly relevant to tech communities but works on other niches too.
1. Address A Typical Problem– Begin by identifying a problem that is too common yet overlooked. This will be the easiest way to attract members to your community.
2. Get The Demographic Right– This is where you can falter big time or hit the bull’s eye. Identify your target audience or customers. Work on creating community engagement for them on the right cue. Once you get this bit right, focus on listening to your members. Try to grasp their needs first and engage in active listening. Community management can be best defined as reactive. Yes there could be days of frustration too, but over all, this is like an iterative process.
3. Build a Support System– If you are the community builder or manager, focus on getting your network right. A community can succeed only when you get the right network webbed along. Get to drive more activity among members to foster growth. Do not shy away from asking for help from other sister communities.
How To Empower Community Members?
There are two angles to this question. In terms of community members—there are two groups to weigh in on. These are the builders and the attendees.
- As builders, you need to offer heightened opportunities for others to become social. This could be with the right use of community tools and also through diligent communication.
- As far as the attendees are concerned, (and if you are one), just focus on taking advantage of the events held online. Communicate actively with peers.
- The crux of this point here is to be more social. This will help you grow individually as well as professionally. And once there is individual growth, there is a thriving community for the world to see!
Summing Up
Always remember that thriving tech communities also support people across all stages of their individual journeys. There could be mentorship, guidance, and so much more involved.
Community builders in tech and other niches must learn to truly “give.” What you give to the community is of course very specific to what you are out to build.
There will never be a one-rule-applies-to-all kind of community guideline ever. You need to organically try and bring home the results you envision for your business.
