Optimizing the product-community loop - Discovery | Validation | Growth

Editor's Notes

• #2: Product success is measured in numbers, but it's driven by humans (customers), & so human interactions are what will help you grow faster & build a better product.
• #3: First, a little housekeeping…
• #4: I am NOT going to talk about these things (though I might refer to them). They’re all deep topics that deserve their own talks.
• #5: The fundamentals of how an engaged community of power users can help you grow faster & build better Just enough community management knowledge to let you find & empower your own communities. Who here is familiar with the idea of user councils? / Who has built one? (This will be fairly familiar to you, but I'm going to offer ways of going beyond the limits those classically have)
• #6: Finally, just so you know my context in sharing this: Tech Ed / Product Marketing / Developer relations / Product management (with a little event management sprinkled in)
• #8: Essentially, it’s a structured approach to acknowledging, engaging, and collaborating with your users in a way that benefits all parties.
• #9: Just for context, let’s look at a few examples of what this might look like. Digital & physical products! Tesla UK group – 5500 members – “Electric mobility / future-facing” Microsoft MVP - ? – “Deep experts / passionate about better software” Anova Fam – 38.5K - “precision cooking / food experimentation” ProdPad Slac – 664 – “Building better products / product processes”
• #10: I don’t know the full context, but here’s a 100% un-self-conscious 40-something mom just celebrating. And here’s a forum where Meetup Organisers go to talk about the pain points they have with the meetup platform, and the hacks they use to get around it.
• #11: So the first question is…
• #14: Dr of Anthropology Genevieve Bell - previously a senior fellow at Intel, leading Sense & Sensors team. Talked extensively about what it means to be Human in a Digital World: - Need for connection, distinct self-identity, use of objects & symbols. (I'll come back to that later). We naturally seek to be members of a communities, ways to craft a clear self-identity for ourselves, use objects and external signifiers to do that.
• #15: The good news is that this community is already out there in the world. If you have a clear vision & a strong mission behind your product, you have an opportunity to align customers around how you want to change the world.
• #16: support forums / sales leads / existing product feedback / social media. These people are the seed for something else that's going to help you discover and validate new features, and ultimately to grow your customer base. Identify your most passionate customers (drawing some sense of identity from your brand), You can collaborate with them to improve your product & drive growth.
• #18: Jump ahead to explore some of the tangible outcomes then we’ll come back to how you get there.
• #20: A user countil is made of up anywhere up to 10-15 very engaged customers representing the broad demographics of your user-base Extremely strong relationship with. You might bring them into your offices to build face-to-face rapport. in-depth interviews, surveys & enthnography studies. Extremely time-intensive, and difficult to sustain for the long term (both for your teams and your customers!) Reduces the stress of research recruiting. High context – advocates.. http://seedcamp.com/resources/all-hail-the-customer-council/
• #21: Give you users something visible to band around Users have a limited amount of cognitive / emotional energy depending on how intrinsic your product is to their identity, they’ll have more / less, but you are asking a lot. Join community for their own goals, their own self-identity
• #22: Your community can derisk what you do by giving early validation and assisting growth / market penetration. They are stakeholders and experts. Early on, - WoM marketing & inbound referrals. Internal champion. Active in your forums or on social media, helping others get the most out of your product Rapid product research and feature testing, And they can often help generate content that supports and markets your product. 1:9:90 - Bradley Horowitz at Yahoo Groups (2013) https://www.forbes.com/sites/forbescommunicationscouncil/2017/12/12/the-1990-model-a-new-approach-to-b2b-influencer-marketing/
• #24: Growth is about finding & activating new / untapped markets. You’re missing a powerful tool if you’re not finding and activating your EXISTING users. Your power users have taken on some element of your mission – they want you to win (think sports teams)
• #26: Okay, now here’s the chunky bit – how do we actually build these communities & work towards these power-ups?
• #27: Product manager! Discovery / Validation / Marketing / Support – key goals will define who in your org is leading. Essential. This set’s the internal “Why” of the community I’ve lived through a leaderless community, and it’s hard for everyone involved.
• #28: Critical. If you can’t define a healthy boundary condition for your community, it’s not really a community. Helps you define who to invite / exclude (& when)
• #29: Most want to be inclusive, but also need a boundary to protect the space - tension between diversity and coherence. Who defines who the community is for and what the criteria are to join. External Why should derive from some combination of your product vision & your internal why. Who / Why are hard to change, so important to get as close as possible to “right” early on. How & What are easier to change, and fundamentally defined by your product / community / goals / preferences.
• #31: “Who” & “Why” give clear guidelines on who to welcome You need clear guidelines on when to apply controls, and when to exclude people / adjust the community. Can be as simple as a code-of-conduct. A lack of membership criteria & intervention protocols will cause you a world of pain.
• #32: Satisfaction / joy v.s. tangible reward. A combination of both is likely. Just be wary of accidentally replacing intrinsic with extrinsic. If you ever take the extrinsic away, you might quench the behaviour. Extrinsic motivators tend to focus attention on the anticipated reward – great for so-called algorithmic / mechanical tasks. Intrinsic motivators tend to focus attention on the challenge itself, ways of achieving an “optimal” outcome – more critical / creative thinking. Research Kathy Seirra on building excellent products by understanding user needs and empowering user goals.
• #33: Other than things, most of these motivations is a subtle blend of intrinsic / extrinsic. Who here is aware of the Kano model? Worth looking up – at it’s core, it states that things that start as delighters become satisfiers & then requirements. People rapidly normalise things / develop a sense of entitlement. Inflation in the motivational economy – intrinsic is more robust “currency”, but it’s not immune. Make sure you give context & caveats when you’re empowering users. If you can bring your most ardent users closer into the organisation and collaborate with them, you build a stronger sense of identity, and an intrinsic motivation to help you improve and grow.
• #34: You ALWAYS need a plan for intervention & escalation (to protect the space)
• #38: Minimum Viable Community Canvas from community-canvas.org. Collaboration of community builders and facilitators. Constantly evolving, but a great tool for quickly outlining… Identity (Blue) Experience (Red) Structure (Green)
• #39: Betsy / Michel / Fabian are all powerhouses in the community space – expert facilitators, community designs & enablers. Donna – “The User’s Journey” – this is all about human narrative arcs (inc. your product). Emily – “Building Successful Communities of Practice” – GDS. Donna / Emily have great talks online.