Community and Growth Hacking

Growth Hacking & Community
Great Wide Open 2016
March 16, 2016
Ginny C Ghezzo
OSLC Community Manager
Program Director at IBM
1@Ginny Ghezzo #GWO2016 #growthhacking

Growth Hacking and Open Communities
What is Growth Hacking?
What does Growth Hacking have to do with Open Source?
Be Relevant
Pick Your Tactics
Measure & Refine
Keys to doing Community Well
2@GinnyGhezzo #GWO2016 #growthhacking

3
@GinnyGhezzo #GWO2016 #growthhacking
3
3
3

4

1. Product Market Fit
2. Pick the Goal & Tactics
3. Measure, Refine & Optimize
5
“A Growth Hacker is a person whose true north is growth. ”
- Sean Ellis, 2010

Airbnb hacked Craigslist as a
way to automate
advertisement.
$24B Valuation
Spotify integrated with Facebook
logon & news feed to raise
awareness in network.
$8B Valuation
Dropbox provided incentive of
free storage for users to refer
others and made referrals
easy.
$10B Valuation
Upworthy leverages AB Testing to
reduce bounce & make
recommendation. Increase sharing
by 28%
Slack found a product market
fit by creating a market that
did not exist: Organizational
Transformation.
$2B Valuation
Examples of Growth Hacks from Startups
http://growthhackers.com/growth-studies
6

What does Growth Hacking
have to do with Open Source?
7@GinnyGhezzo #GWO2016 #growthhacking 7

Similarities between Startups & Communities
8
Product Market Fit Open source, open standards and other communities grow from a
specific technical need, ability to access code and their vitality.
Cross Promotion Foundations and communities are able to do natural cross promotions.
Use of APIs also encourages synergies.
No to Little Funding Startups face what Open Source projects have dealt with for years.
Keep the budgets low while tweaking for success.
Funnel Growth Hackers focus on Acquisition, Activation, Retention, & Revenue.
Communities progress from Awareness, Consuming, Contributing and Mentoring Others.
Retention Over Acquisition It is cheaper to keep a participant or customer then find a
new one. It is also a lot more fun to keep a community member then lose one!

Product Fit
“You have a good restaurant because you serve good food, not because
you tell people you do” - Nick Berry
9

DjangoGirls is fun to use &
reuse. Easy to use and
various contribution
opportunity through translation
and tools.
“Peace Corps for Geeks”
leverages open APIs and open
data to organize projects &
deliver solutions.
Eclipse leverage analytics and
AB testing to monitor the
health & growth. Including
commits, closed tickets, traffic,
etc.
Women of OpenStack acquire
new contributors through tactics
including internships, meetups,
and ‘an amazing culture’
Apache Software Foundation
leverages affiliation tactics
such as committer blog
aggregation & ‘powered by’
logo.
Cloud Foundry leverages SEO
and automation to optimize lead
generation with a focus
approachability for end users.
Examples of Growth Hacks from Community
10

“Growth Hacking is not selling ice to
eskimos. Growth Hacking is selling ice to
polar bears & bartenders.”
- Ginny Ghezzo
11

Pick Your Tactics
“Content is fire, Social Media is gasoline. ” - Jay Baer
12

Example: Opensource.com Bets on Writers
Opensource.com believes that good writers, provide great content which grows their
community.
Opensource.com invests in their Writers
Great topics, themes and series
Style guides
Free, Professional editing services
Opensource.com invests in keeping their Writers
Community Moderators to maintain connections
Mailing lists & social media connection
Make writers successful and proud
13

“Our ability to execute has been amazing.
We experiment & we give the people what
they want. The only way to do this is to track
the numbers.”
-Jen Wike Huger
@JenWike
14

Measure & Refine
“The price of light is less than the cost of darkness. ” - Nick Berry
15

Example: IBM Steps Up again with Hyperledger
What did IBM do with Hyperledger
The Linux Foundation announced The Hyperledger Project to develop enterprise
grade, open source distributed ledger framework.
IBM donated 44,000 lines of code to the Hyperledger Project.
What it learned from past donations
Partner with innovative companies in various disciplines.
IBM Garages provide design & implementation collaboration for business.
Easy of Setup for experimenting and contributing.
Get Started here today http://www.ibm.com/blockchain/
@GinnyGhezzo #GWO2016 #growthhacking 16

“Why open source for IBM? Quite simply
because speed of innovation can only
happen, for ALL ecosystem members, if we
all work together with a common purpose”
- Johanna Koester
@jokoester
17

Keys to doing Community Well
18@GinnyGhezzo #GWO2016 #growthhacking 18

How Open Communities Do it Well
1. Be Useful - Stay simple
“If advertisers spent the same amount of money on improving their products as
they do on advertising then they wouldn't have to advertise them.” - Will Rogers
(1879-1935)
2. Be Helpful - Get to the point, Be available
“If you really care about starting a movement, have the courage to follow and show
others how to follow.” - Derek Sivers
3. Be Nice - Beware of insider talk, foster new users
“Do you know what people want more than anything? They want to be missed.
They want to be missed the day they don't show up.” - Seth Godin
4. Be Flexible - Stay Relevant
“There is no innovation and creativity without failure. Period.” - Dr Brene Brown

20

More free Advice
1. Community needs both value and direction. Corporations pay
membership fees for value, developers contributing because they
believe in the direction.
2. People participate because the love: the love the the code and the
friendships being developed.
3. Leverage Analytics.
4. Quality of commits, quality of releases are the value.
5. For Open Source, the funnel moves people from consumers to
contributors.
6. Make it easy for companies to vet both consumption of and
participation in Open Source.
7. Having a code of conduct matters for inclusion and retention.

Links Worth Knowing
OpenSource.com - http://opensource.com/
Open-Services.net - http://open-services.net/
developerWorks Open - https://developer.ibm.com/open/
GrowthHackers.com - http://growthhackers.com
Definitive Guide to GrowthHacking - https://www.quicksprout.com/the-definitive-guide-to-growth-
hacking/
Treat Open Source like a Startup - https://hacks.mozilla.org/2014/05/open-source-marketing-with-
velocityjs/
Startup Generator - http://tiffzhang.com/startup/
A Beginners Guide to Growth Hacking -https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RnpLCiuMgcU
The power of vulnerability - https://www.ted.com/talks/brene_brown_on_vulnerability?language=en
The Tribes we Lead - https://www.ted.com/talks/seth_godin_on_the_tribes_we_lead#t-71877
How to start a movement - https://www.ted.com/talks/derek_sivers_how_to_start_a_movement?
language=en
22

Questions and Discussion
Personal Thank You to Kai Maetzel, Johanna Koester, James Bogner,
Adam Martin, Deirdre Clarke, Pat Huff, Dragos Cojocari
23

Useful Quotes
1. "Do something that is so good, that is so valuable that users can't help to talk about it."
2. "Make space for others to be part of it"
3. "Make events regular, predictable, consistent"
4. "Open is the expectation now. Community and Momentum Differentiate"
5. "Bucket with holes needs fixing, not more water"
6. "As with any library, it is used because it is useful, not because it is trendy or hip"
7. "Two goals to open: Write Less Code & Get others to access what you are doing"
8. "What is the proof that it is good, stable, has longevity, performs, etc?”
9. "Is it still relevant"
10. "StackExchange is my community"
11. "Stay relevant to the developer community"
12. "Know the motivation of your participants"
13. 'Mastery, Autonomy, Purpose: Are they getting these? Are they seeing the good?"
14. "There is momentum"
15. "Start small, build credibility, spread naturally" - Nick Berry
16. “It is the taste of the fish, not the fisherman” - Nick Berry
17. “The price of light is less than the cost of darkness.”
18. "When you have credibility, people will help, people will talk & spread the word"

Community and Growth Hacking

More Related Content

What's hot (20)

Similar to Community and Growth Hacking (20)

Recently uploaded (20)

Community and Growth Hacking