How can you build a technical community around your product or service?

I'm assuming that if you have already invested or incubated a product or service, then you know who are your target audience. Next step is to make it easy for your customers to adopt it by creating a Technical eco-system around your product.

Make sure you are speaking THEIR technical language. In addition, make sure you are constantly providing NEW VALUE that they may be unaware of, which DIRECTLY taps into solving their pain points and barriers. Before that, you must map and then research each technical persona and job title within your industry, in order to be able to speak their language and understand their pains.

To identify your technical audience, you should ask yourself these questions: • Firmographics: Which type of organization does your ICP work at? (Eg. industry, geo, n. of employees, revenue/funding, etc) • Persona: What team/role do they cover? (Eg. function/team, seniority, years of experience, budget, reporting/collaboration lines) • Technographics: Which apps/tools they use to conduct their work (Eg. Hardware, team specific and org wide software) • Learning curve: What’s the learning curve to become your ICP, and the resources to stay relevant as such (Eg. studies, courses, books, resources, tooling, communities, influencers)

When thinking about setting up a technical community for your product you'll need to address some key points. - Who needs to be in the community? - Is the audience diverse enough? - Will the community offer a real world view or just a techie view? - How do you make your product available to them? - Do you need a platform to host it on, can you give free access, do you want them to play with beta versions? - How do you want them to provide feedback? There are many things to consider but a well formed community who champion your technology/products is invaluable and can not only help with market awareness but accelerate development cycles.

Building a technical community is exciting, but picking the right home for it can feel overwhelming. First, picture your ideal community members. Are they coding wizards on GitHub, casual chatters on Reddit, or something in between? Knowing who you're targeting helps narrow down the options. Next, think about your goals. Do you want deep technical discussions, quick help requests, or maybe a mix of both? This affects the features you need, like advanced moderation tools or built-in knowledge bases. Now, let's talk platforms! Dedicated platforms like Discourse offer flexibility and control, while established forums like Stack Overflow have built-in audiences. Consider ease of use for your members, as well as how much customization you want.

To select the best community platform, you can think about the following: • Control: If you want to retain more control over the experience, Slack, Skool or and Circle are a better fit. If not, you can rely on Reddit and Discord • Moderation: If you want to pick community moderators, then Reddit and Discord have great capabilities to empower and highlight various mods roles. If you want to keep moderation within your company, then Slack and Skool work better. • UX/UI: if your target prioritizes a clean UI and ease of use, then Skool, Slack or Circle are better options; otherwise go for Discord, Reddit or Discourse • Analytics: paid plans from Skool, Circle and Discord give good insights; but adding apps like withblaze.app helps

To select the best community platform, you can think about the following: • Control: If you want to retain more control over the experience, Slack, Skool or and Circle are a better fit. If not, you can rely on Reddit and Discord • Moderation: If you want to pick community moderators, then Reddit and Discord have great capabilities to empower and highlight various mods roles. If you want to keep moderation within your company, then Slack and Skool work better. • UX/UI: if your target prioritizes a clean UI and ease of use, then Skool, Slack or Circle are better options; otherwise go for Discord, Reddit or Discourse • Analytics: paid plans from Skool, Circle and Discord give good insights; but adding apps like withblaze.app helps

Your goals and objectives for creating the technical community for your product and services should be considered. However, while choosing a technical community for your product or services, it is expedient to consider your target audience preference and how easy your choice of platform will be for them. Sometimes when your audience can't really navigate their way through with your chosen platform, it may leads to increase in churn rate and lack of engagement with the activities within the community.

Building a technical community around your product involves providing value and incentives to attract and retain participants. Offer useful resources, such as tutorials, forums, and documentation, that help community members solve problems or enhance their skills. Create a sense of belonging by encouraging collaboration and knowledge-sharing among users. Additionally, provide incentives like rewards, recognition, or exclusive access to new features, fostering a positive and engaging community atmosphere. By consistently delivering value and acknowledging contributions, you can build a thriving technical community that supports and promotes your product or service.

To attract and retain technical community members, provide valuable content like blog posts, tutorials, and videos. Offer incentives such as recognition and rewards to align with community objectives and product features.

For early-stage startup founders, focusing on a few (usually under three) high-impact channels is a must. This strategy streamlines efforts and strengthens community focus. Spreading too thinly across many platforms can hinder the ability to foster a cohesive community. If a larger multi-channel presence is needed, a pro tip is to always direct your technical community to where you want to create the community. It is also crucial to select channels where your target technical audience is most active; for example, web3 communities often prefer Discord or Telegram over WhatsApp and Facebook groups. By prioritizing a few high-quality channels and focusing on engagement, a startup can more efficiently build a stronger technical community.

Let's say a software company has a technical community forum where developers and programmers discuss coding challenges, share insights, and seek solutions to complex problems. The company wants to enhance engagement and retention within the community. One of possible methods could be to regularly publish insightful blog posts on programming best practices, case studies on successful software projects, and tutorials on using the company's tools and APIs. Additionally, they can create educational and entertaining video content, such as coding walkthroughs and tech-related podcasts.

Incentives can be of three different types: 1. Extrinsics. Things that have value and can be transferred outside of the community. Think cash, discounts, benefits and access to content that doesn’t necessarily relate to your community or core product. 2. Intrinsics. Things that have value and can be redeemed inside the community or product. Think discounts for your product, access to esclusive features or in-product content, but also loyalty programs and community events. 3. Social. Things that have value in relation to other community members. Think community badges and roles that grant you specific privileges and access, or features showcases and spotlights in community posts and events.

Understand that your community is a place where the members need to feel welcomed, and that they belong here. How to do that? - Give your brand the personality of your target customer. Do this through your organic posts, blogs, even the aesthetics of your packaging and UI/UX - Set the community standards strictly - create meaningful guidelines as to what your community is for, what's allowed - Create a Token system for active members. Members should be able to showcase their authority in the community using a symbolic upvoting. - Invest time in your community, conduct events, contests that makes the interaction fun

Technical communities that are valuable and collaborative should be mutually beneficial relationships. Some ways to foster interaction and collaboration include: - Provide valuable content (eg. how to guides, demos, thought leadership) Content that teaches the reader something new or a novel way to solve a problem will keep readers coming back. - Offer opportunities for feedback Technical folks love the opportunity to interact with product and/or builders and offer their real-time feedback on what works, what doesn’t, and what they’d like to see. - Make it fun! Make it fun and worthwhile for people to spend their time interacting and collaborating. You can do hackathons, design contests, offer mentoring, or even exclusive meetups.

Technical communities can be multi faceted. Depending on the level of complexity of your product and/or service, its important to understand the various channels involved and associated uses cases. If your engagement includes multiple divisions and/or 3rd party partners it's crucial to identify subject matter experts in all key areas to drive a positive end customer experience. Responsiveness is of utmost importance to build trust. Clearly documenting and sharing solutions in a mutually accessible environment also helps drive efficiency.

Create a user group to: - Give users a way to share feedback - Ask questions - Learn from each other - Gain access to support/training/exclusive access - Hear updates on upcoming features Make those events about the user not about your company. ⚡️

One of the biggest problems with technical communities is keeping them technically-focused. It's very easy for marketing, and especially product marketing, to want to slide some "marketing fluff" into that community. Don't. Once you've identified the type of person who will be a member of your community (engineers, developers, etc.), don't mix tactics and definitely don't mix information types. This means you don't include marketing or sales materials on the community site (unless you want to alienate the members and drive them away). Technical communities provide a forum for the techies to come together, share information, ask questions, without being sold to. That lets them learn more about your product. Don't screw that up.

- Promote the community through various channels - Actively engage with community members through online forums, events, and meetups - Define the community's purpose, values, goals, and expectations for behavior - Regularly reiterate the community's values and expectations - Seek out and welcome individuals from diverse backgrounds and perspectives - Listen to and learn from community feedback and suggestions - Involve the community in the development process - Maintain a strong online presence and make it easy for individuals to join the community.

The basic tenants of continuous process improvement methodology works nicely. Technical teams love (at least in my experience) to keep making it better which invariably leads to something new.

Know Your Audience: Understand your target technical community. Create Valuable Content: Produce tutorials and resources they'll find useful. Build an Online Hub: Create a platform for community interaction. Offer Support: Provide technical assistance and documentation. Encourage Collaboration: Foster sharing and contribution. Host Events: Arrange meetups and webinars. Reward Engagement: Recognize and incentivize active participation. Engage Influencers: Partner with key figures for outreach. Listen and Improve: Gather feedback and iterate. Ensure Inclusivity: Establish clear guidelines for a welcoming environment. Implementing these steps can help you cultivate a thriving technical community around your product or service.