Tech Stack and Strategies of the Modern Community Builder

While the general concept of a user community for B2C and B2B companies is nothing new, we are now observing new startups, customers, and market needs emerging, spurred by several trends:

All of these trends have only been accelerated by the pandemic. Many companies who were offline before needed to think of new ways to maintain customer and partnership relationships. At the same time, users want to stay connected and informed and communication is essential.

This post will highlight why online communities are on the rise and what the tech stack of modern community builders entails. By leveraging user research, we want to shine a light on

🧐 who needs and uses community building tech

⚒ which tools are required to build and manage a community

🔭 learnings about community building strategies

❌ which pain points still exist in the market

We spent some time researching the community space to understand who needs and uses (online) community-building tools. For simplification, we identified specific “personas” accompanied by an exemplary case, namely:

Note: This post’s definition of Community Tech is limited to tools that are being used to build and manage a community. Some of the startups listed sit across multiple categories — we chose one for each, for simplicity. This is not an attempt at including all known companies in these clusters, but rather a selection of some private and venture-backed ones. The ones that are highlighted are those companies that are used by the personas, while the ones in grey were added in addition as part of the landscape.

*gitti is a btov portfolio company

🤖 Community tech stack

💡 Community strategies

Learning #1 Shared interest, different communication channels
DTC Brands such as gitti use different distribution and community platforms for their audience. While all members share the same value and passion, i.e. conscious beauty mindset and being part of innovation, they’re using different channels to emphasize the right key messages and accommodate to user’s preferences.

Learning #2 Instagram & Pinterest for emotional engagement
gitti uses Instagram and Pinterest to bind their community members emotionally to the brand by focusing more on a visual dialogue and engaging and inspiring users by sharing moments, images and questions.

🤖 Community tech stack

Especially Reddit has become one of the main places for current and future Notion users to connect and share templates, ideas and questions. It’s a community-led group where users connect and share insights with other users. This helps Notion in decreasing costs for customer support and community managers.

💡Community Strategies

Learning #1 Ambassador program for superuser
Notion has established a Notion Ambassador program to tap into their superusers and encourage them to inspire and educate other users as well as improving the product.

Learning #2 Amplifying positive community feedback
Notion is embedding real tweets from their users directly on their website to showcase genuine authentic feedback from the community. The team is interacting daily with the users on Twitter and also respond to questions, thus make the brand more approachable and leveraging social media as a customer support tool.

Learning #3 Leveraging networks effects with shareable items
This is the in my eyes the most brilliant hack and what got me hooked on Notion in the first place. The Notion Template Gallery enables users to share their own created templates on OKRs, Journaling, CRM systems and so many more use cases, thus creating a viral growth loop. This community-driven initiative is an elementary strategy to attract, acquire and retain users.

Learning #4 Live events with Office Hours
Notion is offering weekly Office Hours to give users inspiration and a sense of belonging. In addition, local community events are held around the world to connect to other Notion users.

🤖 Community tech stack

💡 Communiy Strategies

Learning #1 Think about the lowest switching-costs for broad adoption
In setting up a communication channel, think about which tool would mean the lowest switching costs for your community. Since the main audience at Factory is mainly freelancers and entrepreneurs, Slack was the obvious first choice. They are using Slack for announcements, updates, job postings, and service offerings. Slack is still at heart a chat platform so 95% of all member’s messages are actually private messages.

Learning #2 IRL Clubs need software that also includes operative workflows needed for membership management
While IRL clubs with physical spaces can engage their community via chat platforms such as Slack, they still need software that manages also the operative workflows such as billing, membership management, room bookings, and user profiles.

🤖 Community tech stack

💡 Community Strategies

Learning #1 Start with a newsletter
In order to build up an (online) community from scratch, most community builders such as InnovatorsRoom started out as a newsletter and moved to an additional platform as soon as they reached the critical mass and saw the need for more user engagement.

Learning #2 Build subgroups within Slack
Since the community is targeted at investors, founders and corporate innovators, there are different motivational needs. In order to find the right point on the value curve of communities, it is important to have the right amount of quantity and quality and create also subgroups for tailored exchange.

🤖 Community tech stack

💡 Community Strategies

Learning #2 Empower community-led support groups and events
As a creator and community builder, it’s impossible to manage 24/7 your members. By giving the community the infrastructure, guidelines and freedom to set up their own support groups and events, community builders can maintain and engage members.

Looking at the current tech stack of community builders, there are several white spot areas that are not yet solved by current solutions:

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