Hey there,
Hello and welcome to Uncommunity! If you are new here then you can read all our previous edition and community experts AMA here.
Welcoming 14 new people who have joined us since the last email. If you’re reading this but haven’t subscribed, join 248 incredible community builders by subscribing here!
Building branded communities & creating content
My favorite community quote ever is: People will support that which they help to build.
Our 5th episode of Community Stories is live. I sit with Tara Hunt CEO of Truly Inc, Phlywheel who is the Community OG. She’s been building communities for two decades. I might be biased if I say it’s one of my all-time favourite episodes on all things communities. If you want to skip ahead to see what we discuss you can find the timestamps here.
BTW if you love listening to audio then I have something for you. Just reply to this email or tweet out to rafy and I’ll DM you the Spotify link. ;)
What else we’re reading/listening?
- Your Startup Is a Movement: How Founders Should Think About Marketing -
In 13 points post by David Spacks - Co-founder at Craft Ventures he talks about nurturing your community. Read the full post here.
A community is a place for your customers and supporters to learn from each other. Some founders are hesitant to let customers mix — and vent — freely, but the gains outweigh the risks. If customers are going to post something negative, it’s better that they do it in a context you control than on Twitter. You need to hear that criticism anyway. If it’s unfair, your fans will jump in to defend you, which is better than trying to do it yourself.
If your community can be built on top of your own product, that’s ideal. At Yammer, one of our superpowers was the “Yammer Customer Network,” a place for customer admins to collaborate with us and each other. Otherwise, startups should focus their attention on at least one channel — it could be LinkedIn, Instagram, Facebook, or a customized network — to galvanize the energy of the community, encourage people to share their enthusiasm and wins, as well as seek help and advice.
- Build a more Human Internet: This is a transcript of a podcast episode Masters of Scale by Reid Hoffman who interviews Caterina Fake co-founder of Flickr, photo-sharing site. She is an early investor in Etsy, Kickstarter. It’s so great listening to people who pioneered community industry. Read the transcript here.
Online communities are built one human connection at a time. As the founder, you need to establish guidelines and norms from Day One — because the tone you set is the tone you’re going to keep, even as you go viral.
- [Podcast] How the Future of Community Can Be Found in the History of Open Source with Nadia Eghbal with David Spinks. Listen to the full episode here. Three takeaways:
- The stories and evolution of Open Source communities can tell us a lot about how our current online communities can evolve even outside the world of software.
- The majority of contributions come from a small number of highly engaged users, even from the largest crowd-sourced communities projects like Wikipedia.
- Implementing more research and research roles will help shape not only the communities of our companies but how we can build as a community industry.
- If you are building a community around education or as we call it ed-tech check out this Wes Kao who’s the co-founder of popular course altMBA.
- SEAT AT THE TABLE ❤️
- Airbnb said "community" 166 times in their IPO prospectus. 🔥
- Put your thinking cap on
- I know I know. I love coffee and did you know? It takes 1, 2 and just 3 clicks to support Uncommunity by buying a coffee. Buy me a coffee. ☕
In the news:
Our featured community platform, Circle - the modern community platform for creators is shipping things like SpaceX sending humans to Space. 🚀
- Circle have launched a brand new content editor with link previews, emojis, GIFs, galleries, and richer embeds.
- Circle’s iOS app is in beta. And they’re inviting you to give it a try if you’re on any of Circle’s paid plans.
- Personalized homepages for your members with improved onboarding, the home feed.
Start your 14-day free trial of Circle today and explore newly launched features.
What’s new at Uncommunity?
- Experts to follow:
- Ankit Shah - Community Product Partnerships at Facebook | Founder of Tea With Strangers
- Richard Millington - Founder of FeverBee | Author of The Indispensable Community & Buzzing Communities
- Book added:
- The Perfect Store: Inside eBay - If you want to truly understand the Internet economy, The Perfect Store is indispensable.
Go to Uncommunity.club to find out about the latest tools and all new jobs that we added this week from companies like Netflix, Camunda, Udemy. Check out the jobs.
If you like this edition smash that ❤️ button and share this with your friends, closest virtual colleagues. :)
thank you ☕
for joining us in our journey. We both have full-time jobs and we have built Uncommunity in our free time as we have been exploring ways to give back and support fellow community builders in their journeys.
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