Community Hot Takes 🔥 Slack CM Newsletter Issue #6
That's right. Get ready for my community hot takes 🔥
This issue isn't a learning resource. It's a call to action.
I want you to join me on a mission to make the community industry (more) legit.
But before we get to that...
This week’s words of encouragement
Do you remember the first friendship that your community work created?
I do. Caro and Florane. I still remember waking up to a message from Caro with a selfie of her and Florane meeting up in real life. Whenever I hit a wall, I think about them and I get motivated to do more.
How about you? Reply to this newsletter with a story of the first community-led friendship you created.
Content for this week
Good News for People Who Love Bad News
Community Hot Takes🔥
More Community Content
Goodbye👋
Good News for People Who Love Bad News
Next week I'm starting a new job as a Product Manager, while also continuing to work on Waves.
That means I have to work crazy hours. Because of that, I will publish this newsletter once a month, instead of every 2 weeks.
There are 2 reasons for that:
You deserve well-researched content. I don't want to waste your time with something that I randomly put together on a Sunday afternoon.
I want to enjoy writing this newsletter. I want to be happy when I sit down to do my research. I don't want it to become another chore that I have to fit into my schedule.
I hope you understand and I promise to do my very best. Thank you❤️
Community Hot Takes
Community as a profession is often not taken seriously.
I don't think we can put all the blame on the industry being new or our managers just not 'getting it'.
Sometimes, we're the ones to blame.
My hot takes are about 'community mindsets' that are comforting in the short-term but hurtful in the long term.
Let me explain with my first example.
"Lurkers are silent learners"
Sure, lurking sounds creepy. I get that.
But let's be honest, they're not all silent learners.
I blame this one on the 90-9-1 rule.
1% of members are super-contributors, 9% are occasional contributors, and 90% are observers (aka lurkers).
Lurking implies that a member took the time to check your community to read what's happening. That's not the case with that 90%.
Most will be completely inactive. They're not checking our communities. They're not learning anything.
Calling them a nicer (but wrong) name won't change that.
It makes us feel better about what we do, but it doesn't help our marketing manager when we tell them that 90% of our members are silent learners.
Having inactive members isn't a bad thing. It's normal.
Knowing who our inactive members are, helps us build better communities.
Knowing how many inactive members we have over time, helps us understand if our changes are working.
"Community is everything"
Community is important. This isn't up for debate. But community just isn't everything. Very few things are everything.
You'd roll your eyes at a salesperson telling you that 'sales is everything', right? Or a marketing person saying that 'marketing is everything'.
Let's not focus on trying to find ways of implementing community at every single step in our companies. We're going to lose that fight.
How about we start small? Let's each sit down for ourselves and figure out where community can make the biggest impact in our organizations.
In conclusion, let's not say that community is everything. Let's ask ourselves this question: Where can community be something?
Double down on that.
"Relationships can't be measured"
"Communities aren't about numbers. They're about connection, relationships, and belonging."
That's cool, but those things don't pay the bills.
I'm not saying that we should figure out how to calculate our community's ROI now. That's extremely difficult, especially if your community is new.
But showing a clear dislike for putting relationships into numbers will hurt.
At some point, we need to explain how we're making money for the business. Numbers can help with that.
Numbers help you with translating your community's value into digestible bits of information for budget holders.
They help you with showing changes in your community's activity over time.
And just because you put relationships into numbers, doesn't mean that those relationships are worth any less.
My German grandma always says "du kannst nicht nur von Luft und Liebe leben".
Translation: You can't just live off of air and love.
Communities aren't about numbers and money. But the businesses who pay for those communities are about money.
The End: less talk, more action
We need to be realistic.
We're not in a position to philosophize about the true meaning of community. Most of the time it doesn't even matter.
All we need to do is create communities that are valuable for our members, and the organizations we work at.
We will make mistakes along the way, but here's the good thing:
Trying, failing, and learning always beats talking.
More community content
The 8 Most Common Online Community Management Challenges
The Future of Branded Communities - Q&A with Hannah Remde
Goodbye👋
I need to be honest. I'm very nervous about my new job. I never had to manage a big team in a real company and I can feel the imposter syndrome hitting me.
But I'm also excited. Product & community management share a lot of similarities and I'm excited about all the things I will learn that I can use to help all of us build better communities.
Wish me luck❤️
See you next time
Kourosh - The Waves Guy🌊