10 Tips on how to Engage in Communities to Grow a Business

At one point ‘marketing’ meant communicating commercial messages by way of print, broadcast, direct mail, phone, and outdoor advertising like billboards.

Today that’s coined ‘traditional marketing’ and now, by and large, means delivering commercial messages in any medium that's not online.

And even though it's got stiff competition from the Young Turk in ‘digital marketing’, traditional marketing isn't going anywhere.

David Ogilvy built an empire the traditional way with direct mail promotion and direct response ads placed in newspapers and there'll be more to follow his lead.

Ask an indie hacker, maker or bootstrapper right now and most will admit they don’t have the resources - or an actual need - to go the traditional route.

Newer mediums resulted in the aforementioned digital marketing tactics like SEO, Pay-per-Click, Content Marketing and Email Marketing.

Now there's a new kid on the block in Community Marketing. And it's a whole different beast from traditional or digital.

Because it's all about connecting as opposed to converting. With that here's 10 tips on how to engage in communities to grow a business that Ogilvey himself probably would approve of.

1. First things first. Find out where your people hang out.

You're more than likely part of a community or communities relevant to your business or project. I mean you’re reading this on Indie Hackers right?

The buck doesn't stop here though. Facebook groups, slack channels, subreddits, message boards, websites, blogs, portals, forums, or any other online place where client fans and aficionados congregate is your target.

2. Remember Venn diagrams? Well they're still as important as they were in elementary school.

Because your audience and prospective clients don’t always fit into one neat little category.

Examples:

Both design and technology professionals converge on https://www.designernews.co/

The SaaS Products & Marketing Facebook group plays host to a wide range of entrepreneurs, marketers and consultants

So don’t think that communities are black and white. Indie makers wear a lot of hats from coder to marketer to the accounts payable dept. Go to standalone communities as well as crossovers communities in equal measure.

3. Self promo is a no-no. Jump on Reddit and launch into a sales schtick and you’ll get shadowbanned faster than Donald Trump inciting a riot. I’ve been shadowbanned myself. But if you must be sure to search community rules because 99% of the time they will detail the sticky threads on Reddit or channels on Slack and Discord where you can self promo on allocated days till your heart's content.

NB An increasing trend in Slack and Discord based communities lets you offer discounts for your product or service exclusively to respective community members, so well worth taking advantage of.

4. Posting in communities usually takes one of the following themes...

Emotional Connection: Tell people about personal wins and losses - like the steps you take to increase MMR or how you are burdened with churn

Ultimate Guides: Know how to find testimonials for your landing pages? Put it in a guide.

Tutorials: Know how to build a Stripe alternative with No code? Let the people know!

Resource Lists: Have a list you're currently using to teach yourself code? Share it.

Case Studies: If you've grown from 46,000 Monthly Organic Traffic in 4 Months, blueprint it and post it.

5. Understand that each network likes to engage their own little way

By and large the communities will either be in Facebook Groups, Reddit, Slack, Twitter, Discord, or independently or increasingly powered by Circle.

But that doesn't mean you have to create differing articles and posts for each one. For example you can create a long form article - like this - and then break it down into pieces to be used on other platforms.

Kanye enthusiast @harrydry hits this particular nail on the head with what content platforms engage with at https://marketingexamples.com/content/sharing

TL;DR

Indie Hacker, Reddit and Twitter (using threads) are all communities where long form content is king
Facebook, Slack and Discord groups engage with visual posts (Images, even memes)
Indie sites like Hacker News and Growth Hackers want you to drop links that will lead to a blog on your own or other sites

6. Know how to engage with emotion

Think about how effective clunking a press release about your project or business in a community would be. You think it would connect with the audience? Think again because you'd get ignored and/or kicked to the kerb in no time flat.

People don't hang in these communities to be sold to. They want to fraternise with like minded people that revolve around topics like growth marketing or Ruby on Rails or Pule donkey cheese.

Take time and go through the high ranking posts in communities, find out the pain points and the terminology used and the advice or replies given. Then connect how your business or even simple community post can respectively solve or relate to the pain, jargon and recommendations you find.

7. Repurpose your content

Come on now. Let’s be honest. Who here actually likes writing content and articles? Nope, me neither (NB The rash of GPT-3 businesses chasing the success of @DannyPostma is indicative of this pain point as much as machine learning being soup du jour is).

A boon of community marketing means you can write long(ish?) form content like this and rework it in appropriate channels where best received as mentioned.
I can take this article, whittle it down to 240 characters per point and get 10 tweets out of it. Or a ten point tweet thread. And you can bet your bottom dollar I will. Check my Twitter timeline that I’m a man of my word.

Or I can rework the title to “Your lack of community spirit is killing your SAAS”, put it on Hacker News and link it to this article on my sites blog.

In fact I can get a double figure amount of posts out of this. But like pick and choose your spots because going all out war machine with repurposing is tantamount to spam. And guess what? Communities don't do. S-p-a-m.

8. Repurpose other people's content

What if you can't possibly squeeze another drop of engagement out of one article? There's a workaround for that.

All successful makers are essentially community marketers at hearts. They constantly have their ear to the ground and engage as much as possible.

So you take posts found on other platforms and link to them. It may give kudos, it may cast you in the light of talisman for all things indie hacked and strapped from the boot up.

EXAMPLES:

Heres @AndrewKamphey doing just that:

https://www.indiehackers.com/post/headlime-acquired-by-conversion-ai-438c399d48

Here's the head honcho @channingallen doing it too:

https://www.indiehackers.com/post/twitter-will-let-everyone-host-twitter-spaces-next-month-60387e1535

9. Don’t be afraid of engaging in big communities

And that's because members aren't particularly bothered about you, your startup or side project. They’re bothered about the value you can give them, be it a product or service or just an article with advice or a case study about how you did something.

It's easy to engage in small communities in say Discord but that's basically because you probably like comfort zones.

Product Hunt can make or break a product and is probably the first acquisition channel makers and entrepreneurs think of. Cult of personality or not I’m still going to shoot my shot with the site. And so should you because as long as you prepare then it can be a springboard to stellar growth.

On that note Check out @MarieMartens Notion Checklist to help you with preparing for PH:

https://www.indiehackers.com/post/how-we-went-from-mvp-to-product-hunt-launch-a-notion-checklist-54d625802b

UPDATE: @andrewkamphey has brought @jadeCraven's PHLaunches.com to my attention so check that out too when taking on PH.

10. Don’t write posts as if your from the ‘Really Boring, Official Dept’ of you startup or side project

Again the raison d'etre of community is organic engagement. Fast food chain Wendy's OWNS with it Twitter strategy in a way Ronald McDonald could only dream of. Wendy's Twitter chops may well be the reason the hamburglar still has to resort to a life of crime.

Bottom line is the relaxed, carefree way Wendy's Twitter account engages has seen the chain experience its sixth year of consecutive sales growth.

If you’ve enjoyed this post or are ready to engage in communities, or both, you may get use out of my acquisition database at https://communitable.xyz/#makers. It has no less than 335+ communities and 570+ channels you can grow your business with.

You never know. You might like it.