Are you really building a community?
This tweet by Marco Marandiz has been in my mind for almost two weeks now. What a great question. I think modern startups hide behind the messaging of “building a community” in their marketing. Bec…
jovianhere.com
This was a really nice read! I'm not a native speaker, but I think your writing is really good! Short, clear, straight to the point.
You're right, a community should be about helping. I think it should be the same for a product. Not as an excuse to sell something, but as a core principle.
I'm trying to practice my writing a bit more. English isn't my native language, so need to put the reps in.
I'm actually curious about what y'all think about building a community vs audience. I think Indie Hackers is genuinely community centered, but other companies try to use the word "community" when they really only want sales.
I enjoyed the read! Thank you!
Those job descriptions were horrific!
And yes, it's a big bug bear of mine. Community can exist is so many different ways, but at the core of it should be about helping people. I strive for a better world where communities can become more self sustaining and aren't so ego/audience driven.
Part of what is so great about IH (from my community perspective) is that whilst we have ambitions and goals to grow, everything is very much centred on helping indie hackers. I'm not big on metrics (yet I love to see a growth chart!), but ones that get automated into our Slack everyday is very much based around user activity - comments, members, posts, milestones. These kind of things give me a sense of the heartbeat of the community, the trend is steadily upwards, anything dramatic up or down would cause me to investigate why.
Also along side this we are very mindful of the quality of the posts and content and constantly trying to think of how we can improve it so that indie hackers can succeed.
As another example, Ministry of Testing (my previous company) is also community centred.
Thank you for reading Rosie! I think Indie Hackers is one of the cases where engagements are the gold metrics. Like you mentioned, it is the heartbeat of the product so to speak. If one is building an audience or sales funnel, then engagements will be a vanity metrics.
I'm curious about your process in the content "quality control". How do you go about it brainstorming or testing different kinds of content?