Hi All,

Where should I host a community of my customers?

Facebook Group Reddit Slack Discord Self-host on my website (Wix) Others?

It feels like unless I self-host it on my Wix site, I will exclude people who aren’t on the chosen platform. Have any of you setup successful client communities?

Thanks.

  • goast-ai@alien.topBEnglish
    1·
    11 months ago

    I have a different follow-up question: how many customers/users do you have?

    There is nothing that leads to an online / business community imploding faster than it feeling empty. Just look at the smaller subreddits or those with limited engagement.

    If your community feels empty on day one and you have no way to generate engagement, it’s going to be a lot of effort for no return.

  • eliasatparrot@alien.topBEnglish
    1·
    11 months ago

    Agree with u/narutospeaking – it’s really all about where your customers are. I’d worry less about possibly excluding some group and more about engaging some users deeply. I personally run a community completely on LinkedIn with 1000+ HR & People Ops professionals, because even if LinkedIn is generally terrible for running communities, it’s simply where our members already hang out. Every time I get invited to Circles or whatever I sign up and it’s really nicely put together, but 9 times out of 10 I never go back. Food for thought!

  • spewingideas@alien.topBEnglish
    1·
    11 months ago

    Two things to think about:

    1. How much experience/time you have maintaining a community. It’s a ton of work to keep it alive. If it isn’t a priority can a comment/discussion feature on your website’s blog work?

    2. Not all channels are the same. With Facebook groups, people browse all they and get pushed your content. With Slack, they have to actively log in to check for updates.

    I set up 2 mini communities earlier this year (a microSAAS challenge and a 10k Twitter follower challenge). Both are well received but it’s a lot of effort.

  • Adamthekingdean@alien.topBEnglish
    1·
    11 months ago

    I sell to young / early entrepreneurs so our community is hosted on discord but we’re building our own networking feature within the website so hopefuly moving to that soon.

  • BasketNo4817@alien.topBEnglish
    1·
    11 months ago

    Great question!

    From experience, list out what you are looking to achieve based on a few example use cases to narrow down the solution:

    - Have you sent a quick Q&A to your existing customers asking them you are looking to run a pilot program for this community based solution?

    - Does the engagement need to be in real time? This may point to more of a topic based Q&A solution like a forum (such as reddit)

    - Are you expecting this to be self moderated or will you be promoting the channel (host live Q&A’s with other companies/teams/internal?)

    ​

    I would start with a test for sure and run it for 6 months or so as a trial run to get some feedback. Something free and something that you can ask your users if they are on before going gung ho.

    All of the options mentioned are excellent, but I think you really need to see what your clients really want from community based engagement.