DISCLAIMER: No, I don’t believe I’m the universe’s gift to DevRel. I don’t have all the answers, all the skills, or even all the Pokemon. What I have is my experiences, collected over the 11 years I’ve been doing this work. That – my experiences and observations – are what I’m sharing in this series.
For those unfamiliar with it, the “Bechdel test” is named for the American cartoonist Alison Bechdel. In one strip from her series “Dykes to Watch Out For“, a character described their 3 basic requirements to go see a movie. The movie had to have:
- At least two women, who…
- …talk to each other…
- …about something other than a guy…
The point is that an embarrassingly small number of movies (not to mention TV shows, books, comics, etc) can clear that fairly low bar.
Equally embarrassing are the number of so-called “community forums” that fail to pass what I have termed my “Bechdel test for community”. In order to qualify as a real community, it would need to have:
- at least two (non-employee) accounts with fully filled out profiles…
- …talking with each other in a public area of the community forum…
- …about something other than the company (or it’s products).
Meaning: A true community is a space where two people with common interests or goals talk to each other about things that matter to them. It might include the company who owns and runs the site, but it might not.
And a true community is one that not only permits, but encourages and facilitates those interactions.
Like the real Bechdel test, that bar seems low until you start surveying community sites. Most will have some form of a #random channel. Many will have other variations of #off-topic discussions. But those examples point to the flaw: often the things that permit a community to pass my test are the same things that are labeled “random” and “off-topic”, betraying the bias against having a true community.
If this hits uncomfortably close to home, don’t let that discourage you. Because improvement is within anyone’s ability.
Put Baby Product in a Corner
One of the things I find vendors fail to recognize (or know, but then quickly forget) is that their name, logo, and product are ALL. OVER. THE. PLACE. There’s need to put the brand front-and-center, nor to make the products the focus. This is because both of those things are intuitive to anyone arriving at “TechBrand.Community.com.”
Moving product-centric forums and their discussions – whether those are announcements or support discussions – into a corner effectively does the opposite of the #random channel I mentioned earlier. It makes a clear statement that “this space is for you, not for us.”
Make It a Sales-Free Zone
Closely related is a rule that I consider to be inviolable, both as a member of an online community and as someone closely involved with running them: A community space has to be completely free from sales activities.
Never in the history of ever has someone in a community forum lamented, “If only I could find a sales person to take my money!”
Like the point I made about product information, you have to recognize that community members will have no problem engaging with sales if they want it. There’s absolutely no need for sales to “check in” or “touch base” if they think a conversation is veering into sales-related territory.
I promise you that if there’s even a hit that sales folks are lurking on those channels, waiting to swoop in (either in the comments or out-of-band via email, phone calls, or whatever) your membership will shrink to zero faster than your platform’s software will be able to track.
Solicit Input, Not Free Labor
If you’re like most tech practitioners, you probably have enough work to keep you and 3 clones busy basically forever. The people in your online community are no different. If you want to demonstrate your respect for their time, not to mention your appreciation for being part of the community the last thing you should do is ask them for free labor.
That includes bug bounties, offering beta version (aka “free QA testing”), or community tech support. Even if they get points or swag.
Instead, the emphasis should be on encourating the community to share opinions, ideas, and experiences in ways that don’t look or feel like free labor.
That starts with problem-forward questions and discussions. Rather than asking how the audience uses a particular module or feature, center the conversation on “how many of you have experienced X?” (where x is a situation, issue, or problem). Or “How do you all deal with X?”
By focusing on the experience (hopefully something that happens to IT practitioners with regularity) you are making it clear your not trolling for customer reference stories.
Other conversation starters that might help:
- What are some things nobody told you when you started working with (a certain technology); or in (a particular field)?
- What’s a cool hack for solving X?
- What issues slow you down every day that you wish you could make disappear?
…and so on.
From a company standpoint, let your community be a place where you open the door for members to participate in UX/UI sessions. These are designed to show early ideas about a new technique or technology, but in a way that allows community folks to offer input that can directly impact (and even change) the product. It’s a win-win that is still surprisingly rare in the tech world. Very few companies allow their community to get involved in a way that allows them to say “You see that option? That’s included because I told them how important it was!”
Reward Participation
That attitude – of valuing real engagement and contributions that benefit both the membership and you – should extend beyond your product to every aspect of the community. You should recognize and reward individuals any time they share their knowledge.
The place to start is recognizing and rewarding when some ASKS a question, not just when they answer them. Asking good questions is actually the hardest and most valuable element of building a vibrant and engaged community. A good question is the thing that starts a conversation, or keeps it going, or makes the answer matter in the first place.
Yes, you should also reward members who share snippets of code, scripts, dashboards, reports, and any other portable (meaning import/export-able) assets. And of course you should reward people for answering questions. But that shouldn’t be the primary focus or else you will once again fall into the trap of making the community space biased toward free labor.
Feature Request System, as a Feature
From a vendor standpoint, the most important question you can ask is “What do YOU need the product to do?”
And, as I’ve mentioned earlier when talking about UX sessions, it has to be asked in a way and at a time when the feedback you receive actually makes a difference.
For this reason, I strongly suggest making a public feature request page part of your community. This is a place where ANYONE (well, any verified community member, at least) can request a new capability.
But not only that. It should be a place where people can comment on the request to add nuance or challenge assumptions. ask clarifying questions. It’s also a place where folks can up (or down) vote those feature request.
This voting capability is more than just a popularity contest. Remember, these are requests from the public who uses your software. They are taking their time to tell you what they need (and why). When an FR gets a significant number of up-votes, it should be seriously considered by your developers. More than that, the developer staff should have to justify why those FR’s are NOT on the list, each and every development cycle.
One piece of criticism I’ve heard about this idea is “what if they say, ‘make the product free’ or ‘buy me a pony’ ?” To clarify: I’m not saying you must slavishly execute on every FR. Of course there will be folks who put in requests as a lark or just to be funny. But the vast majority will be serious.
Some – while serious – will not be possible. And that’s OK. But it’s valuable insight to know that a majority of your user base wants (for example) dark mode. If that’s something your dev team you can’t deliver, then it’s at least something your marketing team should address.
Shall We Play a Game?
Underlying all of this is a truth about online communities: the best ones make engagement and participation fun. Part of that is the content and conversations, but another part is endorphin-boosting rewards. Having a “gamified” online system that assigns points to users who answer (and ask!) questions; who upload resources; who particpate in quizes and missions; who engage in scavenger hunts and other activities… having a system that automatically tracks and tally’s reward points for those types of behaviors is important.
Equally important is having something to DO with all those points. An online shop or other system that lets community members trade in points for swag may sound foolish, but it’s the sweet icing on the cake of community interactions for many of us. It helps give us a reason to hit YOUR site rather than one of the 3 dozen other options in front of us as we sit at our screens.
Communities Are Worth It
A vibrant, engaged, participatory community is more than just a gift of goodwill to the tech space at large (although it definitely is that). It’s also an engine for change, self-awareness, and profit for the sponsoring company. It is a valuable source of customer insight – from superfans to potential employees to canaries who give advance notice when something about your product has become toxic. In one company where I worked, over $1million of revenue per year could be directly attributed to community activities.
But they require work. That includes moderation, content curation, and a careful hand when it comes to participation by the platform owner (that’s you and your colleagues) but not domination.