Community Building Tips for Startups

Social media tools are one of the most powerful channels for the brand to reach its consumers. The fact that the brand has a strong profile on social media by creating its own identity shows how powerful the project is. However, social media tools often provide a one-sided flow of information that extends from the startup to the user. To be able to listen to customers, startups must be set up in a place where they can be among their customers. To solve this problem, the concept of communities and community managers has come to light!

The Community Manager is responsible for managing an organization's online voice and aligning all company communications, public relations, social media, and marketing content to build a strong brand identity. In the process, community managers will have to deal with hundreds or thousands of people one-on-one. Here are a few basics for community managers who want to take on these tasks:

1- Discord

When the community is mentioned, we have a lot of different options to bring a community together. Discord is a program for making audio, visual, and written communication Although it was originally a platform created only for gamers, in recent years it has become an important channel where startups can bring their communities together. Here you can organize events, share announcements or even just chat, where users can be involved either anonymously or with their personal information. You can also make your server more fun with many bots that can be integrated into Discord!

2- Telegram

Telegram is an end-to-end secure messaging application Telegram, which has been highly preferred due to data breaches of Whatsapp in recent years, offers an environment where you can share and correspond with users. You can create groups of up to 200,000 people on Telegram. Similar to Discord, you can be found anonymously in Telegram by hiding your phone number and e-mail address. It is highly preferred by community managers as a powerful platform where you can share Telegram announcements and surveys.

3- AMAs

Your users are faced with many problems while using your product. “What is the founding story of this startup? What do you think about the next steps? Who is on your team?” are some interesting questions. To answer these questions, you can host an Ask Me Anything(AMA) event where you can get together with your community. In this event, participants get the chance to chat with guests at the startup by asking any questions they want. This allows users to be more connected to the startup.

4 - Rewards

One of the biggest strengths for users to connect to the community is to distribute rewards using gamification. Small prizes will be given to people who have answered the most questions on the community channels or participated in the chats most actively, creating a sweet competition among users. This competition will motivate other users and make the community more lively. 

To sum up, to strengthen your brand, you should take care of your users and gather them under a community roof. A community where users feel they belong will add great value to your brand. 

Don’t forget: you don't need a startup to build a community, but a startup needs a community!