Community Building Tips for Startups

Eren Karaçil

Growth Marketing Specialist

Linkedin Profile

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!

 

SMARTUP NETWORK

Smartup Network is a team of entrepreneurs that have experience in building, raising funds and selling startups. Our mission is to support entrepreneurs with bright ideas who don't have the proper team to turn their ideas into products. Our three main areas of expertise are:

Technical
We build their products for entrepreneurs whether they are at idea stage or post-MVP stage.

Product Management
We work alongside entrepreneurs to find the ideal product user experience for their target markets.

Finding Investment
Once our entrepreneurs' products begin showing traction, we get them in contact with the right investors.

So far, we have had the opportunity to build startup 35 products in 16 countries, for entrepreneurs from all over the world including San Francisco, Seattle, Amsterdam, Berlin, Dusseldorf, Copenhagen, Dubai, Johannesburg, Accra, Quito and Istanbul. You can find some of the latest successes of our entrepreneurs' apps through this link. Smartup Network partners with well known startup hubs all over the world. Including but not limited to, Switzerland based Seedstars, which supports startups in developing countries, Boston New Technology Group in the United States and Impact Hub Istanbul, the world-renowned startup hub for social entrepreneurs. Startup experts from all over the world such as. Trivago founder and CEO Rolf Schrömgens and Sina Afra, who was named One of Top 100 Most Influential Tech People in the world by Wired Magazine. Our goal is to support as many entrepreneurs as possible realize their dreams.

Smartup Network
Technical Partner For Your Startup