Community Times: Battle of Community Platforms

Let's talk community

Hello, there Community Rockstar 👋

We hope you had an amazing start to the year and are sticking to your resolutions. If not read it till the end, you’ll be more motivated than you were when you took the resolution.

In the community news, we hosted Venessa Paech in the 4th episode of “Chronicles of Community Builders” with a great host Manohar Kabeer,  and also our monthly ritual, everyone’s favorite “When RETRO Meets METRO”.

On the other hand, a lot more new community builders have joined our community. Join us at Community Folks to get to know them and listen to their experiences.

We are here to keep you updated on all things community, the events that are being hosted, the jobs that are open.

So, scroll down to see the complete picture.

Let’s goooooooooooo!

Community Platform-

Community Platform is the place where you host your community and it’s members get to interact at that place.

In the words of Carrie Melissa Jones, your community platform is like a watering hole and community members are the wild life that comes there to quench their thirst. So, the better your watering hole is, the more wildlife will come. Better your community platform is, the more it will attract the community members.

Now the question comes, better how? In looks, in functionality, in engagement, in content or what?

Let me break it down for you:

First of all, there is no one size fits all platform here. Everyone has their needs and the perfect platform can change according to that. Like for crypto, web3 and gaming communities discord is the preferred choice.

But you narrow it down by asking these questions -

1. Member’s general needs - What do people want from the community and how you can help them best without making it too complex to interact.

2. What is that you need it to do, does it need to be some front end software or backend? - What we are trying to asses here is that do you need something that is community member facing where community members can interact with one another, or you need an internal facing, where you want to better keep a record of your members to understand who they are? You can always answer both and look for a platform that can integrate with others

3. What kinds of urgent needs are the members facing - These are the needs that only meeting other people can solve and then look for the best solution provider platform for that.

When choosing the perfect platform, remember that it’s not you who will be using it, but the members and it has to be more to their liking.

These will help you get started towards the best choice.

Some recommendations for the platform are - MightyNetworks, Cirlce.so, Discourse, Disciple, Discord, Slack, Habitate

Must Check Out -

Top 2 community podcasts

1. In Before the Lock - This week’s podcast of In Before the Lock brings Erica and Brian, Where they answer the question “Do you think there is a minimum size of customers/users that you need to have to make a community successful?”

   Listen to it here: Fractions of fractions

2. Masters of Community with David Spinks - In this episode, David Spinks, the VP of Community at Bevy and the Co-Founder of CMX, speaks with Jeremiah Owyang, Industry Analyst and Founding Partner of Kaleido Insights. The purpose of this interview was to give a clear understanding of what it means for a community to invest in web three blockchain and crypto.

   Listen to it here: Delivering Belonging with David Spinks

Top 3 community articles

We know it’s very hard to pick from so many amazing articles that get published every month but we have tried and here are the best articles of the month for you.

1. 7 Steps To Build Your Brand Community - Miki Sim talks about the 7 basic steps to take when starting a new community

2. What Is DevRel? - Aditya oberai talks about what Developer Relations really is and how it impacts tech today.

3. Stop rewarding quantity! - Ingo Steinke talks about the importance of quality over quantity of content in community.

Jobs

1. OutSystems - Community Growth Associate - India

2. Sawo Labs - Community Manager

Throwback Time💯

Events last month-

1. We hosted the 4nd episode of our series Chronicles of Community Builders with Venessa Paech on 13th January where we touched upon various topics in the industry with our host Manohar Kabeer.

   You can watch the session recording here.

   p.s. we have launched a new initiative where we give one of our community member a chance to be the host in the series. If you want to be one of them, contact us at: akash@communityfolks.com

2. We hosted our fifth When RETRO Meets METRO on the 28th of January where we got to hear the amazing community that Madhurima Mantha is building with MyCaptain. We got to hear a few words from Cherish Santoshi, who won the Developer Relations Community Professional of the year award and got to catch up with many new and old folks.

Upcoming Events -

1. We are excited to announce that we are going to be hosting Richard Millington on 16th February 4:30 PM - 5:30 PM IST in the 5th episode of Chronicles of Community Builders. Where our very own Varalakshmi Dwaraknath will be the host. You can register here.

Till Next Time!

Have a suggestion for a piece of content we should include in our next edition? Email us and let us know!

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