I think we can all agree that building a startup is an extremely difficult task. Aside from getting product market fit, the other critical elements to successfully building a startup will be customer satisfaction, brand awareness, becoming an authority in your industry and, of course, taking care of customer service issues. One of the best ways to cover all of those areas is to create a community around your startup. If you get it right, you will set yourself apart from your competition and potentially turn a few of your customers into active brand patrons and ambassadors. 

I have outlined a 4 step process to build an online community for your startup, which will get into more detail further into the article. I have also added a few of the the best practices that you should follow to maintain a great experience for your users.

1. Determine the focus for your online community
2. Research which platform is best to grow your community
3. Identify key internal stakeholders for the community
4. Promote your community

Determine the focus for your online community

Figuring out your primary reason to create a community will help you determine the platform you choose as well how to better facilitate your goal.

• Establish your brand as an expert in your industry?
• Increase collaboration with your customers?
• Increase your customer satisfaction rating?
• Decrease costs related to customer support?
• Increase demand for your product or service?
• Identify influencers and advocates for your brand?

You can choose more than one option from the list or even another option that isn't on the list. Just make sure you are very clear on your objective for building a community in the first place, it will save you a lot of time and effort in the future.

Research which platform is best to grow your community

Choosing the right platform for your community can be a bit confusing since there are so many options available on the market. I have broken down the more well known platforms below with a few points as to the benefits of each.

Telegram Groups / Whatsapp Groups

• Great for reaching people outside North America
• You can grow a group very fast with the invite links
• Communication is very easy

Instagram

• Great for reaching a younger audience
• Your community needs to be based around something visual (Cakes, Travel, Cars)
• It tends to be more of a one-way communication but you can still talk through comments or direct messages

Discord / Slack

• Great for more technical or professional audiences
• You can create multiple subcategories to focus on different topics, keeping communication organized

Reddit

• Great for finding a more technical audience, generally between 20-40 years old
• The content voting system allows for the most up-voted posts to bubble to the service, keeping engagement high

Youtube

• A great visual platform for content you create
• It is a bit harder to get into since you would need to create the videos yourself
• Video comment section allows you to engage with your audience

Facebook Groups

• Good for reaching 30+ age groups
• Has a lot of tools to help grow your community
• There are already a lot of people with a Facebook account

Identify key internal stakeholders for the community

Depending on the needs of your community, you should establish who will be actively monitoring and maintaining it. For example, who will be making sure everyone is keeping to the rules you have establish? Or, a more important scenario could come up where a customer uses your community to make a complaint. Who will handle this?

Depending on the needs of your community, you should establish who will be actively monitoring and maintaining it. For example, who will be making sure everyone is keeping to the rules you have establish? Or, a more important scenario could come up where a customer uses your community to make a complaint. Who will handle this?

Promote your community

Your community isn't going to grow by itself, or at least not at first. You really need to embrace this as an additional communication channel for your startup. That means you should start thinking where you will promote you community. For example, our website, Codebase Studio, has a "call to action" section on the right side of each of each of the blogs as well as a "call to action" at the bottom of each major page on our site.

Here is a picture of the promotional banner from our site.

Feel free to join our startup server

Think of ways that you can build your community into your product or online process. A few other options would be to place it in your email signature, on linkedIn and other social networks. Get creative with it and try to differentiate yourself from your competition.

Best practices on how to continue to grow an online community

So, you have created a community of your very own, now what? The real reason why people join a community is to fulfill a need of theirs. That need could be to learn something new, gain more information, share experiences, support something their passionate about, gain or find the feeling of belonging.

In order to facilitate and grow a deeper connection with your community, here are a few tips that will take you very far

• Create relationships - Be real, be genuine and be helpful.
• Never stop engaging - Reply wherever you can. It can be difficult to get people to talk so you need to be the driving force for engagement in the beginning. There will be a tipping point where some of your members become just as engaged as you are.
• Create or find content that adds value - pay attention to questions that are asked. If there is no website or video that has the answer, create it and share it with your community. Not only will your members appreciate the help but your content can be shared and potentially bring in new members.
• Solve their problems - Be the expert in your industry. You may not have all the answers in the beginning, but do your best to find it. Over time, you will gain more and more knowledge and the word will spread about how helpful your community has been