Tech Stack and Strategies of the Modern Community Builder
By: Jennifer Phan
Tags: Future Of Work, Online Community, Passion Economy, Creators, Community

Tech stack to build and manage a community

We spent some time researching the community space to understand who needs and uses (online) community-building tools. For simplification, we identified specific “personas” accompanied by an exemplary case, namely:

💅🏻 a Social Media Manager at a DTC brand (Example: gitti*)

🗒 a Community Manager at a product-driven company (Example: Notion)

🏢 a Community Manager at a Co-Working space (Example: Factory Berlin)

🚀 a Founder of an online community (Example: Innovators Room)

🧠 a Creator and content writer (Example: NessLabs)

Note: This post’s definition of Community Tech is limited to tools that are being used to build and manage a community. Some of the startups listed sit across multiple categories — we chose one for each, for simplicity. This is not an attempt at including all known companies in these clusters, but rather a selection of some private and venture-backed ones. The ones that are highlighted are those companies that are used by the personas, while the ones in grey were added in addition as part of the landscape.

*gitti is a btov portfolio company

Community Tech Landscape with Personas

💅🏻 The Social Media Manager at gitti

gitti is a DTC brand for conscious beauty and was founded in 2019 in Berlin. Community size: ca. 60k followers

🤖 Community tech stack

Newsletter

Social Media platforms: Instagram, Pinterest, Linkedin, Facebook, TikTok

💡 Community strategies

Learning #1 Shared interest, different communication channels

DTC Brands such as gitti use different distribution and community platforms for their audience. While all members share the same value and passion, i.e. conscious beauty mindset and being part of innovation, they’re using different channels to emphasize the right key messages and accommodate to user’s preferences.

Learning #2 Instagram & Pinterest for emotional engagement

gitti uses Instagram and Pinterest to bind their community members emotionally to the brand by focusing more on a visual dialogue and engaging and inspiring users by sharing moments, images and questions.

Learning #3 Integrate your community for product development

Social Media should not be seen as a pure distribution platform but needs to be understood as a community-driven tool. Gitti is listening to their community and shares insights and lessons directly with the team to influence product development, marketing campaigns, and more. Another excellent recent example is their recent campaign with Jovoto, where they co-developed new products with their community.

🗒 The Community Manager at Notion

Notion is for notes, tasks, wikis, and databases. Community size: ca. 360k members.

🤖 Community tech stack

Newsletter

Forum platforms: Reddit (67k ), Facebook groups (27k)

Social Media:Twitter(125k),Youtube(65k),Instagram(39k),Linkedin(32k)

Chat platforms: Discord (1k ), Slack (2.9k)

Event Management: Meetup (1.7k)

Webinar: Crowdcast, Zoom

Especially Reddit has become one of the main places for current and future Notion users to connect and share templates, ideas and questions. It’s a community-led group where users connect and share insights with other users. This helps Notion in decreasing costs for customer support and community managers.

Notion Community Page

💡Community Strategies

Learning #1 Ambassador program for superuser

Notion has established a Notion Ambassador program to tap into their superusers and encourage them to inspire and educate other users as well as improving the product.

Learning #2 Amplifying positive community feedback

Notion is embedding real tweets from their users directly on their website to showcase genuine authentic feedback from the community. The team is interacting daily with the users on Twitter and also respond to questions, thus make the brand more approachable and leveraging social media as a customer support tool.

Notion Customer Feedback Tweets

Learning #3 Leveraging networks effects with shareable items

This is the in my eyes the most brilliant hack and what got me hooked on Notion in the first place. The Notion Template Gallery enables users to share their own created templates on OKRs, Journaling, CRM systems and so many more use cases, thus creating a viral growth loop. This community-driven initiative is an elementary strategy to attract, acquire and retain users.

Learning #4 Live events with Office Hours

Notion is offering weekly Office Hours to give users inspiration and a sense of belonging. In addition, local community events are held around the world to connect to other Notion users.

🏢 The Community Manager at Factory Berlin

Factory Berlin is a physical co-working space and community with access to a curated network. Community size: 3000 members.

🤖 Community tech stack

Newsletter

Chat platform: Slack

Event management: Eventbrite

Campus App

💡 Communiy Strategies

Learning #1 Think about the lowest switching-costs for broad adoption

In setting up a communication channel, think about which tool would mean the lowest switching costs for your community. Since the main audience at Factory is mainly freelancers and entrepreneurs, Slack was the obvious first choice. They are using Slack for announcements, updates, job postings, and service offerings. Slack is still at heart a chat platform so 95% of all member’s messages are actually private messages.

Learning #2 IRL Clubs need software that also includes operative workflows needed for membership management

While IRL clubs with physical spaces can engage their community via chat platforms such as Slack, they still need software that manages also the operative workflows such as billing, membership management, room bookings, and user profiles.

🚀 The Founder at InnovatorsRoom

InnovatorsRoom is a global network of founders, investors and innovators. Community size: 2000 members.

🤖 Community tech stack

Newsletter: Mailchimp

Chat platform: Slack

Webinar: Crowdcast

Social Media: Linkedin, Instagram

Other: Airtable, Zapier, Run the World

💡 Community Strategies

Learning #1 Start with a newsletter

In order to build up an (online) community from scratch, most community builders such as InnovatorsRoom started out as a newsletter and moved to an additional platform as soon as they reached the critical mass and saw the need for more user engagement.

Learning #2 Build subgroups within Slack

Since the community is targeted at investors, founders and corporate innovators, there are different motivational needs. In order to find the right point on the value curve of communities, it is important to have the right amount of quantity and quality and create also subgroups for tailored exchange.

InnovatorsRoom Community

🧠 The Creator at NessLabs

NessLabs is a community of curious humans who want to achieve more without sacrificing their mental health. Anne-Laure Le Cunff is a creator who writes every week neuroscience-based articles about creativity, mental health, and metacognition. Community size: ca.20k.

🤖 Community tech stack

Newsletter: Mailchimp

Community platform: Circle

Paid membership: Memberful

💡 Community Strategies

Learning #1 Start with content

Anne-Laure started off with a monthly newsletter and then switched to a blog and weekly newsletter. She launched her community during the pandemic and is using Circle in order to engage and manage her community. Circle is the modern community platform for creators and is trying to solve in a way what other synchronous chat platforms such as Slack are lacking. As a creator, you can bring together discussion threads, content, recordings in a meaningful way and monetize via membership subscriptions. These asynchronous online forums also allow for slower and more thoughtful conversations.

Ness Labs Community on Circle

Learning #2 Empower community-led support groups and events

As a creator and community builder, it’s impossible to manage 24/7 your members. By giving the community the infrastructure, guidelines and freedom to set up their own support groups and events, community builders can maintain and engage members.