Lessons from 5+ Years of Building Tech Communities

Community work takes time, right? You're building trust, you're building loyalty, and it's not something that you do in a day. It's like builds up, it compounds. But the thing is that most companies just expect that you establish a community today, boom, it picks up, boom, people suddenly start loving your product, boom, people start doing things. So there's like a lot of pressure, and that's why you get most of them telling you, oh, we're not seeing what you're doing. Companies do not understand what community is and why they want a community.

Hi, welcome to the Early Stage Marketer Podcast, where I speak to marketers and the In just 20 minutes, you hear the story of one challenge they faced, how they navigated it, and what they learned from it. If you enjoy it, please subscribe and share with a friend. Jennifer, welcome to the podcast.

Thank you. Thanks for having me. This is actually my first podcast appearance, so yay to you.

Oh yeah, it's such a pleasure. You see, you see, we are a team of firsts. I'm so happy you're here. Thank you for—

Same here.

Making out time to be here. Thank you so much for making out time to join. Thank you.

Thanks for inviting me.

So yeah, yeah, absolutely. So I'm so looking forward to, you know, what we're going to talk about. You said you wanted to talk about your experience building and growing tech communities. Why I love it is that most, if you ask me, I would say most of the most loved products in tech, usually, in fact, not usually, most of the most loved products in tech, this further alliteration, they usually come from products that have been fueled by community. So think of Notion.

Yeah.

Think of Figma. And then if you come to the crazy AI space, think of love. Everything has been fueled by community. Yeah, so come— so yeah, exactly. Yeah, yeah. So software companies these days are just investing in community, and I'm happy we're going to talk about it.

Exactly.

So I think the first thing I want to begin with is, um, I wrote it down here. Based on your experience, right, what are the 3 things most people get wrong about community, I mean, you've been doing this for over 5 years. So based on that cumulative 5 years of experience, what do most people get wrong about community management?

Um, so I'm going to take this from 2 approaches, right? So the approach, the first approach is what people think it is and what they get wrong about it. And then secondly is what organizations totally get wrong about it. Um, so I've had people walk up to me coming from the people perspective and they're like, oh, community management. What is community management? And then you explain. That one, and then some people that I have worked with they say, "Oh, community management must be very easy, all fun and vibes. Just organize events, bring people together, pictures, and put it on social media." And then I laugh. If they catch me on a good day, I go deeper to explain. But if they catch me on a not so great day, I'm like, "Whatever you think it is," and I move on to the next thing. But then coming back to organizations, um, and first thing is that organizations, the first thing they get wrong about community is that most of them don't even know if they need a community or not. All right. So there was a time it seemed like community was like the buzz, the next big thing for every company. And then we saw every company just setting up a community, you know, putting out ads for community managers. And the way you know communities that don't even, or organizations rather, that don't even recognize or understand what community management is, is you can see the JDs on social media. You're putting out a role for a community manager, but you're asking for someone that can manage social media. You're asking for someone that can do influencer marketing and all of those things, right? So social media can be a bit embedded into a community manager's role, but community management is not social media management and it's not managing like influencer marketing, right? So most of them don't even realize or understand what community entails and then what community or how community, like, let me use the word, gets, or like, what would I say, aligns with their goals or with the product that they are building.

Yeah.

So there's like that first mistake, which is organizations have not sat down to understand their why. Why do you want to have a community and why are you building that community? And it leads me to the second thing, which is they think that community is a very quick fix, right? Oh, you have a terrible product. What do you do? Boom, open a community. Tell the community manager, oh, get us reviews. Let people talk about it on social media and all of that. Oh, let community just act as a support. We don't have strength to go to our support agents really. Just boom, anybody that has issues, direct them to the community. People will help them figure out, you know, what they're supposed to do. So that is like the second mistake that organizations make. And then the third, which is something that is very personal to me is that they think that community management is a quick fix. They expect like the biggest results in a very, very, very short timeline, right? So community management takes time. And the thing about community management is that most or some of community work is largely invisible, right? It can be a little bit hard sometimes to measure or quantify community work. Now I'm not saying that community should be vibes, there should be no ROIs or whatever on all your community initiatives. But the thing is that community work takes time, right? You're building trust, you're building loyalty, and it's not something that you do in a day. It's not something that you achieve in 2 months. It's not something that you achieve in 3 months. It's like builds up, it compounds. But the thing is that most companies just expect that you establish a community today, boom, it picks up, boom, people suddenly start loving your product, boom, people start doing things. So there's like a lot of pressure, and that's why you get most of them telling you, oh, we're not seeing what you're doing. Oh, 1,000 people have not used our product. Oh, you were supposed to sell these 1,001 things and this has not worked. Is that again, it ties back to, I think, the first point I made, which is that most companies do not understand what community is and why they want a community, you know, integrated into what they are doing. And then they expect it to be a quick fix and a fast route to maybe customer growth or whatever that the company is trying to achieve. These are 3 recurring mistakes that I've seen, and it's also common among my community manager friends that, you know, I've spoken to over time.

Thank you. Thank you. I love your answers. I actually have another question, but when you were speaking, I kind of picked up just 2 additional questions I want to quickly ask you before we move to the next one. Yeah, I know, we'll just catch up. Yeah, so, you know, the first thing you said is for most people, you know, most businesses who are building communities, they do not know their why.

Yeah.

Okay, so it's almost like, um, hey, community is The next big thing we should be doing.

And oh, our competitor has a community, and then suddenly everyone is starting communities.

Yes, exactly. So now, what should a company's Y be? So I know, yeah, you can't— you're not in every company, you don't know what it should be. But imagine someone brings you on as a consultant and says, oh, Chizuru, we are thinking of— yeah, so what do you think? Even if you can just use a hypothetical community, whatever, but What's an example of a good why for wanting to start a community?

So I'm going to point to something which is called the SPACES model, right? And it encapsulates— that's S-P-A-C-E-S. It's like the 5 whys or 5 reasons that we've tried to like put communities into. And then every company should derive their why from that. So the first thing is a community can serve as some sort of support for you. Um, I manage Interswitch's developer community and our community doubles as as a support channel for people. So what that means is— oh, I think Apple also does that. There are several examples. Apple has a community, and Google also does that, minus their GDG group. It's more like a forum per se. I wouldn't really call it a community. It's more like a forum. But there's that where people offer help to people. So say your customers are using your products, maybe SaaS products, and they run into issues, and they are maybe unable to really find an FAQ that explicitly defines what they should do at that point. Your community can be a where people come to get support and then other community members can help them through it. There's also something which is customer engagement, right? The E is engagement, right? I can't think of an immediate example right now, but a community or a company can build a community for engagement. So you've built something, you want people to interact with it. You want people to build some sort of connection around that product that you built. For example, fitness, right? A fitness gym, for example, can decide to build a community around that, right? What is the common interest that binds everybody in that community. Oh, they are gym rats. They are people that like going to the gym. They are people that like working out. And so what that community can do for a business like, say, iFitness is engagement. Or people are sharing tips for maybe leg days, people are sharing tips for abs, people are sharing tips for this, this, that. What that does is that it gives people a sense of belonging. People are able to even achieve their fitness goals through that community. And you know that over time there's going to be retention. That's how it ties back to the business, because of the value that people are bringing from that engagement in your community, they stay with your business. There's also, there's the P, which is around product, right? So we see a lot of people that do beta testing. They can just, you know, send the form to their customers and then they can tell people, oh, we're building XYZ or this, we're adding a new feature to the product and we'd like you to test it out, right? There's also the A, there's the C, and then there's the other S, but I'm not going to go into all of that. But for anybody who is interested, they can just check out the SPINs model by David Spins. It makes up the 5 whys. Yeah. Thank you for establishing a community. And it's important to note for this part that also that a community can be set or a community can be, can be set up for more than one purpose. So for example, mine at Interswitch doubles as support and also like engagement, right? So your community, your why can be 2, but again, to keep things simple, start off with one. Why do you want to establish a community? And as soon as you get that why and you start that community, then you can find other layers of it that can be complementary. So that's it.

Yeah, I like that. Thank you, thank you very much. Thank you. And then there's just one— something else you said. You can just give me a one-liner, like one-liner short answer before we move on. So you also said that, well, most people just want quick results, and then you added the caveat that you're not saying we shouldn't measure something in the early days, right? But we should know what to measure at each stage of the journey. So what I want to ask is In the early stage, so let's say we've started a community 3 months down the line or 6 months down the line, but ideally less than a year, what should we measure in those early days? What is just 1 or 2 core metrics to measure in those early days? Yeah.

Um, so, um, it goes back to that spaces model that I talked about, right? So what you're measuring depends on what your goal is. You cannot just measure, you know, just randomly. So for example, if let's say my community, community was set up for support, one of the measurements or one of the ROIs that I'll have to look at is over the past 3 months, how many complaints have come or how many issues have our users had? And then to what degree have community members helped them?

Yeah.

So it tells you, oh, that points to me. If you have people that have issues and community members have come to their aid, it points to you that your community is actually beneficial. Is useful and is something that you should scale for the coming years or for the coming months, right? So if it's engagement, for example, a community is measuring daily active users, that's DAUs, and a community is measuring monthly active users. Oh, they might actually even measure the number of people that register for events and the number of people that turn up. And then after that, you can actually even register, oh, 1,000 people registered for an event and say about 300, 400, 500 turned up for that event. Even after the event, did engagement increase in the community? Did you find out that people who are lockers— so lockers are just basically people that just join a community but never participate. They are just like onlookers, you know. You're trying to see, oh, did a locker maybe attend this event and then this locker actually saw the need to fully participate or be part of the community? Did engagement increase after this event? Did engagement tank after this event? It gives you an overview of the things that actually resonate with your community. And if those things that resonate with your community you know, are in alignment with your business goals. Because also something I forgot to say is that every community has to align with business goals. Every single community initiative has to align with business goals.

Thank you for that. So something I want to ask, I mean, you've been doing community management for over 5 years. I think you started from this, you know, VC firm that has a community of founders they invest in.

Yeah.

And then you move to, you know, you progressed until you're now at Endless Reach. So in all these things, I mean, all these experiences, what's that one major thing you struggled with in community building? Just one thing, very major, you struggled with around building community?

I, I think most of it would be— should I call it psychological? I don't know if psychological is a term. But I struggle with— I never believe that I'm doing enough when it comes to community. Oh yeah, yeah, yeah. I think, oh, could I be doing more to make my members feel more connected? Is what I'm doing enough? Oh, and there are times when my members, you know, I even see that members, you know, now get to know each other more personally outside of the community, which is also a win, right? Because you're also fostering connections. And then I have my members literally tell me, oh, this community is doing this. praise for me. This community has helped me in this way. Well done, this and that. But personally, you know, even sometimes in the community, but I struggle to believe it. It sounds like sometimes high praise that does not have any substance to me. So it's just— I don't know if it's psychological, I don't know what term it is, but it's actually, um, believing in the impact that my work makes. That's like the major factor that I've had for a very, very, very long time. The major issue rather that I've had, um, for a very long time. Believing in all that work.

Yeah.

And believing in the good that the community has done.

Yeah, that's it. Yeah, I think, I think I can relate to this, right? So for me also, for a long time, though I'm not a community manager, but for a long time in my own career, I struggled or had this feeling where I felt, I felt like I was chasing an ideal. And to make it worse, I didn't even know what I do this. All I know is that there's something in my head telling me you're not doing enough, this is not it. That's because of that.

Yes.

Yeah. And because of that, I find it hard to even share my wins. I don't see my wins, so I don't even share with my, you know, superiors.

Exactly, exactly.

I don't even talk about it. I just feel like you're not doing well, so just bend down. And because of it, I can be doing Amazing things and nobody knows because there's this head trash that keeps telling me it's not enough, it's not doing well.

Exactly.

I think I can't do it. Oh my God, that's it. So how have you been able to navigate it? So for me, someone says, how have you been able to navigate? I mean, I don't know, I can't even say I did XYZ, but I think I'm curious for you, how are you navigating this psychological feeling that you're not doing enough, especially considering that you're also battling this external thing where most times people don't understand your work, you struggle to see the impact it has made?

Yeah.

So it's almost like battling head trash. That's the internal struggles, and then you also have to dispel All these external darts people are shooting at you. So how do you, how did you navigate that feeling or how are you currently navigating it?

Okay. Thank you for saying currently navigating it because I'm still in the waters. Um, so one of the things I do is that, you know how some years ago we spoke about, or you told me about having a brag sheet. Um, I tried to do something like that, but a little bit different with my external stakeholders. Right. So I've had people discover services or I've had people use some of my company services or APIs in some cases. because of the community or through my community, right? So example, if my community didn't exist, people might want to use a certain product or might want to know if we're able to offer a certain service, and then they'll have to go through the website, get the support email, email support, and then, you know, get the response. My community has now served as a discovery channel, if I'm to call it that, for the company. So I just have people come to my community and they're like, oh, we want to do X, Y, Z, and we're wondering if Interswitch provides this kind of service or has an API that can enable us to do do this sort of thing. And then of course there are several business divisions in Interswitch. If it's within my purview, I help them through it. If it's not, then I serve as the link between that customer and the business. I now connect them to somebody who is able to help them answer their questions in good time and actually help them get onboarded. So most times I take, you know, maybe screenshots or whatever of that, and I put it in my reporting to show the company that, hey, this is how this community is helping the business make money beyond the things that we're offering. And this is a project projected income or projected results that is coming from this, right? That's one. Then the second thing is, um, I've also come to realize that, oh, my feelings might be valid, but not everything my feelings tell me is true. So I've spoken about how that people give me feedback, and sometimes I wonder, oh, why are they saying this? Are they trying to make me feel good? And all of that. And on the flip side, I think about it, these people do not have an obligation to make me feel good. They are not exactly friends per se. they are people that I am building with, my community members, and I'm not paying. It's not like I've paid anybody money to give me some goodwill. So if people are really saying these things without me having to incentivize them or trigger them to or ask them to, then it means that it's true, right? They know how that community has been of benefit to them personally and professionally. So I take these words that they say to me and then I tell myself, oh, this is good. Maybe you should double down on this. It could have more ripple impact or ripple effect on the rest of your community. So the second, again, if I'm to put it in a sentence, is that I teach myself to believe the good that I do and the impact that it does. That's the second. And then the third thing also is I always, I constantly question what I'm doing. I ask myself, is this the best there is? Is this the limit? Is this the summit of what you're doing in this community? Oh, there's a tendency to feel I'm not doing enough and all of that. And then you rest and then you feel bad and all of that. But feeling bad does not translate to doing the rest of the work that is required. So sometimes just to get past do it, I try to see what other people are doing. I read reports, I comb through other communities in Nigeria, outside of Nigeria, to see the limits that people— or the lengths that people are going with community management, you know, just to also challenge myself to go beyond what I currently know and what currently exists, you know. Just so the more I do it, the more there's confidence, the more I cast self-doubt aside or cast aside the thoughts that I'm not doing. But these are the 3 things. So show results in a way that it translates to business goals. Secondly, teach my mind to accept feedback about the good work that I'm doing and double down on the work. And then the third is, um, going beyond what I know and what I've learned, um, so that it doesn't just end there for me. And that the more I learn, the more I do, the more all of those doubts fall away and I have better reasons to believe in myself. Yeah, those are the 3 things.

I, I like that. You know the part I like best? I like the parts where you said if maybe you see something happens, maybe someone comes comes, you know, buys the company's products through the community. I like how you said you take a screenshot of that and then you share with your team.

Yeah.

Like you share with your leaders. And I find it so interesting because when I struggled with that epic head trash, right, I never even shared my work. I never even talked about my work because I always saw it as it's not good enough. If it's not good enough, why talk about it?

Yeah.

Yeah, yeah. But from what you said, I think one thing I'm learning is, or one very vital lesson from what you just said, is even if your head trash tells you this is so basic, why flaunt it, it's so basic, why are you trying to talk about it, ignore that head trash and go ahead and share that work with everybody, or with the right people, with the relevant people.

Yeah.

So do not hide your work, no matter— even if you think it's very minor, still talk about it.

Yes, yes. And something else also, just what you said, um, it's also the fact that sometimes we don't share because it feels cringe. Oh, why are you showing off? Sometimes it could not even be that it's small. For me, the thoughts could be, oh, it might not be so much of a big deal, but why are you trying to show off? Oh, there are other people that are doing even much more than you are.

Yeah.

So who are you in the grand scheme of things to show those things, right? But there's something I've started— maybe a recurring theme for me recently has been like unlearning shame and decentering shame, to be honest. So I do things that feel cringe to me, I share regardless, even when it's cringe. Oh, there's sometimes you share it and there's no comments. You might even be expecting to hear, oh, well done, this is great, this is that, and nobody comments on it. And then your brain might just tell you, you know, don't even do it again, you see, nobody did that. But the huge part of decentering shame is coming back to that thing over and over again. You're not doing it for them, you're doing it also because you're trying to teach yourself something, and you're also trying to show. So it's just showing up and doing it regardless of what your head tells you or what your mind tells you. Your mind is not always on your side, to be honest. So that's also like—

Yeah, I love that. I love that. I love that. I mean, I like how you shared these tips or the steps you've shared around how you navigate So one last thing I want to ask is, what lesson have you learned so far? I mean, now community is hot. You've done it for a while. You've even been doing it before it became such a hot thing in tech.

Thing.

Now, what's that vital lesson? Yeah, you've learned, or let me put it this way. Imagine you move on to something else tomorrow. Okay. And then you have to give one advice to someone who is going to take your place. Or someone, a fresh grad just out of school, comes to you and is about to start a career in community management, and they come to you to ask for advice. What's that critical lesson you've learned that you'd want to pass along to someone else?

So this might sound cliché, but one thing I say to my friends a lot is that clichés are true, right? Um, so my, my advice would be don't give up. And let me explain what that don't give up means, as I said, community management is very hard, um, in case nobody has ever said it. And it is very, very hard. And it being hard means, as I said, some days what you want to do and the things that you actually do might not resonate. It might even fall short of the business goals that you're trying to achieve. Um, there are times when your community will not be what you want it to be or where you want it to be. Um, and what keeps me going is, oh, tomorrow might be better. Tomorrow we will really be better? Oh, I could try something I haven't tried before. What are others doing that I think that is out of reach or out of touch that I can try? Or sometimes it's as simple as going back to my very active members to ask, is this community what it used to be for you? Are you still getting value from this community? Where did we fall short? What did we stop doing? What should we consider doing? It's just, again, as I said, don't give up. You have to keep trying new things. And again, for the stakeholders, let me bring it back to that, that maybe sometimes question you a lot, and you might And that, oh, sometimes, of course, your esteem, again, people say, oh, separate your emotions from work and all of those things. I think that is high sounding. But what I believe is that—

That's not how it sounds.

Exactly. Thank you for that. We are whole humans. All these separate— your work should matter to you. And if your work matters to you, then a lot of your emotions is actually going to go into that. If you care about your work, I'm sorry, your emotions will be involved to a very, very large extent. So it's keep trying new things, right? With the stakeholders, are there ways that you can make them understand this? I'm going to give an example, right? I was a bit stuck on how to go about my reporting because I work in a business where there's engineering, there's the business team, and then community team. And the way others go about reporting is not exactly the way that I would go because of the peculiarities of my own role. And so I was a bit stuck. I had been thinking about it for a while. One day I was like, oh, I could use Claude and I could just run Claude, give Claude enough context about my work. And I came up with these very, very good reporting templates that, you know, my MD had to say, oh, wow. And now even for me, what it did is it even now helps me articulate better the work that I do and how it ties back to the community. So the part of not giving up could be, oh, should you have more conversations with stakeholders outside of the formal official meetings? Do you have to go to your line manager after a meeting to say, hey, this is what I'm doing and this is how it translates to my work? You know, maybe during meetings, people are trying to stick to time. There might not be enough time for you to explain, enough time for them to dig into what you're doing. And most times there might be that conclusion that, oh, you're not doing anything, right? So it could— the part of not giving up could be trying to find ways to provide some sort of synergy with your stakeholders in which they understand you better. The part of not giving up could be learning something new. It could be getting a certification. It could actually even be attending community conferences for community managers. It could be trying new things for your members. It could be speaking to them more. It could be stopping some things that feel good to you but are not necessarily bringing the results. But what I would tell someone is to never give up because community management is hard and there's a tendency, a very high tendency to just boot out of it in the first few years. Oh, I've even been 5 years into it and and I still feel all of that on some days. It's just to keep trying, keep iterating, and then, you know, see where it leads you.

That's it. I, I thank you so much, Chizuru, for that. I love your answer. Let me tell you why I really love your answer, right? You know, most times we feel bad about something, and then because we feel bad about that thing, we feel justified. Oh, I'm so sad my community is not growing, and you feel justified and you move on. The next day you come back can feel sad, but I like how you've tied it into— yeah, you could feel bad about something but always be in motion. Okay, so not giving up means you may have to— sometimes it's inward, you have to go learn something. Sometimes it's outward, you have to go advocate for yourself. I have a whole podcast episode around it, but I really just love our conversation. It's so practical. Yeah, effortlessly simple. Well, very practical. Thank you so much, Chizurum. It's been quite an insightful conversation. Yeah, do have a lovely day. Thank you for listening to the Early Stage Marketer Podcast. I hope today's story gave you something to reflect on or even something to try in your own work. If you enjoyed it, please subscribe, leave a comment, and share it with someone who might find this helpful. See you next time.