Make a discord and advertise it prominently. Hang out in there. Talk to people who join. Be actually interested in their use cases, and not in your own company.
A discord server is useful for far more than most people understand. You can show daily progress; show new features; highlight community contributions; have a centralized bug report channel; and the other users will start solving other users' problems when it attains critical mass.
The nit is "critical mass". But if you make something that people find remotely interesting, people will join. Broadcast what you're doing on twitter, and eventually you'll get noticed.
Surveys and cold calls are like trying to make fire by banging stones together. Tools from a different era. Sure, they work, but I've found the above process to be far more effective.
It helps to make your discord a general topic, by the way, rather than a specific product. Our ML discord recently passed 1,000 users. https://discord.com/invite/x52Xz3y
Community building is tough work, and I've had several failed attempts. You shouldn't expect yours to take off immediately. You should do it because you like it, and eventually something will work.
But it depends entirely on the business. Most businesses don't need a community. But I can't think of a single business with a community that would have been in such a strong position without it.
Agreed but replace 'discord' with the platform that your users already know and hang out on. For us, in a non-technical niche, that's Facebook groups. For others it might be slack or discord - just know your market and go where they are.
A discord server is useful for far more than most people understand. You can show daily progress; show new features; highlight community contributions; have a centralized bug report channel; and the other users will start solving other users' problems when it attains critical mass.
The nit is "critical mass". But if you make something that people find remotely interesting, people will join. Broadcast what you're doing on twitter, and eventually you'll get noticed.
Surveys and cold calls are like trying to make fire by banging stones together. Tools from a different era. Sure, they work, but I've found the above process to be far more effective.
It helps to make your discord a general topic, by the way, rather than a specific product. Our ML discord recently passed 1,000 users. https://discord.com/invite/x52Xz3y
Community building is tough work, and I've had several failed attempts. You shouldn't expect yours to take off immediately. You should do it because you like it, and eventually something will work.
But it depends entirely on the business. Most businesses don't need a community. But I can't think of a single business with a community that would have been in such a strong position without it.