Hello, and welcome to Bad Community Advice.I'm your host.My name is Seth Resler, and this is a show where I invite people who are experts in community building on to give us their terrible tips and toxic takeaways.And today, we're actually talking about a topic that we have talked about before, but it is so important, 'cause it is usually the very first thing I hear from new community builders.They make the mistake that we're gonna be talking about today.So, uh, my guest is a legend in the community space.He's a community strategist, a speaker, an author, and a podcaster.He's the founder of State of Shift, a consultancy that helps organizations design, scale, and measure high-impact communities, developer workflows, and go-to-market programs.He's also the author of a number of books, including People Powered and The Art of Community, and he founded the annual Community Leadership Summit.Please welcome Jono Bacon.Hi.Welcome to the show.Thank you for having me on.It's great to be here.Oh, it's awesome to have you here.I, I'm, I'm really excited.And, you know, we're gonna get into your piece of advice in just a bit.Um- Yeahand it's a really good one.I, I, I think this isYou know, like I said, this is one that we've talked about before, but it is so important, 'cause this is such a mistake that new-time community builders make.But before we get to that, I do wanna talk a little bit about your story and how you fell into community building and community management, because when you first got into the community space, there wasn't really a job title called community manager, was there?No.I mean-what was it like?Not that I'm aware of.Yeah, it was, umSo I was 18, um, and I was living at home with my parents before I went off to university, and, um, my brother, Simon, um, came to visit for a couple of weeks, and he introduced me to this, um, this early operating system called Linux.Um, and, and what I didn'tI'd, I'd heard of Linux, but I didn't really know what it was.But what was interesting about it was that people all over the world come together to build this.They build this software together.And as a, as a bit of a nerd, I was mesmerized by this.You know, the technology was interesting, but it was really this idea of people on the internet kind of building stuff together who are not in the lo- same location, who don't really know each other, and I was justIt, it sounds like such a horrible cliche, but, like, a light bulb went off, and I just thought, "I just wanna learn everything to do with this."It really, like, massaged kind of the, um, you know, theI was, I was always kind of interested in people and tech and psychology.Uh, I didn't really know it at the time, um, but it kind of, like, ticked all of those boxes.Um, so I just started learning more and more about it and set up a c- a community in the UK called Linux UK.Started kicking the tires, and then started meeting, like, really cool people and really smart people.And as a kid, uh, who's 18, and I did terribly in school, I got Cs and Ds, and my teachers thought I was an idiot, um, it gave me a real sense of agency.It gave me a sense of purpose.Um, and I felt like I could see a place for me in the world.Um, but there was no job title.Um, you know, my degree was in, was utterly pointless, was in CD-ROMs from the '90s, so irrelevant now.Um, um, so l- little did I know that I would end up kind of working this career that really didn't exist when I was getting into this, you know?Well, that makes me feel better.My degree is in philosophy, so we're, we're both good there.Um, but you are working primarily in the tech space, and I feel like, uh, in a lot of ways, the tech space is more advanced when it comes to this concept of community building.You know, when I go to, uh, community conferences, sometimes it feels like not only is everybody there from the tech space, but they're specifically from the software as a service space.And if you say- Rightyou know, they're, they're familiar with the job title of community m- uh, excuse me, community manager now.Um, but in a lot of other industries, they aren't really aware that such a job title exists- Rightor, or it gets confused with social media manager.They just think everybody who's on the internet is, uh, you know, a- all doing that kind of stuff.Is that your sense, too?Are the tech companies farther ahead when it comes to community building?I th- I think so, and I think it's a blessing and a curse, becauseSo I think one of, one of the reasons why community building, probably started out earlier in tech is because there was a really fundamental unit of exchange, right?Which was code.You know, when I got started, um, uh, open source was starting to become a thing.It was very, very early.Most people didn't really know what it was.I remember, you know, I worked in a bookshop, and I would, I would, um, iron on transfers of the Linux penguin on, on, on a T-shirt, so when I go to work, I was hoping someone would recognize the Linux penguin and then strike up a conversation about it, and it was very occasional that anyone mentioned this.But there was a unit of exchange, which was code.So somebody could make something together so that it was an output to the community, and I think that's different in other parts of the world, where, um, you know, communities might be more about kind of, um, uh, sharing wisdom and experience and problem-solving and, and, and things like that.But where I think it's a blessing and a curse is that when we look at companies, um, chief financial officers kind of ruin companies, right?Because what they do is they basically set the terms of agreement, which is the way in which we define success in a company, is anything that can be measured in a Google sheet, right?And it's, it's, it'sThere are obvious things like revenue and churn and things like that, um, but a lot of the value, a lot of the, the, the magic in communities, of course, is the stuff that can't be measured in a spreadsheet, right?It's, it's empathy, and it's, it, it's, it's mentoring, and it's kindness, and it's relationships.So, um, I think what's interesting is that you can prove the value of communities in many cases much more readily inside of tech companies.But because of that, like, compulsion towards graphs and spreadsheets, which I do think are critical, it only really demonstrates one half of the coin.So a lot of the work that we do with companies when we work with them at State of Shift is, is making it clear, like, what are the measurable pieces that we should focus on in terms of efficiency, but also the pieces that are on the other side of the coin that you can't measure.That's actually where your competitive adv- a- advantage is.Because communities are really belief systems, and what we're doing here is we're engineering belief with your audience, but that is really fundamentally immeasurable in nature.I hear that so often from community managers that proving ROI is difficult, especially when it comes to just getting internal buy-in from the organization and getting everybody on board and, and in the community.Are there specific things that you like to look at to do that?Like, certain data points or certain ways that you like to tell that story to get buy-in from your own organization?Yeah.The way, the way we do it is, like, when we bring on aLike, with, at Station, we only work with a very small number of companies.It's 20 companies.Because we go, like a lot of consultants, they tend to just talk at people, and we actually partner up with people and we do work with people.The first thing we always do is, uh, I always ask the founder, like, you know, "What, what is the outcome you wanna get to?"And it's almost always, "I wanna grow my brand, I wanna get more people using my software or my product," um, um, or, "I wanna drive leads and revenue."So what we do is we identify the outcome, and then from that we then say, "Okay.What are the things that we can measure that will demonstrate success in that outcome?"Right?So for example, with brand recognition, it can be things like, um, tracking brand mentions and citations in LLMs.We use a tool called Peak to do that, for example.So it's one way in which we can, we can show, like, a, a quantifiable outcome.And then from that, the community strategy or the, the go-to-market strategy, whatever else, kind of spans out, right?We'll identify which channels to focus on, all the rest of it, and then for each of those individual channels, you'll measure those things.If we're doing YouTube, we'll measure things like average view duration and, um, subscribers and stuff like that.So that to me is the, um, is the measurable pieces, and I actually think you can prove ROI in communities relatively easily.I don't think it's complicated, but what you need to do is you need to tie engagement to the unit of revenue or the unit of value within that company.And it depends on where that company's at.For early stage companies, they don't really care, they don't really care that much about revenue.They care about product market fit.So y- so the unit of value there is product usage.Uh, but then with later stage companies, especially like series B, it's all about growth, so you have to be able to tie it into revenue.So I think you can actually prove that.The, the key thing, though, is, throughout all of this, is, like, if we only focus on those graphs, what you build is you build efficiency, but you don't necessarily build, um, fully rounded outcomes.So for example, when we work with a lot of companies, the first thing we do is we look at brand positioning, which is, candidly, why should someone give a shit about you and your company?Like, why should they care in the first place?Uh, because I'll give you an example.Like, um, if you look at the difference between, um, GitHub and Atlassian, these are 2, like, tech companies.Developers, for example, they love GitHub.They're obs- like, they're huge fans of GitHub.Um, Atlassian have got good products and all the rest of it, but they didn't really capture the same developer mind, mindset as, as GitHub.So what happened is that GitHub really, they, they, they built a belief system around developers that they were kind of like one of them out there flying the flag for developers, right?And what's interesting is that when you identify that belief system, it enables you to be creative in ways that your competitors aren't.So most companies, what they do is they look at their competitors and they say, "What are my competitors good at?"And then they try to become better at that.And our counsel to these companies is, we'll measure all the stuff that I just mentioned, but let's identify the areas where they're not competing, and then we lean into that.So for example, back in the early days of GitHub, um, there was plenty of other companies that were doing developer tools, but GitHub really focused on social coding, the idea of people coming together to collaborate on things.Uh, and that enabled them to differentiate in a way that really made them stand out.That is not measurable, right?So it needs the companion of, of both of these, and that, I think, is crucial to the overall success of this.The community managers that I see fail are the ones that they, they, they either don't measure or they, or, or it's, it's either they don't do either of those or they certainly don't do both of those.Uh, you can have the best metrics in the world, but if it's not leading the company forward, you're, you'reIt's only a matter of time before you get cut.Um, so I think it's, it, the, both of those are of crucial importance.Well, uh, we could talk about metrics and ROI all day, but that's not why I brought you here.Uh, we're gonna talk about the bad advice that you mentioned, and that is this.If you build it-they will come.And this, of course, is the, uh, the famous quote from Field of Dreams, uh, that we all like to say.But it, it turns out that's not true in community-building.Talk to me about why.Yeah.You know what's embarrassing about this, Seth?I've actually never seen Field of Dreams.I need to watch that at some point.I trot out that statement endlessly, and I actually still haven't seen the movie.Um, so I, the reason why I said this, and I know it's, it's not a particularly original thought, if I'm being honest, is, yeah, there is this, this view.We hear this with a lot of the c- a lot of companies that we, we speak to.They're like, "You know, I wanna build a community," and what they think of as a community in their minds is a forum, a Discord channel, Mighty Networks, Circle, all of these platforms.Um, I, in myself, think that that is a broken mental model, right?To me, a community is not necessarily any of those platforms.What a community is is it's a scalable set of relationships with your target audience.A lot of the folks who we work with, when they wanna build a community, we w- actually won't recommend they set up a forum or a chat channel.We'll build community through email.We'll build community through online events and things like that.But the people that then do decide, yes, we wanna build a place where our community go and hang out, like a Discord or a, or a forum, there's a general view of, like, "If we put it online, people will just naturally show up, and we can then kind of build this scalable community, and we can go and focus on other things."Um, and then people start getting into, especially community managers, get into the nerdery of how to do this, around gamification and, you know, technical features in all these different platforms.To me, the most crucial element that gets people to come back isn't the platform.It is how you frame the role of your community mem- members in your organization or in your initiative, right?In other words, you know, most, if, Seth, if you and I were working together on a community, most people in the community would, would assume that you and I are in the front seat of the car.We're driving.They're in the back of the car following our lead.And we have to frame that.We, we have to reframe that.We instead, we need to be able to say, "We're all in this together," and be candid and, and honest about it and say, "Look, this community is gonna suck, and it's gonna fail unless we actually build it together."Like, just Seth and I, we can't just do it ourselves.We, as a group, need to, to do that, and that means opening up the community to feedback and input and, you know, your ug- your baby is ugly at the beginning of a community, is identifying those ugly traits and fixing them and making them more beautiful, and I think when we do that, that is a really complex, um, vulnerable set of things that we need to do.But when we do that, that's how you build the growth, not just, you know, buy Ni- Mighty Networks, and, and boom, you're off to the races.So I've run into that situation so often where somebody says, uh, you know, "I wanna build a community.What platform should I use?"And they, they look at all the platforms that you just named.Y- what is the first question they should be asking instead?To me, the first question is, who is your audience?Um, and to get reallyWithout turning this into one of those weirdo marketing persona development kind of exercises where people create, like, 12-slide decks with, you know, what conf- what type, what brand of cornflakes is your target audience?I think that's such a waste of time.Instead, it's like when you think about who your audience is who's gonna come into this community, who are they, and what do they care about?And that audience breaks down, for companies, breaks down into 2 different types of audience.You've got the economic buyer, the person who buys your stuff, and then you've got the user of your product.The vast majority of economic buyers are never gonna go into your community.Just doesn't, just doesn't happen.But your users, the people who use your product, your tool, or, or p- the people who are part of your mission, they are very likely to go into it.So the first question I always ask is, who are those people?What do they care about?What are they interested in?What problems do they have?Um, and we as humans are very responsive, uh, uh, receptive to, to loss prevention.A cycle, uh, a study was done in the '70s that found that, uh, l- losing $20 on the street is far more psychologically jarring than the joy of finding $20 on the street.So when we take into account all of those things, like pain points and loss and all the rest of it, who is that person, and then where do they naturally show up?Like, how do they naturally engage, right?So for example, a lot of developers, they are very comfortable in places like Discord.Uh, gamers are very comfortable in places like Discord.Um, but a lot of, like, general SaaS users or people who use, like, you know, browser-based software, they, they, they're never gonna go into Discord, right?So figure out who is your audience.Where do they naturally hang out?Where do they naturally like to engage?And then decide your platform based upon that, right?Because that will, that will help you to break it down to, is it a forum, is it a chat channel, or is it one of these big all-in-one platforms like Mighty or Circle or Gradual or whatever?And then you can start figuring out, okay, based upon that persona profile, what are the features that we need?So for example, I think a lot of people should be building mobile apps, right?Because you get notifications in mobile apps that can pull people back in.So going with Mighty Networks and buying their app thing or the Circle app thing or the Swarm app thing is really good for an audience that is very mobile-centric, right?Um, the, the, the, you know, if that's the need that your audience has got, that's how it should frame your, your decision-making in my mind.Yeah.No, that, m- that makes a lot of sense.You mentioned events.Can you talk about what role events play, especially at the beginning stages of a community?Um, and, and how does that help you- Yeahfigure out what you should build?I think events are more important than any forum or any chat channel.And the reason why is, um, to me w- a community is a, it's really, it's a, it's a, it's a fabric of human trust.So, um, when you have an environment where people, um, are generous with their expe- expertise and insight, and they trust each other, that's the most beautiful community you can get, and it builds a real sense of belonging.People feel a part of something.They build lifelong friendships in those kinds of communities.The critical ingredient in doing that in any community is trust, and the way in which we build trust, the, the, the most b- the most purest, like, um, you know, farm-to-table, organic, superfood version of trust is you and I having a beer together in person, right?Or, or a glass of wine or a coffee or whatever your tipple might be.It's being in person.That does not scale out, right?So to me, the reason why events are so important is in-person events, super valuable because you can build that trust in person.You get that, you get something that's missing in a lot of online settings.The second best there is getting on Zoom sessions or group kind of video calls.And one of the things that we say, for example, we do this in our events, we run a bunch of events at StateShift, is we ask people to turn their cameras on, and we basically say, "Look, this session is gonna be 100 times better if we're all present, we're all visible."And the reason why is because we exchange body language.Like Seth, you and I, we're chatting today, I'm terrible with names and faces.I don't think we've met before.Maybe if we have, it's all, albeit very briefly.But I can get a sense of who you are, and, like, I can tell you're, you're passionate, you're enthusiastic.I can tell you're a nice guy, that you're a genuine guy.Um, and that all comes through with the, not just the words, but the body language.So that's why I think events are crucial because when y- you could yank people into a forum or into a chat channel, but you don't exchange that body language.So one of the things we often recommend, for example, for new communities is get people on events a lot, right?Build that trust and then bring in your early adopters in.Because they've met each other on events, either in person or online, that trust is better formed, and therefore you'll get better traction on those text channels.I, I know you like to talk about the psychology behind it.Let's talk a little bit about how you build that trust.And are there certain things you can do with events that will build trust?Yeah.So I think the most important thing is making people feel useful.Um, the, umIt's interesting, I think, when you look at society, where, where, where there are portions of society that have, um, that have fallen into, um, poverty and instability.In many cases, it's when there is a lack of purpose, when people feel a bit kind of lost in their lives.Um, and when you add purpose, people feel much more, um, motivated, they feel more useful, and they generally are more productive, um, in what, in whatever they're doing.It's the same thing in the community.Like, you go into a community, you don't really know anyone.There's all these strangers.Um, and those are the communities that people will generally leave.But if you go into a community and you feel like, uh, you have opinions that are useful and interesting, you've got an opportunity to share and play a role and build something that's special, you, you, you generate much better results.Like, the, my first experience with this really was when I ran the community team at Canonical.We built a community of about 60 million users.We had about 350,000 active participants, and we worked really hard to create an environment where everybody could show up and bring their gifts and bring their wisdom to make, uh, Ubuntu better.It wasn't, you know, Jono and his team are in, are in charge of this.So to me, the key element of trust there is, is when you bring people into an environment and you, you, you get in person or online and you exchange that body language, is you facilitate people being able to bring their wisdom and expertise and show up and execute in there, right?So I'll give you an example.When we do online events, one of the things that we do is, at the beginning of the event, we ask people to turn their cameras on.And then what we do is we, instead of just, like, most events suck, right?It's 45 minutes of someone blathering on and then 15 minutes of Q&A.What we do is we instead say, "Okay, what do you wanna get out of this session?Go and write it down in this doc."And they go and write down, like, what's on their mind, what they're struggling with.and then we say, "Okay, now everybody go and up vote the things that they, everyone wrote down for the things that you're also interested in."So now I've got a list of things that people care about, who wrote them, and then the highest up voted things.And then what I do is I use that as a calling card.I basically say, "Okay, Beatrice, you said you're interested in this topic.Tell us a little bit about what you're struggling with there."And then I might say, "Oh, Seth, I know you've worked on this a little bit.Could you share what you've learned with Beatrice?"So what we're doing is we're kind of like we're, we'reIt's like those old school, like, telephone exchanges.We're connecting wires between these different people in this conversation.And what that does is it gets people talking, it gets people engaging, they feel a sense of purpose.They build trust because they're open and vulnerable with each other, and that's, I think, the best way to do it.You know what's so important, I think, about what you're saying is that so often when we are thinking about building audiences, we're thinking like content creators, the question we ask is, what are people going to get out of this?Yeah.And, and you're also saying we need to be thinking about what can people give, not just what can people get.And that that plays- Yeaha really important role.That's what starts to build the bond and the sense of belonging between people, right?I think you're absolutely spot on is communities that are transactional in nature never flourish, right?And we, we, we've seen this for years.I think this is actually gonna go away with AI, where you get a lot of communities and it's just a bunch of people, they go in, they ask their question, they get their response, and then they get out of there.That's not a community.That's just a shitty support forum.Um, and, um, it's, it's, it's basically, it's just, it's multiplayer, multiplayer kind of support ticket at that point.Um, so I think AI's gonna make that go away because people are not gonna go to communities to ask their questions.They're gonna go into ChatGPT and get much better results much faster.So to me, uh, with creators, for example, creators tend to be broadcasters, right?They tend to create material, whether it's YouTube or podcasts or they're writing articles, and they broadcast out to their audience.But when you create that 2way system where you can gather input, you can gather feedback, you can run polls, you can encourage people to create knowledge bases or create resources around what you're doing, what it does is it, again, builds that trust, builds that sense of belonging, but it adds value to you as a creator as well, right?So I think we gotta try and get away from this, like, purely transactional, you know, people go in, ask a question, get, get a, get a response, and get out of there.I wanna return to something that you mentioned earlier, which is that, uh, you talked about how this is an act of co-creation, that this is not just something where you use that car analogy.It's not just something where you're driving it and everybody else is in the back, that everybody's gotta participate.At the same time, especially at the beginning when you are, you know, first kinda kicking off a community, y- you've gotta be a little bit of the driving force.How do you, how do you do that?What is the way to co-create with people?What do you need to be thinking about to make that happen?Yeah.So what I've learned is I think it's about being able to spot signal, right?So I'll, I'll give you an example of this.When I fir- I, I've been living in the US now for about 17 years.When I first moved over here, um, I've always been into heavy metal, and I've been playing music for years.Um, and um, when I first moved over here, I had this idea of, of basically writing and recording music where I give the music away for free.This was kind of unusual at the time.It's less of a thing now with Spotify.Um, and my idea was I'll build a community around this, and then what we'll do is we'll build a movement around the band, right?And I was writing allIt was basically a solo project.I was writing and recording everything myself.So what I did is, um, I created a little community, uh, and people could join this community.Um, and people would join it 'cause they'd listen to the music, and they'd, they'd like, they, they'd like the music.C- can't understand why 'cause the music was terrible if you'd asked me.But they'd join.And then I would, when they'd join, I'd say, "Oh, you know, um, my goal here is," like I'd try to talk to as many people one on one, especially in those early days.Um, you know, myI'd, I'd love to just see what we can do to, like, make this music as pervasive as possible.Like, I'd like to do a newsletter.I'm thinking maybe video game or whatever.And, you know, I, and I'd say to people, like, "I'd love your ideas."And then when somebody would share an idea, like this one guy said, "I think it'd be cool for you to have, like, a, a fanzine," right?Uh, and I said, "That sounds like a cool idea.Would you be interested in doing it?I'm happy to help where I can."And he's like, "Sure, I'll do it."And so he started, um, doing a fanzine, which I think went out once a month, where he'd just post about the ba- We, a, a little, a little while later, like, formed the live band, and we'd play arou- gigs around the Bay Area.So my point there is I was, like, basically polling for signal, right?And, um, he basically expressed an interest in this.He seemed, the way, because he was quite responsive and quite engaging, seemed smart and motivated.Um, so that's when I was like, "Okay, look, if you don't ask, you don't get."And on that signal, um, proposed the idea of him helping, but the goal that I had was to lower the bar as best I could, right?So I said to him, "You know, I'm happy to send you information.I'm happy to maybe, um, get a designer to create some, some, some designs for you.Whatever makes it really easy for you."And he was happy to participate.Another person, for example, was a developer who I already knew.Um, um, and he created, like, a kind of, like, um, uh, like, a Guitar Hero type game of our songs, uh, based on an open source project called Frets on Fire.So it's like identifying little bits of signal, and but the key thing here, I think, is when people have ideas, all too often people have ideas and want somebody else to do those ideas.I think when you create that environment where it's not Seth and Jono in the front seat, we're all driving this half-built car together, is when you share an idea, you're putting yourself up to potentially be asked to volunteer to implement that thing.And then when that becomes the norm, I think that's how you start co-creating together.Mm.But it does require whoever forms a community, in this case with my, my ex- my music example, I was the creator.It, it did require me, like, scanning for signal and identifying it, and then trying to create these mechanisms for people to contribute so I could scale out the impact ofYeah.Uh, but when you talk about scanning for signal, I mean, and just basically saying listening, it's not necessarily something that requires a complicated system.I mean, it doesn't sound like you sat there and, and put together a, a, a 10-question survey and emailed it out to a bunch of people.No.These came up just in regular conversations, right?Just chatting to people, yeah.Yeah.Yeah.It'sI actually think that this is, you know, without taking us off track, I actually think this is, in my mind, one of the most crucial skills, I think, for, for community builders, is, you know, when we, when we work with companies at StateOfShift, we operate, we always call it a flywheel, which is basically measure something, um, interpret the results, hypothesize what's right, what's wrong, and then experiment.Like, do a single experiment to see how we can improve that, that, that mechanism.It's, it's kind of inspired by MrBeast, where, you know, he's been asked for years, "How did you build such a large YouTube channel?"And he said, "Make a video, and then pick one thing to improve, and then implement that fix in the next video, and r- rinse and repeat thousands of times."So to me, it's the same kinda thing with community building, is we have that flywheel of measure, you know, interpret, hypothesize, test over and over and over again.And I think the same thing applies to when we are, um, when we're scanning for signal.It's like we're scanning for, oh, here's something that might be useful, um, and then basically hypothesize that that could actually add value in the community, and then rinse and repeat over and over again.And some of the signal will not be good.Some people will say, "Yeah, I'll do it," and then they'll do nothing.Right.Um, or what they'll do is crap.Um, and you'll mentor them, and then it still will, it'll still be crap.But, you know, that's how we, that's how we fine-tune and sharpen our skills as, as we do it more.You know, this idea of experimentation, I think, brings us back to events.I mean, this is one of the reasons why I like events, is because events end, and so you can experiment with them, and if they don't go well, well, at least it's over, and you can do something else- Yeahthe next time.Yeah.You know?It, it, it- Yeahworks really well like that.Um- Totallyso, yeah, I, I mean, I mean, I, I love that.Well, this has been really, really valuable.Um, I wanna ask you one last question, and this is the last question that we ask everybody who comes on the podcast.Uh, make a prediction.What do you think we're gonna be talking about in the community space 5 years from now?So I think what's gonna happen 5 years from now is, I think, community marketing and, uh, product are all gonna be much more infused together.Um, right now, a lot of organizations, they have, like, a community manager or community team.They have a separate mar- that person might report into marketing, and then they'll have a separate product team.And I think what's happened over the last, I'd say the last 5 years, talking about 5 years, is a lot of community managers have been sidelined because the, their execution and deliver, delivery does not fit into, again, like I mentioned at the beginning of our chat today, the model of how companies, um, define success.So what's happened is I think a lot of people have been let go, and what's happened is community management has become a lot more data-driven, which I think is a net good thing.Um, but that's now integratingI think there's a, there's a holistic view now that really community, marketing, and product are all doing the same thing.They're all focused on delivering value to human beings, right, in some shape or form.And I think that balance of how those teams work together is gonna be the, probably a major topic of conversation 5 years from now.In the organizations that you work with, where does community usually sit?Is it in the marketing department?Is it in, uh, customer success?Is it somewhere else?Does it just depend on the organization?Um, a- and where should it sit?It depends a little bit, it depends a little bit on the size.Like, usually with the earlier stage companies that we work with, it tends to sit in marketing, unless it's a highly technical product, in which it sometimes sits in engineering.Like, when I was at Canonical, um, one of the best decisions I think Canonical made when I joined, 'cause I was, like, employee number 30 or something like that.I was, like, one of the first people to join Canonical who wasn't an engineer working on Ubuntu.Um, but I started out re- reporting into the, the founder, Mark Shuttleworth, and then he would do that for new roles for about a year, and then he'd move people into a team so he could scale out, and then I reported into the CTO, and I was part of the engineering management team.And I think it was a really wise choice, because we were a technical community primarily, so I needed to have that relationship with those engineering leads.But I think most of the time it's either marketing or sometimes engineering, rarely product.Um, in some cases, they report directly to the CEO in the early stage companies.To me, it really depends on the type of company.I think marketing's fine with the proviso, with the caveat that, um, it only works if a marketing lead really in their bones understands communities and the value of communities.If you have a person reporting to marketing, that marketing person sees community as this kind of silly, fluffy, hippie-ish kind of nonsense, it will never succeed.So, uh, I think it depends onA, a lot of community people will refuse to work in marketing because they say, "Oh, marketing people are just plastic head, you know, cocaine-snorting, cafe- you know, cappuccino-drinking lunatics."I don't think that's fair either.I think it really depends on the individual.Have you seen companies start to realize that community can have an impact on all different aspects?You know, I mean, maybe it started as, for example, customer success.We just wanna deflect tickets.Instead of having a million people to answer the same question over and over, we're gonna throw all these people in an online forum and let, you know, answer each other's questions, and that was a, a way of cutting costs.And then start to realize that, oh, if we wanna know what products or features our customers want next, we can go hire an expensive research firm, or the people in the community will tell us.And if we wanna hire somebody, uh, who knows our product really in and out and is passionate about it, oh, it turns out they're already in the community.Uh, are, are you seeing that companies are starting to realize more and more the benefits?Yeah, itDefinitely, but I think it depends a lot on the way in which the community program is executed.Um, so I think where community managers are in a bit of a tricky and potentially dangerous spot is a lot of founders, when they, um, or senior leads, when they, when they wanna build a community program, um, the reason why they typically wanna do it is because they see their competitors who have this, like, thriving community of people who are passionate about what they're doing, and they're going to conferences, and they've got ambassador programs and all that kind of stuff, and they want that.But typically, these leaders feel like that's the right thing to do, um, and would love that.They aspirationally want that, and they can see the value of it.they don't know how to measure it.They don't know how to manage it.So what happens then is, going back again to the beginning of the conversation, you have companies that are primarily defi- measure success by stuff that's in spreadsheets, but what they do is they want a program where they don't know how to measure that in, in, in, in mechanisms like spreadsheets, where a huge chunk of that value is immeasurable in spreadsheets.I mean, this is a big chunk of the stuff that we do at StateShift, is kind of aligning and setting up these programs for success.But what often happens is when it kinda comes in, and if you've got a community manager who's good, who demonstrates results that are measurable in nature and educates, uh, um, the broader team around that kind of, that qualitative value, then what can happen is the commun- the, the importance of the community can grow and grow and grow and grow.But it only works when the community manager is delivering along the lines that the, that the leadership are expecting.Because if they hire a community manager and they're paying them $100,000 a year, whatever it might be, and they feel like, "Oh, well, we got a handful of blog posts and a couple of social media posts and a half-empty Discord forum," there's no credibility in that community manager at that point.So they have to be able to s- surprise and show some level of success for that momentum to grow, if that makes sense.Yeah, absolutely.Uh, well, Jono Bacon, thank you so much.This has been really, really helpful, really, really enlightening.I really appreciate the time.Thank you, Seth.Yeah, and, uh, people can go find the website.It is Stateshift.com.Thank you so much for coming on- Yeahand, uh, sharing your terrible advice with us.I love it.Yeah, more terrible advice to go.Uh-oh.
