Community is rooted in humanity. Uncommunity #24
Hi, Rafy here.
This is Uncommunity’s bi-weekly newsletter. We bring you community experts interviews, resources related to building and growing communities, tools that you can use to scale your community or events and books that you can read to become better community builders and jobs to be applied.
Introducing.
Willa Tellekson-Flash is Public.com’s Director of Community, where she engages with its diverse community of investors. Public makes investing inclusive, educational, and fun by adding a social layer to the stock market.
Is community-building hyped in 2021? How do you build communities that are thriving while ignoring the noise?
There's a lot of hype around communities, but it's for good reason. Human connection is powerful, and it's exciting to see that we're spending more time thinking about the different ways that that power can be harnessed to provide value. We have so much choice as consumers in 2021 — I see community as a major loyalty driver that allows brands and companies to create long-lasting, deeper relationships with their customers.
What's one thing about communities that you've learned and is very close to you?
Community is rooted in humanity, and so some of the most basic principles of how we learn to treat one another apply directly to community-building. Kindness and respect sound simple, but they really matter. And taking the time to learn people's names and find out what they're curious and passionate about goes a really long way when it comes to creating relationships that aren't surface level. The Public community has continued to grow rapidly, but as we scale, making sure that people feel seen, included, and valued are some of my biggest priorities.
Investments are at risk if they are driven by misinformation. What steps do you take to moderate a community and build a place of trust for your community members?
Fostering appropriate, thoughtful interactions is central to our Community Guidelines, and we don't allow purposeful sharing of misinformation. Additionally, though, I think that one of the most important ways to prevent harmful spreading of rumors & misinformation is to foster a community that cares about one another and has the best interest of other members in mind. As a result, our community members are more likely to be motivated to share news and information that they're fascinated by or excited about to have a fruitful conversation with fellow community members. And, in the case that someone tries to disrupt this environment and share something misleading, other community members are more likely to call them out and look out for one another. This makes moderation more scalable.
What can other community builders learn from your experience building a fintech community?
Money can be an uncomfortable conversation topic for many people — it's personal, and not something that we've historically engaged in open conversations about. Opening up conversations around sensitive topics while challenging is also something that I feel is really valuable to our society. The more comfortable we are talking about something, the less shame there is around it. Whether you're trying to build community around something like money or personal finance, or something else "taboo" (I used to work in the reproductive health space, for example, and also felt this!), creating environments that are safe for people to share their thoughts, experiences, and questions without fear of feeling judged will allow for more genuine participation in your community. Rather than shying away from sensitive or intimidating topics, I see it as far more valuable to think about how we can open more doors.
What are the best ways for marketing and community teams to work together?
Successful marketing provides their customer-base or audience with solutions, while successful community building creates spaces where community members help one another. (I think I first heard this from David Spinks!) As a result, Community teams know a lot about how we as a product/company can better support our community and share insights with the Marketing team about how we might position launches and releases to best address our community. At Public, because product launches and marketing campaigns so directly impact our community, the Community team is included in every launch plan and campaign rollout, and I believe we see more success in our Marketing efforts as a result. Additionally, I think it's important to remember that Community teams often have treasure chests of stories and highlights directly from the community that the Marketing team can weave into brand building and brand storytelling.
How do you bring inclusivity into a community?
Public was built to make the stock market more accessible to everyone, and to do that, we need to change the environment and culture of investing. We want to move away from the homogeneous, exclusive circles that have typically dominated the stock market and ensure that everyone feels empowered to participate. In our case, our community makes investing and the stock market more human and thus more approachable to people who may not have previously felt like the stock market was “for them.” As far as welcoming people to the investing community, I focus heavily on helping people find their entry-point. You may not believe you're "qualified" to share your thoughts on investing, but you probably have really valuable expertise that you may not realize. Maybe, for example, you have strong opinions on Spotify vs. Apple music — that conversation is relevant for investors in Spotify and/or Apple! Or maybe you use Chewy to buy products for your pet — your experiences with them are also really valuable in conversations within our community. Helping people find their entry-point is really important to me because it welcomes a wider range of voices to the conversation. All that said, I also want to acknowledge that when it comes to investing and wealth, there's a large racial wealth gap in our country, and people within our community have different experiences with money and finances as a result. I have a lot to continue to learn about ensuring that everyone feels a sense of belonging when participating in our community, and feel strongly in the importance of continuing to work to actively build our community so that all of our investors can connect with other community members who they share common ground with.
Advice to someone getting started in community building
Start by being more intentional about building community in your personal life — hone your listening skills, make thoughtful introductions, get curious about how humans interact. All of this will seamlessly translate to being a stronger community builder professionally.
Follow Willa Tellekson-Flash on Twitter.
*INTERMISSION*
Ok, this interview was a lot to consume! So many good points made by Willa. Feel free to take a break. Stretch, breathe, get some water, etc. Then come back.
There are only three sections left now: What else we’re reading including few tweets, community news and new products to checkout.
You good? Ok! Let’s dive back in 😅
What else we’re reading?
Why Community-Led Product Development Wins. Read about the concept and why business stop talking to customers when it scales. Such an incredible post by Peter Yang who is the Product Lead at Reddit.
The customer is the most important person on the team.
You cannot build empathy for the customer by only relying on secondary sources, you have to immerse yourself in their problems by talking to them directly.
Build a community to have daily interactions with customers about the product and their lives. The velocity of the feedback loop really matters.
Community, meet Privacy. This is such a good article by Alexandra Bowen of Google on why we community managers should design communities with a privacy-first approach. (Thank you Yashraj for pointing us to this piece.)
A community that respects the users privacy is a community that is committed to helping users get the most out of their digital and community lives, while minimizing harm and risk to them.
Community ≠ Marketing: Why We Need Go-to-Community, Not Just Go-to-Market. Patrick Woods of Orbit Model explained the beautiful concept of Go to Community where one can deliver consistent value to their communities rather than just building a community that may be as old as humanity. Read here.
The upside of community extends beyond just defending one’s position and territory, though. In a world where software is no longer sold, but rather adopted, more companies than ever before are embracing the customers, contributors, and fans they had previously overlooked. But while some of them do recognize the importance of community in their go-to-market (GTM), I’ll go much further here and argue they need a related but distinct competency: go-to-community (GTC).
[PODCAST] Shameless Plug. Yours truly, I was on a podcast talking about all things community with Pramod of Threado. Listen in to know more about what inspired me to start Uncommunity, the power of 1% improvement every day, and my take on how the community space is shaping up today.
If you want to build a community-led company just follow what HubSpot is doing. ;)
Together we can do a lot.
True words.
It’s changing and you are all a big part of this change. More power to community builders :)
Great Twitter Thread.
What’s in the News?
Commsor, the community operating system has acquired Meetsy, which helps people within communities facilitate conversations with each other.
Hopin, the virtual events platform added LinkedIn to its investor list. “Virtual events are here to stay,” Scott Roberts, LinkedIn’s VP of business development.
[Event] Join the free On Deck Event called Community Hacked and get answers to your question, “What is one proven community growth or engagement tactic that worked exceptionally well?”.
What’s new at Uncommunity? ^Upvote your favorites^
Product added:
Convosight - All-in-one platform to monetize your Facebook group.
Book added:
Bowling Alone - The Collapse and Revival of American Community.
Go to Uncommunity.club to find out about the latest tools and all new jobs that we added this week from companies like TikTok, Hotjar, Filebase, etc. Check out the jobs.
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