I'm Rosie, I've built a 7 fig business, led community at IH, now building a community @Orbit. AMA 🔥

@zachpiepmeyer Great question! With my indie roots, it was a tough decision to take up a permie role. Mostly it came down to a few things: - the founders (hi @patrickjwoods and @dzello) are super genuine - the product is new and has huge potential to be a change maker - the culture of shipping, product, and content wise, with care, depth and thoughtfulness is one that aligns with my heart - I get to think, write, teach and innovate on community building, every day of the week. 😍 Ultimately, my personal goal is to create genuine and meaningful impact for the community building world, Orbit aligns with that and they are supporting me in many of my crazy ideas and ways of being. 🙏🏽 I guess the most exciting part is how the stars of Orbit align with me.

@zachpiepmeyer I left this to question to the end to answer, it's always a bit tough. I think as an industry we need to get better at this. I've definitely struggled over the years, both in trying to quantify it for myself, but also as a way to justify it to stakeholders. I guess the ideal future scenario of this is to measure some things, but to also be able and willing to tune into many aspects of community that simply aren't measurable. For example, recently people have been saying community is the new marketing. (It is not!) But from that I'm trying to encourage people to think about how community builds trust that marketing is then able to leverage better. When there is trust, people will naturally want to open your emails, whether it has the perfect headline or not. I'm not really sure if this can be measured in a quantifiable way. Partly it's important to keep an eye on things like traffic, members, posts, comments. But it needs to go deeper than that. - how are people growing within your community? - are they getting value? - are they sticking around? - how successful is your community at bringing people to the center stage? - is your community or company making progress towards their overall vision? - are people excited to come back? - how are people talking about you? - how are people supporting you? The Orbit Model is a great way to start getting a baseline understanding on what is going on in your community. There some info here www.orbitmodel.com @patrickjwoods wrote this on the concept of Go-To-Community, I'm thinking and would love to explore this idea more. There's some good starter questions there - https://future.a16z.com/communit...

@zachpiepmeyer Most of my success in hiring has been from within the community. Erin who joined our team at Orbit was very much an active member and fan of the product. We had also been having much fun creating stuff together over at Rosieland. When I was building Ministry of Testing, virtually everyone we hired were community members. It's not always possible, but I do think it's a great way to hire. Apart from myself, no one has actually left a permanent role at Ministry of Testing yet. A big part of what keeps them is the love for the community and how it aligns with who they are. With direct relation to community skills, I feel it's easier to teach people about how to build community over finding someone who is truly passionate about the community they need to serve. We can even look @5harath who is now doing community things here at PH, he was very much in love with PH before joining. If you can't hire from within the community, then look for ways to find out whether they are truly passionate believers in what the community is about.

@akangudaniel there's a phrase I keep going back to. "study your people" Just because you want a community, it doesn't mean you should start one. Take time truly getting an understand of the world you are about to commit to for years to come. Who are the people that care and share about it? How can you build up relationships? What are they talking about? Then, where can you or your community fit into all of this? If you still want to start a community after spending weeks or months doing this, then start small. A Twitter account, a blog, an email list. Any tool that allows you to communicate with people is a community building tool. Don't fall into the trap of jumping to using a branded 'community tool' at the beginning. I have a few articles here on starting communities - https://rosie.land/posts?topic=s...

@mspseudolus Yeah, there's all the talk. But who is walking the walk? The trouble is that people now look at really successful products and companies without fully understanding the time and pain that it has taken people to get there. I do believe that community should be at the heart of most businesses, but one cannot just slap on community. It's a cultural thing. And it's something that takes time to build in and that often you won't see the result for a long time to come. I have a pet hate for the term that is flying around atm 'community is the new marketing'. I'd like marketing to stick to what they do well, and let community do what we do well, so that we can help build the trust that marketing can then leverage in other parts of the business. Naturally, I wrote a few words on this too: https://rosie.land/posts/calling...

@mspseudolus @katerinabohlec When not to start a community: we can get pedantic with terms, lots of audiences these days are branded as communities. Mostly, if you want an audience, fine, go do that. Nothing wrong with it. And audience is not a community though. Mostly what this comes down to, IMHRO (in my humble rosie opinion), is that when you build a community there needs to be something that you are striving to change or do that is greater than yourself. When things are greater than yourself, you need to invest in those around you, give back as much as you possibly can and make that as part of the culture. So, don't start a community if you are not willing to do that? 😹🤷🏻‍♀️

@katerinabohlec What data (if any) is most helpful to understand what is going on in your community? I struggle with this a lot. I think there is a lot of data that is worth keep an eye on. Traffic. Number of posts. Number of comments. I don't think they can measure a community. They can give you signs that of how things are going, they are just signs, they are not the map. Part of the challenge that we need to explore is why do we need all this data? And what kind of data is actually useful? For example, within the Orbit Model (www.orbitmodel.com), there are 5 defined levels: Orbit 4 - Observers Orbit 3 - Participants Orbit 2 - Contributors Orbit 1 - Advocates Orbit 0 - Team To me, it makes better sense to try to understand how the community is moving up and down between these levels. Whether they are getting value. Whether they are contributing. And sure, some of this can be captured in an automated way, but not all. How can we measure relationships? And conversations? Do we even need to? Or are just better off enjoying the process and trying to find ways to pull people into our communities with the best possible intentions? If I had to point to data, I'd probably point to specific conversations, within that feedback would likely be included. We should pay close attention to the conversations happening and create a habit of taking notes and data points on them. And really, we should do this in more ways than expecting people to participate in forums or answer unhelpful surveys.

@younestalkdz It's easy to think paid communities are an easy path, but they are not. There are two angles that I'd recommend considering: Make your current members so happy that they have no choice but to go and tell their friends about it. Find ways to share stories that are happening on the inside to the outside world, all with permission of course. Screenshots. Tweets. Podcasts. Videos. Wins and successes. Of yourself, or with your people. Building in public as much as you can is great fun too.

@nataliekarakina Building a community around a CEO is not a community, that's more of an audience of in some cases it becomes 'cult like'. I'd be weary around building a community around a company too, I think people get more on board with a shared vision, so you can you on a journey together, in support of one another.

@5harath an audience can definitely help build community, it's not essential though. What I mostly try to do is put myself in other people's shoes and ask myself what is it that I can do to help these people. I listen to their challenges. Their successes, their failures. Their visions, desires and goals. And then I do things that I believe will help us both towards our visions. One way is to give people opportunities. Like this AMA. 😇 At Ministry of Testing we gave people speaking opportunities, or hosting opportunities. These are things that the community appreciated and it also helped us towards our goals. At Indie Hackers I loved elevating people's stories. I would tweet about them. Focus in on helping them get their (first) sales. This would encourage people to come back, share their story and converse with others. Giving people opportunities creates excitement and really encourages people to converse with one another, and it's this conversing that really builds the trust and bonds within the community.

@stefan_smiljkovic I love what @anthilemoon @theannagat and @arvidkahl stand for, and love seeing them continuously grow and give. And these are all community minded people too. 😻

@erinmikail I don't think I'm the best example, tbh, but I try. I still take life one day at a time, much more than that and it becomes too overwhelming. Also, yes I'm crazy, and have 5 kids who I unschool. Those who have kids will understand that actually time to myself is work, and some exercise too. :D Over the years I've also made sure that as a family, my husband and I share responsibilities for our kids equally. Also, mostly I feel fortunate that everyday I get to do work that I enjoy and always look forward to getting 'stuck in'. 😺

@rosiesherry <3 "Get to do work that I enjoy" i think is such an underrated gem. Thanks for sharing and being you

@mikestaub Do it yourself and others will copy you, if they like how you are doing it.

@emotf Talk to these people you say that want to make a change, do that for a long time and for the lifetime of the app, then the more you get to know them, the more you will understand and find opportunities to create community for them. Greta is probably the person I think of when it comes to the environment, I'd start there and try to understand how and what communities formed as a result of her work.

@rosiesherry thanks for the insights. Reading back through your replies on other questions in this AMA you have given a lot of great tips. I'll be bookmarking this thread 😉.

@sagar_devkate a big part of growth is consistency, the best thing you can do it to keep showing up and build up trust. You could also try starting conversations with your current subscribers. Reach out to them. Encourage them to hop on a call. Make it clear that they can respond to the email and you will get back to them.

@mrgregzen I find things are overwhelming because of lack of understanding and knowledge of the space people are in. Therefore, the best way to get over that is to work towards becoming a real expert in the niche you are trying to serve. Be that persons who knows everything and everyone, this will really help you become a connector and a central part of conversations that will naturally occur.

@kishoraditya 1. How can communities collaborate with each other, other than working on projects and causes? You never know where relationships end up, all kinds of magic happens. I've seen people fall in love, get married, start new businesses, get new jobs and opportunities, make new friends, save lives. Honestly, the possibilities are endless.

@kishoraditya 2. Is community saturation a thing? How do we work out on increasing number of communities from the managerial/ creators end as well as member/ joiner's end? Should it be create many join as much as you want? before starting to create look out for similar ones and work with those kind of? idk. There definitely seems to be community overwhelm, hopefully in time things will find their natural balance. There's an excitement right now because of COVID, I think many communities will die out and the strong ones will remain.

@kishoraditya 3. A very obvious one, how do you increase communication between members, apart from general engagement tips, I want everyone to state views, debate with each other, which works for everyone for a certain days, and gets repetitive/ cold later, even though the topics are new, I tried collecting feedback, but was very generic, is there anything that can be done to improve this specific type of engagement/? There is no one way, the only thing I can suggest is to think creatively and to see the world from their view. You almost have to put to one side what you want, and try to create things that they want. Feedback is hard to get in the traditional sense (e.g. with surveys), but go have a real conversation with someone and you'll gain the most insightful feedback ever.

@thanh_nguyen13 there's a phrase I keep going back to. "study your people" Just because you want a community, it doesn't mean you should start one. Take time truly getting an understand of the world you are about to commit to for years to come. Who are the people that care and share about it? How can you build up relationships? What are they talking about? Then, where can you or your community fit into all of this? If you still want to start a community after spending weeks or months doing this, then start small. A Twitter account, a blog, an email list. Any tool that allows you to communicate with people is a community building tool. Don't fall into the trap of jumping to using a branded 'community tool' at the beginning. I have a few resources on starting communities here - https://rosie.land/posts?topic=s...