#6 How to build and grow a community - Closing Call case study

When you’re a brand-new startup with no pre-existing audience, you have a steep road ahead of you. And when 2 million blog posts are created every day, you have to do something different if you want to stand out.

Ryan Gum,Attach

Greg Pietruszynski,Growbots

Building a community requires a lot of dedication and constant input. But to establish an engaged community is a goal worth your effort.

#CustomerAcquisitionPlan

Basic question:

Who is our target market, and where do they hang out online?

#audience

Building a community is a classic chicken-and-egg problem

Reddit co-founders Alexis Ohanian and Steve Huffman created hundreds of

fake profiles and manually seeded the community with content.

#fact

No one will bother contributing if they don’t think there’s anyone else there to see it.

#LongStoryShort

Step-by-step guide how to start:

Use Telescope to launch your first community!

A little help. We seeded about 20-30 pieces of content from different

accounts and added a few comments, so when people showed up for the first time they would see some activity and

decide to signup.

#1

Get it out there. We launched in on Product Hunt and Hacker News,

cheekily calling it ‘The Hacker News for Sales’, and brought in just under 10,000 visits that day. This was enough to get

the first few hundred members.

#2

10,000 visits and instant feedback. Win!

Involve the comunnity. We’ve run 2 AMA’s that have encouraged

involvement from the community. Closing Call now runs by itself now

(without any seeding from us).

#3

Involve the community using relevant influencers

#results

>> 2,000 members

>> 700 email subscribers

>> 50 signups to Attach

#advice

People are hesitant to vouch for or join something if no one

else has.

#1

Social proof is extremely powerful. The presence of social proof is validation.

#2

Have a plan. Start with customer acquisition: http://

ryangum.com/customer-acquisition-plan/

#3

Use available resources. Learn from the best: http://www.communitybuildinggui

de.com

#4

…fake it until you make it!

Read the whole article here:http://blog.growbots.co/

startup-growth-academy-6-closing-call-

case-study

Join FREE Marketing Course!

www.growbots.com | www.blog.growbots.com

Greg Pietruszynski | @pietruszynski CEO Growbots - AI for sales | @growbots_

Ryan Gum | @ryangumCEO Attach - a document tracking and lead insights tool for salespeople. Runs Closing Call.www.attach.io | www.ryangum.com