Growth Hacking to Build Community

Growth Hacking & Community All Things Open 2015

October 20, 2015

Jen Wike Hugar - Content Manager for Opensource.comAlberto I. Roca, Ph.D. - Founder and Executive Director of DiverseScholarGinny C Ghezzo - OSLC Community Manager & Program Director at IBM

1@JenWike @MinorityPostdoc @Ginny Ghezzo

Growth Hacking and Open Communities

What is Growth Hacking? How does it related to Open-Source

Case Study: How Opensource.com recruites and retains authors

Case Study: Social Media and Increasing Diversity with DiverseScholar

Discussion, Resources and Lunch

2@JenWike @MinorityPostdoc @GinnyGhezzo

What is Growth Hacking?

1. Product Market Fit 2. Pick a Goal & a Strategy 3. Measure, Refine & Optimize

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“A growth hacker is a person whose true north is growth.” - Sean Ellis 2010

“A community hacker is a person whose true north is relevance.”

@JenWike @MinorityPostdoc @GinnyGhezzo

http://www.startup-marketing.com/where-are-all-the-growth-hackers/

Airbnb hacked Craigslist as a way to automate advertisement. $24B Valuation

Spotify integrated with Facebook logon & news feed to raise awareness in network. $8B Valuation

Dropbox provided incentive of free storage for users to refer others and made referrals easy.$10B Valuation

Upworthy leverages A\B Testing to reduce bounce & make recommendation. Increase sharing by 28%

Slack found a product market fit by creating a market that did not exist: Organizational Transformation.$2B Valuation

Examples of Growth Hacks from Startups

http://growthhackers.com/growth-studies




Many similarities between Startups & Communities

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Product Market Fit Open source, open standards and other communities grow from a specific technical need, ability to access code and their vitality.

Cross Promotion Foundations and communities are able to do natural cross promotions. Use of APIs also encourages synergies.

No to Little Funding Startups face what Open Source projects have dealt with for years. Keeping the budgets low while tweaking for success.

Funnel Growth Hackers focus on Acquisition, Activation, Retention, & Revenue. Communities progress from Awareness, Consuming, Contributing and Mentoring Others.

Retention Over Acquisition It is cheaper to keep a participant or customer then find a new one. It is also a lot more fun to keep a community member then lose one!


DjangoGirls is fun to use & reuse. Easy to use and various contribution opportunity through translation and tools.

“Peace Corps for Geeks” leverages open APIs and open data to organize projects & deliver solutions.

Eclipse leverage analytics and A\B testing to monitor the health & growth. Including commits, closed tickets, traffic, etc.

Women of OpenStack acquire new contributors through tactics including internships, meetups, and ‘an amazing culture’

Apache Software Foundation leverages affiliation tactics such as committer blog aggregation & ‘powered by’ logo.

Cloud Foundry leverages SEO and automation to optimize lead generation assuring an end user first approach.

Examples of Growth Hacks from Community


CS1: Content - Opensource.com wants You!

Recruiting new writers

● 50% or more writers every month from the community● Publish call for articles on our site● Send out social media messages about themes and series● Community Moderators help us maintain connections● Invitation for the audience to share their story:

http://opensource.com/community





Mentoring writers

● Style guide● Examples of similar articles and stories

○ My Open Source Story and My Linux Story series○ Interviews for events and conferences

● Free, professional editing services○ help you craft○ copy edit○ publish something you are proud of



Retaining writers

● Writer’s List mailing list for previous writers ● Social media lists and connections● Community Moderators help us maintain connections


CS2: Diverse Scholar Dr Alberto Roca on leveraging Social Media and Affiliates

● Catalyzing Diversity: Practical Advice for Navigating Minority STEM Communities to Open Up Open Source

● Invitation for the audience participte athttp://www.minoritypostdoc.org/


http://www.minoritypostdoc.org/


How Open Communities do it Well 1. Be Useful - Stay simple

“If advertisers spent the same amount of money on improving their products as they do on advertising then they wouldn't have to advertise them.” - Will Rogers (1879-1935)

2. Be Helpful - Get to the point, Be available “If you really care about starting a movement, have the courage to follow and show others how to follow.” - Derek Sivers

3. Be Nice - Beware of insider talk, foster new users “Do you know what people want more than anything? They want to be missed. They want to be missed the day they don't show up.” - Seth Godin

4. Be Flexible - Stay Relevant“There is no innovation and creativity without failure. Period.” - Dr Brene Brown


Questions and Discussion

Personal Thank You to Kai Maetzel, Johanna Koester, James Bogner,

Adam Martin, Deirdre Clarke, Pat Huff, Dragos Cojocari


Useful Quotes 1. "Do something that is so good, that is so valuable that users can't help to talk about it."2. "Make space for others to be part of it" 3. "Make events regular, predictable, consistent" 4. "Open is the expectation now. Community and Momentum Differentiate" 5. "Bucket with holes needs fixing, not more water"6. "As with any library, it is used because it is useful, not because it is trendy or hip" 7. "Two goals to open: Write Less Code & Get others to access what you are doing" 8. "What is the proof that it is good, stable, has longevity, performs, etc?”9. "Is it still relevant"

10. "StackExchange is my community"11. "Stay relevant to the developer community" 12. "Know the motivation of your participants" 13. 'Mastery, Autonomy, Purpose: Are they getting these? Are they seeing the good?" 14. "There is momentum" 15. "Start small, build credibility, spread naturally" - Nick Berry 16. “It is the taste of the fish, not the fisherman” - Nick Berry 17. “The price of light is less than the cost of darkness.”18. "When you have credibility, people will help, people will talk & spread the word"


More free Advice 1. Community needs both value and direction. Corporations pay membership fees

for value, developers contributing because they believe in the direction.2. People participate because the love: the love the the code and the friendships

being developed. 3. Leverage Google Analytics. 4. Quality of commits, quality of releases are the value.5. For Open Source, the funnel moves people from consumers to contributors.6. Make it easy for companies to vet both consumption of and participation in Open

Source.7. Having a code of conduct matters for inclusion and retention.


Links Worth Knowing OpenSource.com - http://opensource.com/ DiverseScholar - http://www.minoritypostdoc.org/ Open-Services.net - http://open-services.net/

GrowthHackers.com - http://growthhackers.com Definitive Guide to GrowthHacking - https://www.quicksprout.com/the-definitive-guide-to-growth-hacking/ Treat Open Source like a Startup - https://hacks.mozilla.org/2014/05/open-source-marketing-with-velocityjs/ Startup Generator - http://tiffzhang.com/startup/ A Beginners Guide to Growth Hacking -https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RnpLCiuMgcU

The power of vulnerability - https://www.ted.com/talks/brene_brown_on_vulnerability?language=en The Tribes we Lead - https://www.ted.com/talks/seth_godin_on_the_tribes_we_lead#t-71877

How to start a movement - https://www.ted.com/talks/derek_sivers_how_to_start_a_movement?language=en


http://opensource.com/


http://open-services.net/

http://growthhackers.com

https://www.quicksprout.com/the-definitive-guide-to-growth-hacking/

https://hacks.mozilla.org/2014/05/open-source-marketing-with-velocityjs/

http://tiffzhang.com/startup/

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RnpLCiuMgcU

https://www.ted.com/talks/brene_brown_on_vulnerability?language=en

https://www.ted.com/talks/seth_godin_on_the_tribes_we_lead#t-71877

https://www.ted.com/talks/derek_sivers_how_to_start_a_movement?language=en

Technology

Growth Hacking to Build Community