When it comes to your product, it's even more important to create that community and define how your customers become part of it.
We hear the word community a lot. Brands build community. Bloggers build community. Even we podcasters build community. But whether it’s your listeners, your readers, or your customers, there are ways to do this successfully. And when it comes to your product, it’s even more important to create that community and define how your customers become part of it.
In today’s show I have invited my friend and the force behind building community for GoDaddy.com, Mendel Kurland. He has done an amazing job since he was put in place at GoDaddy and I just knew he would have some great insights into this subject.
You will find a full transcript at the end of this post.
We chatted about:
* How Mendel defines community
* If what you perceive is not really a community, what steps you should take to build one
* How to handle rants, complaints and trolls in a community
* What pros and cons are there to building your community on Facebook
* Advice for creators of new products
Thanks to Our Podcast Sponsor: Jilt
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Transcript
You can also download a pdf of the full transcript here: BobWP eCommerce Show Episode 107 October 4 2017
Bob Dunn: Hey, Mendel. Welcome to the show.
Mendel Kurland: Hey, thanks a lot, Bob.
Bob: Now, I know who the heck you are, but there are probably some people who are wondering, “Who is Mendel Kurland?” Tell us a little bit about yourself.
Meet Mendel Kurland, Evangelist at GoDaddy
Mendel: Well, that’s a broad question, so I live in Austin, Texas. I work for GoDaddy on the community and evangelism team, and I’m a geek by training. I learned how to program on GB-BASIC and C Pascal and then C and C++. (Turbo Pascal, if anybody’s wondering where my geek cred lies.) So, yeah, I work for GoDaddy in beautiful Austin, Texas and I work from home.
Bob: Well, knowing you and what you do, I thought this was a perfect topic. I want to start out by defining what community around a product means to you. I know it’s more than just a customer list. How do you define community when you’re creating one around a product?
How to you define community when it comes to developing one around your product?
Mendel: I think community means different things in different contexts. When you’re talking about a corporation being a part of a community, it is half feedback loop and half contribution. So it’s giving back to the community, which you want to spend time in, and then also completing a full feedback loop, which is receiving product feedback, getting that to the right people within the organization, making changes based on that feedback (which is the important part), and then telling the community about the changes that you’ve made. So that’s the complete feedback.
I think from the community perspective, building communities is all about inclusion. When people feel included, they feel like contributing, like they’re a part of the project and that makes them want to u...