A community-led growth strategy that works

…well, if done correctly. More on that shortly.

This week I spent some time in Florida at Florida Dreamin, a conference put on by members of the Salesforce Trailblazer Community. It was fun, and super chill, which I love. I got to see customers, meet new folks, and enjoy the sun. And the hotel / event venue was on the beach, so what’s not to love? I also did a session on Slack’s workflow builder automation tool, which went well; I love workflow builder, and if you don’t know about it, you should.

Being at a Community conference reminded me how important it is to show up for your peers. These “Dreamin” conferences, as they’re called, are entirely user/community-led, not put on by Salesforce. It’s really amazing what the entire ecosystem has built with these local Dreamin events. It also underscored how important it is to relinquish a bit of that brand and product control to your most passionate users; say hello to distributed control.

Why rely on just one single central of authority, when there can be many?

I love this model because it not only puts the power and creative freedom into your most passionate users’ hands (with our support, of course), but it helps with scaling your community program, especially if it’s a more global/distributed program.

I practice by this model in my day job with our user group program. We have more than 50 chapters around the globe, each one led by a passionate product end user, dev, or admin, and they are hosting local meetups about the product, sharing their best practices, and enabling their peers with materials and knowledge to upskill with the product.

In the end, these events extend the message of the brand and get the product into more people’s hands (through peers). This is the key piece—peer to peer knowledge sharing has been around a while (hello, Reddit), but it’s become more formalized for B2B/B2C communities, especially when focused on passion for the product, and on a global stage.

Another thing I love about this strategy is the idea of collective intelligence. When you have multiple product superfans, with multiple different ways of using the product, with different worldviews, you’re creating a space for diverse perspectives and approaches, which, who knows, might inspire other folks to adopt those approaches with their local group.

On a similar token, when you have that collective intelligence machine among your superfans, you also naturally create a system of decentralized problem-solving. I know my fellow community managers can empathize with at one point being the only person people went to for support or product inspiration or general help. But when you distribute some of that control to your most passionate users and leaders in your community, equipping them with content, resources, knowledge, and personalized toolkits, (hey, maybe you build out an ambassador/VIP program or two, too!) then your community members now have an entire network to go to for support.

So my question to you is: How are you going to distribute some of that control to empower your advocates to mobilize their own networks, and co-own the outcomes?

Thanks for reading and for being here. I don’t take for granted that you care what I have to say. Or even if you don’t care, and you’re still here; thanks for being a fan anyway. ❣️

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