Finding validation for your community

Welcome to the Community Coach newsletter, a value packed read
for community builders who believe community can be built anywhere, anyplace, anytime.

In this newsletter…

📚 Community 101: Finding validation that your community should exist

🤖 The tool that brings all your contacts from EVERYWHERE into one CRM

🔥 Blueprint is hosting their longevity conference in Singapore

👋 Answering your questions: “We are an AI SaaS business and experiencing churn - what should we do?”

Community 101: Community validation

This topic keeps coming up on calls I have with others about building communities: “How do we know if we should even be building this community?”.

I saw this tweet recently and realised the same applies when figuring out if you have potential interested members for your potential community…

I’ve definitely used some of the above tactics to determine if I had enough interest sparked that spinning up a community would make sense.

A couple of other ways include:

• Content engagement: Is what you are putting out there resonating with others? Are people commenting on your posts? And then others commenting on those comments? That’s a good sign.

• Direct requests: Are you receiving DM’s, emails or even in-person requests from others saying they want to meet up again/ meet others in this space/ attend more events/ wishes there was a place to hang with others?

Clay.earth - bring all your contacts into one place

Clay is a tool I recently came across that made my jaw drop with how useful this could be to community builders.

The tool helps you manage your connections & relationships on different platforms - including direct messages, emails, and in-person interactions.

Pull all your connections from WhatsApp, phone calls, Gmail, Google Calendar, Outlook, Office 365, LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter (X), iMessage, iCloud Calendar, iOS Contacts, and spreadsheets (CSV)….

And put them in one place.

Now you may think you’ve seen other platforms offer a similar solution, here’s how Clay is unique:

Centralized contact mgt + Personalized outreach + Serendipity!

Clay combines all your contacts and different communication channels into one place. You can share updates, gather feedback, and coordinate events with people across multiple platforms more easily. It’s also very visual so you know exactly which channel contacts have been pulled from.

Here’s a superpower I found in Clay that I think is the ultimate advantage for community builders: it’s search function that enables “serendipity” results.

I just love the potential for serendipity search results for community builders! We are always trying to find common threads and unique ways to spark engagement in our community - and using Clay’s search could be a useful tool to do this.

If you’re looking for further integrations, the good news is that Clay also integrates with Notion and Zapier. They have decent documentation to explain how to do this.

Pricing is free to try for up to 1000 contacts. The next tier up starts from $10/mth.

If you’re looking to build and maintain strong relationships with members all in one place - then Clay is worth a look!

Project Blueprint is building a community around longevity

Bryan Johnson previously founded Braintree/Venmo and is now the founder and CEO of Blueprint, a company focused on anti-aging and health optimization launched in 2021.

I noticed a few years back that Bryan had started to go all in—not only with his longevity journey but also with distributing content that documents this process behind the scenes.

His content was definitely considered “controversial” especially by the scientific community - but this doesn’t surprise me given he is going against the norms.

His upcoming “Don’t die” summit is being hosted in Singapore next week along with using Nas.io to enhance the community experience.

This is a perfect case study on how you can go from:

Passion → building an audience → launching a community

Here are the steps I’ve observed so far:

1. Deep Research and Expert Team Formation: Bryan deep dives into longevity research, assembling a team of experts to properly understand the topic and enhance his own knowledge.

2. Documenting Progress: He begins documenting his progress through “Project Blueprint,” which includes setting up a website to share results publicly and started sharing behind-the-scenes content on channels like IG, Tiktok etc.
   

   

3. Engaging Content Creation: Johnson shares insights from his rigorous health regimen, which includes a strict diet, extensive supplementation (over 100 pills daily), and various medical interventions. This transparency not only builds trust but also encourages others to engage with the content and share their own experiences.
   

   

4. Community Interaction Begins: By actively engaging with his audience through social media and organising events like the "Don't Die Summit," across 10 cities around the world. Johnson is creating opportunities for community members to connect, share ideas, and support one another in their health journeys.

   

5. Potential Launch of Online Community: In conjunction with the "Don't Die Summit," Johnson is using Nas.io which has the ability for participants to connect beyond the summit, facilitating ongoing discussions, shared experiences, and continuous learning about longevity and health practices.

The community has huge potential - if Blueprint gets this right they could provide a space for members to engage with one another, access exclusive content, and participate in challenges and future events tailored to their interests.

Too many times I see lost potential: where conferences just run their large events around the world and don’t put in enough effort to build their online community to support them. To do this well you must goes well beyond throwing all your event participants in a group chat and hoping they will connect by themselves.

In any case I’m excited to see how the “Don’t Die Summit” event goes next week in Singapore!

Answering your questions

“How can we reduce customer churn for our AI SaaS business?” 

It’s funny how conversation topics can hit you in waves. Last week I found myself discussing this several times - both publicly and behind closed doors.

Here’s an example of a Tweet thread from Tom Osman:

It seems that AI app businesses are struggling with retaining their customers. There are SO many new competitors popping up on the daily, so it’s been hard to keep customers focused (not only from other competitors but also to remain interested in general when there are so many new AI tools popping up).

Here are my top 2 tips to reduce churn in this case:

1. You must create easy to follow tutorials + solid documentation/library on how your product works (as Tom had alluded to in his above tweet)

2. Build a solid community that can provide real time product support, provide valuable customer feedback and generate customer loyalty by helping them achieve their own successes.

Point 2 is for a longer conversation, so if you’re looking for help with launching a community (or re-launching a dead community) - reply to this email and let me know your situation.

Got another question for me? DM me on Twitter and ask away. Your question may be answered in a future newsletter (and I’ll reply to everyone who asks).

Until next time,

Carmen
Community Coach

Connect with me on Twitter, Youtube, LinkedIn.

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