From social media to community

Welcome to the Community Coach newsletter, a value packed read
for community builders who value end goal > vanity metrics.

Quick note: only 3 main topics in this newsletter below as I dive deeper into each one!

In this newsletter…

📚 Community 101: From social media to community

🔥 Learnings from a crypto community winning the community game right now

👋 Answering your questions: “How can I measure success when my community is full of people trying to learn about a specific topic?”

Community 101: Social media → Community

Youtube announced last week they are expanding their community offerings to their creators. This is incredible news and personally I’m absolutely psyched about it!

Before we get too excited, Youtube has confirmed they aren’t rolling this feature to EVERY creator at this stage. I was hopeful that I could finally convert my own Youtube channel to a community page - but alas, I’m still very limited with the features available (just the basic community tab which is not enough for me)!

But it is a step in the right direction and fingers crossed they roll this out further. I’m personally having more conversations with people on how they can convert their social media presence into an engaged community…

Features like what Youtube is introducing can help the transition feel a lot easier. As an example it would be a great way to build a community MVP / test out the community concept first before proceeding further with a full blown community strategy.

A crypto community winning the community game …

Last week was the crypto craziness of the Token 2049 + Solana Breakpoint conferences in Singapore… among many other events such as the F1 city night race + Blueprint by Bryan Johnson’s longevity conference + The Network School opening!

I’m not going to bore you with “what happened at these crypto conferences” - BUT I want to reflect on a certain rumbling I’ve been hearing:

“Solana is building a more solid community than Ethereum”.

If that makes zero sense to you, all you need to know is:

One community in the crypto world (Solana) seems to be doing a better job than another (Ethereum), based on feedback from their community members.

Solana community > Ethereum community

Take a look at some of these comments:

All of this is interesting to me…

What is Solana doing to build community that Ethereum is missing?

Here’s how they are similar:

• They both are prominent blockchains with a decent member base - Ethereum has a longer history and more widespread adoption but Solana has faster transaction speeds and lower fees

• They both are considered to have “strong communities” with active members (developers, enthusiasts, researchers, investors & users) - and to be clear there are definitely people that are m

  embers of both of these communities

• They both host their own conferences

Here’s 3 ways Solana appears to be doing differently when building community:

• They understood WHO they were targeting and HOW to differentiate from their competitor to provide more value to these people

  “Solana provides them the clay to work within a capacity that makes sense to them… in ways that Ethereum did not”…
  
  To translate this: they figured out the user problems better and providing them with better tools right from the start.
  

  

  David Hoffman’s commentary on Solana Breakpoint

• They built their own community DNA based on past frustrations from members +

• Their key leaders put in the hard work when times were tough

  
  Solana went through really tough periods (and by this I mean existential life crisis moments!). Their community members had to deal with those tough times together (from fighting off scammers and other challenges specific to Solana along with broader crypto challenges such as when FTX collapsed).
  
  What’s important to note is during this time the community leaders showed the way for members along with the broader crypto community. They took the time to do things that don’t scale but mattered a LOT during this period.
  
  That included replying to every single tweet about Solana (good or bad).
  
  From this they have emerged with their own “community language” and inside jokes that lands well. It’s all in line with the positives of being a part of the Solana community vs. any other crypto community.
  

• They bring the vibe that their members are looking for + they focus on what their members are looking for at the conference
  
  They use key leaders within their community to shakes things up in line with their “pragmatic” approach but also bring the right vibe.
  
  The Breakpoint conference is kept simple and well organized (with no side events that take away from the momentum). The sessions themselves are interactive and members ENJOY the vibe and actually want to attend! Educational + entertaining is key.

  This is in stark contrast with Eth Denver events, where members felt that they had to choose between hundreds of competing side events and caused the conference to feel more fragmented.

Now the crypto world is incredibly volatile, so it’s impossible to have a crystal ball in this situation and predict what will happen with either the Solana or Ethereum communities in future. But there are definitely lessons to be learned on how to deliver the best community experience for your members in the present day - and Solana seems to be on more solid ground right now.

Answering your questions

“How can I measure success when my community is full of people trying to learn about a specific topic?” 

I tweeted about this today and wanted to re-share it as I believe it’s valuable advice for anyone looking to build a community of learners.

Figuring out the right metrics can feel tricky:
“Do I measure how many times they login to the community?”
“Do I measure how many downloads of community resources?”
Etc.

I used to measure all of those above metrics when focused on building a community of learners. But when I changed the main metric to focusing more on the learners and their own end goal, things changed for me.

I started polling learners before AND after educational sessions. It would be as simple as:
“How well do you know XYZ topic?”

If people weren’t moving up the learning curve after our educational events, then that was real feedback that we had to go back to the drawing board.

I also started building interactive quizzes that were used within community events. Again I was trying to determine: “Are they actually learning what they need to learn?”. This was such a turning point for me when proving the ROI of building community for learners. I hope it helps you too.

Got a 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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