Building a community around a product is a long and arduous journey. The initiation should be built upon a foundation of passion and love for the product by the users, such that there is an altruistic desire from the users to want to better the product and engage in co-creation through a forum-like platform.

Before delving into the strategies we have to first understand the preparatory stages required to prime the product for community collaborations.

Users Must First Be In Love With The Product.

In order to build a cohesive community with an innate desire to better the said product, there must first be strong adoration and appreciation for the positivity the product brings about to users’ daily lives. By curating an experience ecosystem where the product is able to attend to all promised needs and beyond, users should be inclined to feel that the product is indispensable in aiding them to achieve their daily objectives; that’s where reliance deepens and we can expect users to be more vocal about the ideas they have, to extensively grow the ecosystem in order to better cater to their needs. It is imperative as not many would spare time to better a product of which they have little to no passion in.

Attending To Users’ Psychological Needs.

In close reference to Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs, we can explore different means of reciprocation to the users aside from periodic physical gifts so that the community can be grown organically and commitment to the cause can be ensured. Reliance on physical gifts as motivations can deter genuine participation and dampen its quality; not to mention its potentially high cost for subpar returns. Such psychological needs as described in the Hierarchy are as follows:

Belonging Needs

Esteem Needs

Self Actualisation Needs

Because the primary mission is to launch a forum like platform as a vessel to inherently solicit Ideas from a select group of lead users, it would seem absurd should there be a lack of returns to the user whether physical or intangible. Therefore, it is important to identify forms of returns that are of high value and satisfies psychological needs, which are far more effective than physical giveaways.

Launching the Vessel, & Steering It Right

Launching a platform as a vessel specifically to garner ideas and promote customer collaboration requires dedicated efforts to steer it away from becoming yet another complaint center. Considering that there are already existing portals to attend to the daily difficulties users may face which does not necessarily generate solutions to trigger a seismic change to the product, it is important that moderators of the platform should make sure the Interface is designed to explicitly curate and extract constructive feedback advantageous to the betterment of your product.

Lure, Hook & Trap

For a start, it is inevitable that physical gifts or other incentives would be utilised and be of value as an incentive for an initial lure of lead users to partake in collaborative campaigns. This answers to the physiological needs of users (in accordance to Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs). The strategy thereafter is to Hook and Trap the users by catering to their Belonging, Esteem and Self Actualisation needs through deploying the following incentivised strategies:

  1. Introduction of collaborative campaigns and enticing lead users (from various target groups) representing their organisations to put forth ideas and co-create improved versions of the application. (Hook;Self-Actualisation)
  2. Launching a Beta Lab, where concluded collaboration campaigns result in the deployment of beta versions so the users can “test” the enhancements first ahead of others. (Hook;Belonging Needs)
  3. Upon a successful beta testing and following a version release, organisations with prominent contributions for the concluded campaign can be openly credited (through various forms) for their collaborations which will generate a certain form of marketing based on recognition, and at the same time either pique interest (to join the select group) or spur more commitment from existing lead users to partake in the campaigns. This also helps your product brand portray itself positively as a community driven Brand. (Lure & Hook;Esteem Needs)
  4. Part of the main pillars of this platform can include a Business Building tab which essentially helps businesses socially connect with each other to achieve objectives if your product is business-centric. Encouraging representatives from individual organisations to network with each other (in a healthy and positive way) may in turn help them to build and grow their businesses (which may bring about more gains in various forms to your Brand), or help spark off more conversations and ideas that can better your product. This can help raise positive impressions on how your Brand/Product can aid businesses in growth, which may increase more sign ups when users from competitor products observe the opportunities present in this inclusive community. (Trap, Belonging Needs)
  5. The other pillar in this platform would be the information center, which your Brand can utilise to share articles and exclusive information on relatable topics. Such articles can increase the value of how your Brand returns to its customers, as good and timely intelligence is always a welcomed advantage to businesses. Moreover, by sharing it exclusively to users in the community (not all, perhaps privileged ones that unlock this feature with high volume of contributions) would entice users to contribute more and increase commitment. This perk will then ensure users stay trapped in the ecosystem when they see it as one of the many intangible values this platform brings about. (Trap, Esteem Needs)

Reaping What We Sow.

So what is it in for your Product?

By catering to the various psychological needs of the user when defining corresponding incentives, we can postulate that the following returns can be expected, provided the aforementioned strategies are implemented according to plan:

  1. Growing an array of features that actually matter to users with their help, which in turn will raise the usage satisfaction. This helps to propel the review of the application, which may influence more users to jump ship and adopt your product instead. This however needs to be managed carefully as poorly executed features may detriment experience.
  2. Based on the feedback received and analysing the demographics of which industries these feedbacks commonly stem from, you will be able to acquire, aggregate and repackage these datas to be useful in strategic planning purposes, through various products.
  3. Proper management, execution and curation of the platform will enable you to receive precious feedback of which otherwise may go unnoticed should the user not be motivated to share.
  4. Being open to ideas and collaboration with users will mean there are various underlying opportunities for API integrations which in turn will raise the your Product’s Technological Openness ranking, positively influencing the its presence in the technology scene.
  5. Establishing a tightly knitted community with exclusive perks can encourage conversion of customers from competitor banks once awareness of such advantages are being publicised.
  6. Perks such as articles published to hook users into returning to the platform can foster more inter-business entity interactions, which are beneficial to businesses. The platform and the Product will be regarded as an important information hub and it gives users another reason to utilise the platform repeatedly, creating more opportunities for lead users to potentially feed into the other pillars and looping them into a cycle of sorts.
  7. Successful campaigns will also propel the Product’s perceived impression as socially and community driven that highly regards users’ opinions. This targets the emotive aspect that may affect consumer’s choices, which may generate more conversions.

This article was initially written for building a community around a digital product from a Financial Institution, and now edited to the context of a generalised digital product.