Community Hacked

has renamed the channel from "5-tech-stack-qs" to "3-tech-stack-qs"

has renamed the channel from "3-tech-stack-qs" to "4-ask-tech-stack-qs"

Does anyone here use Circle? I'd love to know their thoughts on how it is as a space to host your community

I’ve been a user on it in a couple of situations - I’d be happy to connect you with <https://www.linkedin.com/in/kylehagge/|Kyle> from Morning Brew Education or <https://www.linkedin.com/in/qemmett/|Quinn> from <https://newsletter.importantnotimportant.com/subscribe?ref=6795796a5a|Important, Not Important >who both use/have used it.

Ah kyle uses it does he? I interviewed him for the first ep you joined I believe so ill plan to reach out. Thanks <@U03U6CNES22>!!

I built a community for my last company on it! Really enjoyed the experience/product. I haven't used it since I left last May but happy to speak to it and answer any questions you may have :slightly_smiling_face:

I'm an admin of a circle community (but don't do much admining.) Enjoy it as a user.

I oversaw Ladies Get Paid’s transition from Slack to Circle and will say that usage declined a ton. 

It may have to do with the fact that Slack was used for years before trying to force adoption 

Tried circle and really didn’t like it as much as I was hoping to. It’s UI design is not great and limited ability to brand. It’s sign in for users was less convenient than slack or discord   

I haven’t tried Tribe, <@U04JY6CS1EJ>.

Thanks for the feedback on Circle. A part of me is worried about how regularly members will sign in (and then engage). Guess we’ll see :man-shrugging:  

That’s why I dropped it in the end. Tribe is nice but expensive. I’m looking at building features on Bubble. 

Whatsapp gets most engagement for our entrepreneur community 

There’s no perfect community tech platform :see_no_evil:  

I’ve transitioned from Slack to Circle two months ago.. happy with the platform for now. However, it has confirmed my original suspicion that Circle would take more effort to drive engagement.. my community is on Slack daily for their own business, having to open Circle adds some friction. Hoping it’s just an initial hurdle

Same for me, WhatsApp is the one that works better for my women entrepreneurs community.

I had similar worries about getting people to adopt Circle (we were transitioning from a FB Group) but it went pretty well. I don't have much to compare it to but appreciated the automations that you could setup with Zapier, Airtable, etc. They introduced the app around the same time I was starting up the community and I think that was helpful too.

Thanks <@U04NKGCK6KE> that is helpful. I have similar concerns to those expressed/highlighted by<@U04EMTMQYNA> <@U04JY6CS1EJ> and <@U043MNNU9K9> about added friction, but am also not such a huge fan of overly 'opinionated' software that kinda restricts how much you can customise your setup. That's why I often prefer combinations of more flexible tools, as long as the UX isn't too jarring!

Good to know that there are communities using it successfully though as when i first tested it I had a hard time finding any

Have you checked out the Circle Community on Circle? Again, it's been awhile but I remember they had a "Showcase" of sorts where CMs would walk you through the different communities they've created on Circle. I found that helpful!

Ditto on <@U04NKGCK6KE>’s comment. When did you first try using it <@U03TG21DBQW>? I found that Circle has come a long way in terms of features as well.. when I first looked at it, a little over a year ago, I didn’t think the features justified the added friction. It made sense to me now, it has evolved a lot..  and the circus of integrations and combinations of features I was building on Slack with other apps was becoming a bit ridiculous.

ill check that community out <@U04NKGCK6KE> thank you. <@U043MNNU9K9> its definitely been over a year so having a centralised place does appeal to me if its more flexible than previously. I fear with CH that it will become similar for me building a circus of customised features and integrations haha (circus is the best word for it haha)

And guess who the clowns are…. :laughing::melting_face:

i think of myself more as a tightrope walker

Late to the thread here but we use Circle and its great for getting a community set up quickly without needing additional design/eng support. Our community of 7K have adapted well to using it and we are getting roughly 50%+ logging in each month. I think its intuitive for members to use as its similar to facebook and if you’re looking for something easy where you don’t need sophisticated functionality, it works. And obviously the price tag is muuuch lower than more robust solutions.

Some of my gripes that might be enough for us to move off unless they improve are below but these are only relevant if you’re hoping for another level of reporting, functionality and sophistication. Always happy to chat if it’s helpful.

1. Very limited reporting &amp; native analytic capabilities. If you’re looking for rigorous reporting/metrics, Circle is not it. 
2. No tagging functionality on posts or better federated search for easier thread search-ability by members (&amp; again, reporting. Our team wants to be able to report on post themes, CX case deflection). 
3. Space hierarchy is very limited so its hard to get sophisticated about how you set up different channels/parent channels. Works fine if you’re not looking to get too nuanced in your spaces and groups. 
4. Limited customizability in email comms that are generated via Circle. Its very basic and one-size-fits all. e.g. a weekly digest can only be sent on Thursday’s at a specific time or, as a member, there’s no way to get a daily digest, member either needs to get an email notification every time a new post is made or nothing at all. 

Very good points, Nina.. Analytics also bothers me and I’m looking for workarounds. Have you found any integrations that help with this? I haven’t spent the time yet, but Orbit has been on my mind to look more closely.
And ditto on email comms, I completely disabled their email and send my own weekly newsletter/ community roundup.

So far my biggest pains from Circle are:
• Lack of robust automations especially for onboarding (I’ve seen exceptionally better tools that are Slack-specific)
• Lack of ability to tag posts and create a filter with the tags within a space to help members find relevant and related conversations swiftly
TBD on what I uncover today :sweat_smile:  

<@U03U5QQS91V> &amp; <@U043MNNU9K9> - Thanks for highlighting the email functionality as a negative. I’ll be mindful of that, especially as we grow and think about email more. For emails (welcome and/or newsletters), what do y’all use?

I’m think ActiveCampaign would work well for us at the early stage and it has strong, easy automations with Zapier. 

<@U03U6CVRMLN> there’s a way to create folders and tabs within Circle that I find is helpful with organising conversations. Might work for you in lieu of tags.
I’m going super simple for emails: gmail + mail merge

We’re utilizing the folders to house running lists of newsletters, podcasts, etc. mentioned by members so people don’t have to search everywhere for the individual posts.

Would you be open to jumping on a call to show/help me catch up on how you believe folders/tabs would be helpful for organizing these posts in Circle, <@U043MNNU9K9>?

ugh <@U043MNNU9K9> sadly i haven’t found a great solution for the kind of comprehensive reporting that I need (particularly want to be able to see content viewership, member frequency on platform - not just ‘last 30 days’).

• my team does a manual CSV export monthly and does what we can to pull metrics that we need/can get with the limited available on Circle like : % posting or commenting, % logging in monthly. We also link up the CSV of circle data to other biz data to see if there is any correl bt community engagement and other biz metrics… very very manual. 
• we’re exploring layering on Google analytics to see what I can get from here. I’ll keep you posted! 

<@U03U5QQS91V>, please keep me posted on your exploration of layering on GA to Circle too :blush: 

I’d love to hear how it goes!

<@U03U6CVRMLN> happy to chat, but I think it’d probably be best in a few weeks, once I’m making more use of the folders (I’ve just started trying them out)

Works for me, &amp; then I’ll have more experience under my belt with Circle too :blush:  

Just need somewhere to say out loud how much I am loving using Geneva for a personal community I'm in :heart: I think it would be great for a business community, too

<@U04BG161EGZ> do let us know as would be v interested on this one

Oh gosh, yes! Sorry to be so tight-lipped earlier.

I love that, like Discord/Slack, I can be part of several communities—called Homes.

I love, LOVE that there's a calendar feature for scheduling out our events. How is it that this is new? Communities have events—that's what we do, we need a calendar view!

I like that the brand design is so friendly. It sets the tone for the sort of sophisticated interactions that we want. Think of it like hosting your get together in a well lit room with fresh flowers and lit candles vs a dark room with lots of computer monitors, cords, and pizza boxes. No shade either way—just setting the tone.

I love threaded replies and notifications.

I haven't seen their community manager panel yet, so can't speak to that.

this is the best description of a tool ive read in a while. love the analogies <@U04BG161EGZ> :rolling_on_the_floor_laughing: . Having checked it out now it does look really cool. Hadnt seen it before but will go deeper now - thanks!!

If anyone has any guidance on how to learn Airtable formulas better, please let me know. 

As of now, I am consulting chatGPT and I’d say the output works 50% of the time. Maybe I just need to get better at writing prompts. 

By formulas, do you mean actual math formulas or logic within Airtable to trigger actions?

Logic. If I can understand that, then hopefully can understand the math. 

Happy to see if a friend of mine who is an Airtable wiz is open to helping you, Allie :blush:  

Hey guys. Having the Discord versus slack debate in our community. Any big benefits of either? Thanks 

Love Slack for B2B-focused/professional communities. 

I didn’t like Discord at all when I was a member of a paid community. I canceled my membership. They dropped it.

We were having a discussion about this with <@U03TG21DBQW> and other members. In my opinion it has a lot to do with the audience's age, profession, etc. Discords seems to work really great for devs, crypto enthusiasts, and web3 in general (millenials/centennials), while Slack seems to work more for entrepreneurs and older people...that is my experience.

We launched the <http://netappdiscord.com/|NetApp Discord> in August 2021 and currently have just over 3300 members, with no real help from marketing. In September last year, we moved our public developer Slack workspace over to Discord, following Slack’s 90-day retention change. There’s always going to be some grouchiness, but all-in-all, the move went smoothly and we’ve won over most of the nay-sayers.

In November, we piggybacked on NetApp’s global partner event, INSIGHT, to host live-stream video and chat sessions _in_ Discord with product management and TMEs. We held 17 live demos across 3 days, averaging 50-80 attendees each. It was a lot of work, but that’s something you just can’t do with Slack.

Since then, Discord has added a watch-party activity to connect users directly to YouTube where we’re now running a weekly live-show, linking back to Discord.

One of my biggest complaints about Slack is that I have to create a new profile for every workspace. With Discord, I’m “me” everywhere, with the option to appear differently in specific servers. You can also have a much richer profile, which I think is a big positive.
What’s important about the “same account everywhere” concept is the metric in the lower-right corner of the attachment. When we started, over 50% of our new members had been on Discord for &gt;1 month. It was a resource previously unknown.

The way we like to look at it is that we’re building a community for our next generation of customer.

I’m happy to talk more sometime :sunglasses:

I launched my umpiring education community on Discord 3.5 years ago and it’s gone so well, I started a second business sharing what I’ve learned about community building on that platform.

So I definitely have a horse in this race and should NOT be trusted to give you a fulsome comparative review. :wink: My experience with Slack communities (and sorry, this place included), has always been a ride on the struggle bus because of how the UI is designed around productivity containers rather than flowing, organic growth and engagement.

At the same time, Discord is far from perfect. Running a business on it can be terrifying when they roll out new features seemingly on a whim without anything in the way of documentation but lots of cute vids on social media.

Anyway, it’s a tremendously in-depth topic that that needs the back-and-forth of a conversation/debate to really get info, but I’m also here for that conversation!

I’d be really interested in a conversation to share experiences!

Does anyone have strong opinions on Orbit or Common Room as tools to measure the impact of community on things like sales/marketing/support/success/product?

Last I saw them, I thought Common Room was significantly better than Orbit.

However, if you’re looking to up your experience and data game easily for a community on Slack, I think there are better Slack-first tools than those (especially for automations).

yeah <@U03U6CVRMLN> im asking more broadly tbh. We use Threado for slack and it works great

interesting <@U04K4KVBYKV> - what is lacking in Orbit? Or rather, what makes your opinion on Common Room so strong?

I have found the support from Common Room and ease of use significantly better than with Orbit. I found it incredibly difficult to even speak with anyone at Orbit whereas CR is not only communicative, but quickly responsive.

Based on that, I’d be in the Common Room camp :camping:  

yeah, support is huge, especially when your tool isnt as user friendly as other tools!

were there any downsides to CR during the time you used it?

I currently use them, but I'd say the downside is just some product limitations since they are new and still building. I have some platforms they don't automatically integrate with that I would love to not have to build Zaps for.

ok, and yeah those just come with time anyway. Good to know, thank you!

happy to answer any other specific questions. I use CR daily!

thank you so much briana, will come back to you if i do. I guess the only final one is: were there any other similar products you looked at other than Orbit for this purpose?

Commsor, Ahoy Connect, SavvanahCRM. I did this evaluation about a year ago, so things may have changed, but just had this discussion in another CMers slack and the consensus was the same.

We connected our Discord to Common Room and I found the tool to be pretty awesome. There’s still a lot it can’t do with platforms like Discord and Slack, but they’re making continuous improvements.

Orbit was nice, but we also didn’t have the same sort of connection with that team as we received from CR. It might be just as good, given fair representation.

If we had budget for extra tools like one of these, right now, I’d probably go with Common Room.

We have been using Orbit and have a terrific CSM, but have found their product better for sales/CSM use cases than community business intelligence. They just launched a new feature to help manage ambassadors, which is something we already have tooling for, but is interesting nonetheless.

I have been putting together tech perks for our portfolio companies but just realized I am looking for some for the small community I'm building on the side. All of the perks I've set up are via the VC fund and a lot focus on being VC-backed.

Have yall found any helpful tech tool perks with easy sign up processes without needing a VC entry point? Especially looking for:
• **Airtable -- really want some credits. I know these float around
• Softr
• Google Domains
Maybe this is something <@U03TG21DBQW> can build out for CH? :eyes:

Look for companies that have a “For Startups” program, they typically also offer perks (translation: discounts) to accelerators and incubators for companies. 

That’d be my best recommendation outside of the general:
• Go through a peer/connection/warm intro (or could DM to community, partner, or marketing person at the organizations)
• Do your research to show why it makes sense for both parties — keep it win-win

Airtable usually is pretty quick - email <mailto:startup@airtable.com|startup@airtable.com> to get set up - they do non-vc community discounts!

google has the startups program (not sure if this includes domains),  you have to be VC backed but anyone can apply - <https://cloud.google.com/startup/apply?hl=en#application-form>

softr was on the ondeck perk page so they likely work with non vc communities - if you want to zoom I can show you the list of their companies to take inspo from

For Softr, reach out to Lizzie LaCour, Softr’s community leader, who I’m sure would be able to assist/connect you with the best person/people. Hope that helps!

Hi Allie! At Delighted we have a startups credit that doesn’t require a VC entry point: <http://delighted.com/startups|delighted.com/startups>

You might want to check out: <https://www.f6s.com/deals>

Lots of deals for Slack, and a bunch of other tech perks too!

I’m on the same quest, this is super useful! I’ll share the ones I come across

<@U04EMTMQYNA> check this full list out here for inspiration - it should help you :slightly_smiling_face:

<https://www.builtfirst.com/all-discounts>

Anyone have a system/process for community members to easily spin up their own gathering within the community but track that it's happening and sign ups?

:raising_hand::skin-tone-2: We had something similar when I was at On Deck!

*TL;DR -- it was a mechanism for us to see what events community members wanted, identify if members wanted to run it themselves or have us run it, and then act based upon that.* 

*`The Process`* 
• *Airtable form or Typeform*
    ◦ Questions:
        ▪︎ What type of event? (IRL, AMA, networking, roundtable, fireside chat, etc.)
            • The logic here was if someone chose a specific event, there were different questions following. 
            • i.e. Fireside Chat --&gt; With who?
                ◦ Do you have a connection with this person, if so can you warm intro, etc.
        ▪︎ Host? (Community member vs. On Deck)
        ▪︎ Date
        ▪︎ # of attendees
        ▪︎ etc. etc.
• *Zap to Airtable Base*
    ◦ This allowed us to either act on the event and whip it up ourselves _or_ press a button that sends the member a template and/or toolbox to create the event. 
• *Templates &amp; Toolbox*
    ◦ Depending on the event, we'd send the member a <http://lu.ma|lu.ma> sign up sheet (so that we can track attendees and help manage), a Zoom link, a budget, etc. 

^this is a rough outline. Basically, it was a form that helped us know what members wanted, and enabled them to do it themselves, however with added visibility and control on our side :slightly_smiling_face:

You're the best <@U03UVSXTTC0> :heart: :oyster:

Meetsy would likely be the smoothest all-in-one platform for this 

<@U03U6CVRMLN> you’re super right. And would likely eliminate our need for orbiit too. :grimacing: 

Consolidation FTW :raised_hands:

And, you could do a mentorship program through it too.

At least 3 programs via 1 tool, not too shabby for a few minutes of typing haha 

Hey guys, we want to match members in dinner pods of 4-6 people monthly, how can we low code this to do at scale? Eg, 200 dinners on same night. 

thanks <@U04JY6CS1EJ> - maybe <@U04901G1DCJ> <@U04EMTMQYNA> <@U03V7KDD4VA> <@U048MUMD5GE> or one of the others in VC Platform will know?

Hey Jonathan! <https://orbiit.ai/|Orbiit> can do group matching! We use them for 1on1 Coffee Chats at Forum. Are they people in the same Geo or virtual?

Not sure but deff following this! I am sure there will a chat gpt use case soon for this ha but as of now idk

I have a contact at a large networking community who has set up a method to match people based on common preferences and characteristics

She offeres this also as a service I think: Georgie Nightingall at  <https://www.triggerconversations.co.uk/>

<@U048MUMD5GE> Any idea on pricing for Orbit? “Contact sales” scares me as a bootstrapped community founder :wink:

<@U04KPN3UET1> I think they have different tier pricing for start-ups! Happy to put you in touch with their founder if you want

Orbiit has gottten a bit pricey over the years just to warn you! another one i've looked at that is much cheaper is <https://intros.ai/>

<@U048MUMD5GE> Would love to chat to them. Orbit is the only one I found that does group matching. We are using <http://intros.ai|intros.ai> but unfortunately they don’t support group matching

Apparently intros will be releasing group in Q3 this year 

I found myself struggling with the same pain point when i was trying to start a curated connections program for a bootstrapped client. So, i decided to build an alternative as an indie hacker! :wink:

Currently in a private beta -<https://curatedconnections.io/>

Has anyone found an AI tool that can help with job scraping?
• Paste a job board link (linkedin/lever/ashby/greenhouse, etc) 
• It auto pulls into an Airtable/spreadsheet:
    ◦ Job Title
    ◦ Role category (marketing/finance/etc)
    ◦ Company Name + Company Description + Industry
    ◦ Location
    ◦ Salary
    ◦ # yrs experience

Be careful with scraping info of LinkedIn, it can 100% land you in LinkedIn jail and that’s not a good place to be. They’re VERY protective of their platform :100: 

<http://Clay.com|Clay.com> could work for this. they have a data enrichment plugin that finds active job openings by domain or google job listings by keyword. you can probably then parse out the individual data and push it to update an airtable sheet. cant 100% confirm since I havent had this use case but worth looking into if you havent already!

This will work well for LinkedIn: <https://phantombuster.com/automations/linkedin/6772788738377011/linkedin-job-scraper/tutorial>

We use <https://www.getro.com/|getro>, it doesn't link to airtable but pulls in links from various job boards and compiles them into one job board

Just found out that Mailchimp newsletter campaigns show up janky and wrong on Outlook vs Google/other email accounts. I just chatted with Mailchimp service rep and they are aware of it and essentially said there's nothing they can do. Has another else faced this? Which newsletter providers don't have this issue?

&gt; <https://mailchimp.com/help/my-email-looks-different-in-outlook/|Read here>: _Versions of Outlook from Outlook 2007 to present use Microsoft Word to render HTML email, which can cause problems with campaign display. Microsoft Word is meant for print design and attempts to render HTML like it would look in print preview, causing the display to look different from what you may have designed and tested._

That feels like a cop-out response. :thinking_face:

I’d check out Klaviyo! I’ve always found it much better than Mailchimp overall. Steeper learning curve, but well worth it IMO.

Personally, I like ActiveCampaign for ones easy to execute emails, but a Marketo/SFDC Marketing Cloud are good enterprise, extreme tracking, etc. 

Q from founder: *looking for a tool or hack to see if their network has connections to a target list of potential partners.* Anything out there easier than just sending over a list of names + linkedin profile URLs for folks to click on individually? Ideally to just send one link and someone can immediately see if they're connected to anyone they're targeting. Like if LinkedIn had a way for you to tag certain people or add them to a list - and then send that list out to people.

Audio Clip (2023-05-10 16:46:33).m4a

Sorry I sound a bit like I’m dying because I just got in from a short but fast run lol :joy:  

<@U03U6CVRMLN> is this what you mean -- <https://www.linkedin.com/help/sales-navigator/answer/a107069/how-do-i-view-and-manage-custom-lists-?lang=en>

have you used Cabal? <https://getcabal.com/>

<@U03V7KDD4VA> I haven't! Would it work for this instance?

Yes, it’d be using their lists functionality for your target people and then seeing who you and others at your firm are connected to help make the intro (LinkedIn calls it relationships or something like that) 

<@U03U6CVRMLN> are you able to share the list via a link (like hyperlink it in an email) or can you only share lists via LinkedIn messages/DMs?

yeah 100%! sales nav is also great :slightly_smiling_face:

I don’t think you can share the list, it’d be more so for seeing who you and your founders/VC firm employees are connected with &amp; then 1:1 asking for them to make an intro to PERSON for REASON. 

The sharing wouldn’t happen because that’d kill LinkedIn’s ability to upsell across teams sadly :disappointed:  

<@U03V7KDD4VA> <@U03U6CVRMLN> yall are the best -- thanks for always being so quick and great

I’m a big fan of <https://brdg.app/>
Might help you solve what you’re doing where it shows you who can help you make an intro to someone else on LinkedIn