How Design Companies Build Communities - Community building practices from top design companies

For the last 4 years, I’ve been working with community building in design & development industry while running my startup, @flawlessappio. We used many community-building techniques by ourselves and learn from great companies in our space — from Sketch, Adobe, Abstract, InVision, Figma, Marvel. Those companies make tools for designers. Some of them have huge funding, others - don't. But what they have in common: all of them invest time in working with the design community. And when you look around, all companies try to win users' loyalty and build community. Engaged community drives product development and spreads the word about the product. It gives a dream viral growth, while the company keeps building a sticky product. But how to build such a loyal engaged community? I and my team put all our learnings into one research on How Design Companies Build Communities. In short, you can follow 8 steps to grow your community 👉 1) Give the best learning opportunities for the community. 2) Provide resources community might need 3) Invite the community to contribute. 4) Empower the community to build plugins & extensions 5) Actively communicate with the community 6) Get community offline 7) Be proactive in existing communities 8) Manage community efforts Good luck with your community building and feel free to ask questions!

𝐓𝐡𝐞𝐫𝐞 𝐢𝐬 𝐧𝐨 𝐬𝐮𝐜𝐜𝐞𝐬𝐬 𝐰𝐢𝐭𝐡𝐨𝐮𝐭 𝐚 𝐜𝐨𝐦𝐦𝐮𝐧𝐢𝐭𝐲! Have you ever thought about how the companies get a huge community of users? The main reason is definitely the right product, which solves a huge need. But growing a community around this product isn't less important. Why building community matter? With community, you can get users, traffic and first sales. It’s always invaluable feedback, information, and ideas. That's why we made a huge report on how SMM, content, event marketing can help you to build a social community with practices form the biggest design companies! Please, take a look 💛

Building a large community is probably the hardest thing to do but also the best thing that may happens to a team building a service. IMHO that's the first thing to care, thank you for this precious resource! In which domain did you built your first community @valiahavruliyk ?

Awesome! You've done a lot of work. I can’t wait when I read practices in more detail. Congratulations)

perfecto!

Such a valuable resource 🙏

Wow, it's a super detailed research! Are you planning to extend it and add new companies. thanks for sharing your feedback!!!!

🌟 𝐇𝐨𝐰 𝐭𝐨 𝐛𝐮𝐢𝐥𝐝 𝐚 𝐥𝐨𝐲𝐚𝐥 𝐞𝐧𝐠𝐚𝐠𝐞𝐝 𝐜𝐨𝐦𝐦𝐮𝐧𝐢𝐭𝐲 🌟 An example from @marvelapp on being proactive in existing design communities. * * * Many designers love Product Hunt and visit it often. Being active here is a winning tactic for engaging with the creative community. The Marvel founder @mutlu82 himself is also pretty active on Product Hunt. Murat Mutlu hunts not only Marvel products but also tools and resources from the community. For example, he hunted Prototypr.io, a popular design resource, and Planable, a cool marketing tool made by our friends. You can often see Murat commenting products here too. Such a proactive approach from Murat makes Marvel a good citizen of the Product Hunt community. That pays back every time they launch something Marvel-related and help engage with all design community here. * * *

Wow, it's a super detailed research! Are you planning to extend it and add new companies?

🌟 𝐇𝐨𝐰 𝐭𝐨 𝐛𝐮𝐢𝐥𝐝 𝐚 𝐥𝐨𝐲𝐚𝐥 𝐞𝐧𝐠𝐚𝐠𝐞𝐝 𝐜𝐨𝐦𝐦𝐮𝐧𝐢𝐭𝐲 🌟 An example from Sketch on getting community offline. It’s super cool to gather an existing community of loyal users and supporters in the real world. People can exchange knowledge and ideas, find mutual opportunities, and have fun. Sketch is great at gathering the design community offline. * * * Sketch meetups are really global We met Galya and Todor from @sketchsources in 2015, when we’d just started Flawless App. They ran the first-ever Sketch meetup in Ukraine. Now Sketch lists 103 local meetups all around the world. Sketch also partners with design-oriented companies. One example is MacPaw in Ukraine, who then organized Sketch meetups on their behalf. * * *