
Show HN: How to Build Community – my 4 years research - LisaDziuba
https://flawlessapp.io/designcommunities
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LisaDziuba
My framework is focused on 8 simple steps, which you can use for building your
community:

1\. __Give the best learning opportunities for the community. __

It can be guides, e-books, podcasts, newsletters, courses. Learning content
not only gives you SEO-traffic. It helps to position your brand\startup as
thought leaders and industry experts.

So when someone from the community has a question, you already have an answer
to that. Firstly, companies nurture community via useful educational content.
And you'll see that all companies in the design space do that.

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LisaDziuba
2\. Provide (design) resources community might need

If you look at design companies, they provide handy design resources to work
faster, right inside the tool. So users have no reason to leave. UI kits,
icons, mockups, and fonts — all that is waiting for any user who comes to
Sketch, Figma or Marvel.

That additional value keeps the community hooked inside the company brand.

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LisaDziuba
3\. Invite the community to contribute.

Enable users to talk on behalf of your brand via a company blog, promo-
projects, and social media.

Design companies are great in motivating the community to share design tips,
articles, assets, designs, and even positive vibes. If you open the research
and check visual, you'll see it :)

Some design companies focus on content, inviting opinion leaders to share
their knowledge through interviews. Others run community-driven blogs, openly
inviting contributors by prominently positioning “submit content” call to
actions. Another tactic is to motivate the community to share more of their
design work made with specific design tools. The more the community
contributes to anything brand-related, the tighter the connection formed
between brand and users.

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LisaDziuba
4\. Empower the community to build plugins & extensions

this is something specific for the design & development industry, but can be
applied to many startups as well.

Plugins enrich the tool capabilities, providing huge value by giving end users
the opportunity to build the features they need. At the same time, this forms
a loyal community of plugin makers, who can even build their own small
businesses on top of it. The main question is how to motivate the creative
community to make plugins.

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LisaDziuba
hey to HN community!

For the last 4 years, I’ve been working with community building in design &
development industry while running my startup.

We used many community-building techniques by ourselves and learn from great
companies in our space — from Sketch, InVision, Figma, Marvel.

Based on our learnings and things we noted form other companies, I made a
community-building framework. You can see it in the research
([https://flawlessapp.io/designcommunities](https://flawlessapp.io/designcommunities))
I shared with many visual examples.

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richald
Is it expensive to build a community by a startup?

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LisaDziuba
it takes time, but possible to do without huge funding

