When Exit 5 transitioned from a side project to a real business with salaries, the financial pressure became a "forcing function." This created a necessity to constantly improve the product's quality to justify the investment, trapping the team into making it great.
Educational content and events are effective for acquiring new community members. However, the true "sticky feature" that drives long-term retention is the genuine connections members form with each other. Marketing hooks people, but relationships make them stay.
To prevent a community from becoming a sales-driven failure, consider charging for access. This reframes it as a standalone product with its own P&L, forcing genuine investment and protecting it from the short-term pipeline pressure that corrupts its purpose and value.
Effective community managers don't wait for members to engage. By using onboarding data to understand member expertise, managers can proactively "force tag" relevant people into conversations. This dramatically increases engagement and delivers value to the person asking the question.
In-person events aren't just a separate marketing channel; they are a critical tool for deepening online relationships. When members meet face-to-face, it "cements" their online connections, leading to warmer and higher-quality interactions within the digital community space.
To maintain quality and prevent self-promotion from overwhelming a community, ask a simple question for each post: "What if every member posted something like this?" If the answer is that the community would devolve into a low-value feed, the post should be disallowed.
The metric for a successful community has shifted from high activity ("noise") to high trust. Members no longer want to sift through hundreds of discussions. They want a smaller, curated space where they can trust the expertise and intentions of the other people in the room.
While vulnerability can be relatable, founders must be strategic. Consistently sharing significant business struggles can erode customer confidence, leading them to question the company's stability and wonder if their investment in your product is safe, creating a "sinking ship" perception.
Exit 5's Head of Community secured his job by sending a YouTube video outlining his top five ideas for the role before his interview. This pre-interview effort demonstrated his value and initiative, making him a standout candidate despite lacking direct experience.
An internal B2B community often fails because leadership doesn't give it enough time and inevitably ties its success to short-term sales metrics. When pipeline is down, the community becomes a target for lead generation, which breaks member trust and destroys its value.