Startup Growth Academy #6: How to build and grow a community – Closing Call case study

Automation hacks, metrics, and case studies are constantly hot topics in a startup content stream. We’re happy to cooperate with Ryan Gum, founder of Attach and Closing Call to learn how to grow a community.Ryan shared with us the story of building and growing a sales-oriented community.

Startup Growth Academy is working on developing smart, learnable tactics and methods. This time we check out how to build and grow a community –Closing Call case study.

Take a look, take notes and grow faster!

Footnotes:

4 – For us, the first answer to that question was Sales Managers and Salespeople. But when it came to finding where they were online, we didn’t come across any clear winning channels.

4 – That gave us the idea that if we couldn’t find a place for salespeople to hang out online, then maybe we could build a place for them. So we created Closing Call as a place for salespeople to share, learn about and discuss sales.

5 – Building a community is a classic chicken-and-egg problem. No one will bother contributing if they don’t think there’s anyone else there to see it.

6 – Building a community is a long-term bet, as we don’t directly talk about Attach on Closing Call1. Rather, growing a community around us helps us to easily establish relationships and build an audience. Note: We’ve seen similar success with this in the past from Qualaroo. They have built Growth Hackers as a ‘growth hack’, with great results.

9 – For us, seeding the community with content and users was social proof. That might be doing the first 10 shares across a few social media accounts for a new blog. It looks like it’s already been read and shared. And for a new product, that might be testimonials from your friends.

10 – People are hesitant to vouch for or join something if no one else has – social proof is extremely powerful. The presence of social proof is validation, and the absence of it actually detracts from your offer, so fake it until you make it.

12 – Even though it’s a longer-term play, it’s brought Attach about 50 signups so far, but the main benefit has been through establishing relationships with influencers. Reaching out about Closing Call is a nice way to connect with people. It is certainly more indirect than reaching out about your own product.

Thank you for joining us in Startup Growth Academy! Share it if you like it!

Caroline

Content Marketing Manager at Growbots. Fell in love with startups & marketing and have been wired into it ever since.