What is SaaS Community Building?

Community building for SaaS is the act of establishing an active social platform where users of your software can connect, share experiences, or support each other. This process involves dedicated and loyal customers who influence product development through insights and word-of-mouth.

Community building is a SaaS growth strategy, cultivating a loyal customer base, driving organic growth by acquiring customers, and lowering churn rates for SaaS companies. Involved communities serve as awareness of the project, active assistance, product testers, and marketers.

It is worth noting that no one can build a community without encountering certain challenges. These include:

• Engagement: To ensure continuous commitment, ongoing work is required to keep individuals engaged and contribute to a given community. 
• Moderation: Managing conversations and maintaining a positive emotional environment is required.
• Measuring Success: Measuring social media influence might not always be easy since the effects of building communities cannot always be simply measured through SaaS metrics such as the number of links, followers, etc.

The process of community building is not easy. It requires consistent effort, clear guidelines, and a well-thought-out strategy for building the best community.

Follow these steps: 

1. Choose the right platform: Think about what your audience likes and what you require for further work (for instance, forums, groups, or the possibility of organizing a live chat).
2. Create engaging content: Information exchange, discussions, and encourage user-generated content.
3. Foster a welcoming environment: Establish and enforce community rules, monitor the discourse and appreciate member contributions.
4. Identify and empower community champions: Encourage the members to take an active role in posing questions and planning for meetings and activities.

Consider the following ideas: 

1. Product feedback and ideation: Collect information from your software users.
2. Customer support: Establish peer-to-peer support to reduce the support team’s workload.
3. Beta testing and early access programs: Engage your community in the product development process to gather feedback.
4. Referral programs and user-generated content: Encourage your community to share your product with friends.