Communities can convene in one place, or across many. For any community with an online component, the role of place is significant. Community professionals are often engaged in selecting and implementing platforms for their communities, and it’s important to take those steps in a considered way.

We asked Paz Pisarski, former Community Manager for Startup Victoria and founder of the Community Collective, to share how she approaches selecting community platforms, and how the community tech landscape is evolving.

How do you think about the role of platforming in community building and community management?

Choosing the most suitable tech tools and platforms to manage your community can bring immense value and efficiency. Tech tools can help you better manage the community on the internal side.

For example, choosing a great CRM, website builder and communication tools can make a world of difference.

Selecting an appropriate platform to host your community on can bring significant value to the members themselves as they have a seamless digital experience and know exactly where and how to find everything.

For example choosing a white labeled community platform to customise, offer memberships, display member directories, store resources and communicate with members can make your community stand out amongst others.

However choosing suitable platform for your community is only one part of the decision. It’s very important to map out a clear strategy of how you are going to drive members to use your platform and build habits that keep them coming back on an ongoing basis.

Nail that and you’ll see the magic unfold!

It feels like we're emerging from an era of monopolistic, walled gardens into a new chapter of niche, bespoke and contextual platforms. Would you agree? What have you observed about the changing platform landscape?

New technology is emerging! It’s super exciting to see people build new platforms and tech tools that can be specifically used to manage communities.

I’ve met some amazing founders around the world and in Australia who are building amazing tech-enabled products.

We’re seeing carefully curated and consciously designed platforms built for purpose.

The way we host communities online is changing (again). I’ve noticed a shift away from hosting members on social media platforms (e.g. Facebook or LinkedIn groups) as communities scale in size. The functionalities become incapable of segmenting groups, searching for key topics and moderating conversations. Not to mention the increase of notifications!

There is a rise in using white-labeled, off the shelf products to host communities on. We’re seeing carefully curated and consciously designed platforms built for purpose. As long as you can find one without a hefty price tag, they really can be a great option.

What steps can people take to choose the correct tech tools and platforms for your community?

I think it’s important to explain the difference of these two here. I use tech tools to manage the internal processes of communities e.g. CRMs, website builders, newsletter platforms.

I use platforms to host communities on e.g. picking a platform that can store member directories, events, resources.

The process I went through to choose the tech tools for the Community Collective was:

1) Map out exactly who the community is for

2) Create a vision, mission and values for the community

3) Outline 3 key objectives to focus on in the first 6 months (e.g. welcome 100 members, host 6 meetups, launch a paid offering)

4) Decide on what your community offerings are (e.g. monthly meetups, quarterly public events)

5) Pick the tech tools and platforms that will support you to manage the community internally (e.g. Airtable for forms and data, Slack for communication, Butter for events, MailChimp for EDMs, GoDaddy for the website)

6) Set them up and automate workflows where possible (I use Zapier)

7) Be consistent with how you use your tools and continuously look to improve how you use them

Here’s the process I went through to choose a platform for Startup Victoria:

Understand the needs of the members
List out the features we wanted from a platform
Research all the possible platforms, ask people what they use
Book demos with the top 4
Write a decision matrix to help evaluate (e.g. features, support, price, location)
Understand if there are any local tools or members building platforms we could use
Pick the platform that stands out the most
Begin community migration process (this is an entire process within itself…)
Download and migrate all data across to new platform
Design the new platform, set up automations and email flows
Get feedback from members during live demos
Launch the platform to a priority group of members, then to the rest of the community
Decide on tactics to drive engagement to the platform
Continuously collect feedback and improve the platform ongoing
Celebrate!!!!

Give careful consideration to the places your community gathers online.

What are the most important questions you ask when selecting platforms for a community?

It’s extremely important to ask the right questions when doing your research. Here are a few that I like to start with:

● What platforms and tech tools are members already using?

● What are the features and functionalities?

● Who has created the platform?

● Where is the data hosted?

● What reporting and analytic functions do they have?

● Can we afford the platform?

● Does it integrate with the tech tools that we use?

● What support will we have when customising the platform?

● Can members customise the email notifications?

● Do I know anyone who has used this platform?

What's the most common mistake you see when people choose and adopt tools for their community?

People should definitely avoid signing up to multiple tools and attempting to use them all at once. For example, having a community forum discussion page, a Facebook Group and sending emails can be an overload of too many communication tools.

It’s more important to pick 1 great tool and use it consistently to build habits amongst members.

What platforms do you currently have your eye on?

Here are my favorite tech tools that communities can take advantage of now, grouped by region.

Australia and New Zealand

~ Amplifier (great for speed networking, New Zealand)

~ Canva (for all things Design, Sydney)

~ Pory (love supporting Melbourne based founders Luannie + Samantha, Melbourne)

~ ScaleGrowth.ai (love supporting Startup Victoria community members + Melbourne/San Francisco founders Anna Y. + Victor Kovalev 🙌🏻)

~ Storytail (amazing for online events and conferences, Melbourne)

USA

~ Airtable (honestly I use this for everything, San Francisco)

~ Luma (love their member directory and event invitations, America)

~ Notion (best resource library going round, San Francisco)

~ Mighty Networks (really great mobile app, California)

~ Pallet (great for jobs boards, New York)

~ Slack (I love Slack for all communications, San Francisco)

Europe

~ Butter (a great Zoom alternative for online workshops, Denmark)

~ Hivebrite (a very hightech all in one platform, France)

Paz was a guest at Australian Community Managers’ annual Swarm Conference.

Why your community platform matters