What are the best tools to start and manage a tech community?

Are you ready to start an online tech blog but worried about having the time or the right tools? Here’s everything you need to start a great tech community!

Table Of Contents

• Difficulties faced when managing an online community
• Community management areas
• The right tools for community managers
• Buffer
• Hootsuite
• Final Thoughts

As you already know, there are hundreds of online tech communities. Some of the most renowned ones belong to corporate companies while only a few have reached notoriety while maintaining their independence.

But there are literally thousands more out there that are struggling to get the acknowledgement they deserve, and many others that strive to get started. The key to success is a careful management. Without, a community will neither live up to its potential nor fulfil its role.

We at Codemotion believe that this disaster needs a solution as we are convinced that tech communities are vital for innovation and technological advancement. Luckily, there are quite a few tools that can help community managers stay at the top of their game and get good results fast.

Difficulties faced when managing an online community

Managing a tech community as a developer can be one of the most challenging activities you’ve ever done in your life. First of all, you’re going to deal with professionals like you so it means you need to be at the peak of your game. You won’t have time to waste fact-checking or ensuring the community runs smoothly. To communicate with other developers and be a proactive community manager, you need the right tools for the job.

Secondly, you’ll be struggling to find the time to manage your growing community as a side project while working on your job full-time.

On the other hand, you’ll have a unique opportunity to get visibility and share your knowledge with others while gaining new notions from your peers. All in all, managing an online community is a great way to share your passion, keep up with what is going on and sharpen your skillset.

Being a tech community manager demands for abnegation, and abnegation needs time. You’ll be happy to know that there is hope for you! To start with, there is plenty of tools that will simplify and even automate the process for you.

Before we delve into them, let’s go through the most important areas you’ll get involved in being a community manager on you own.

Community management areas

The first step is to identify the areas that need to be managed to make your community a success.

Community Page Creation

The first step must be to create your community page, it’s the central place people will meet and share information.

Communication

The page is essential but it’s only the starting point. You need to encourage people to react to your postings and create their own content. This is the most important part of an online community, the ability to share information, debate, and even learn!

Communication means that members can share their views and you are able to connect with them to provide updates, event news, and even share your own knowledge; which can be a great way to get a debate started.

Developer Relations (DevRel)

DevRel is simply building a relationship with developers either in your community or external to it. It’s important to develop these relationships in order to stay ahead of technological developments. By getting the developers to contribute to your community you can make sure they, and you, stay relevant.

Social Media

You’re probably going to want to link to as many social media accounts as possible as this will increase the number of people who know about your community. This is a good idea although when you first start your online community you may prefer to focus on the most popular social media sites, such as Facebook and Twitter.

All you have to do is create an account with these social media sites and connect it to your online community. It will allow them to connect through social media and for you to spread knowledge of the community to those that may be interested.

Blogging and Emailing

You need to be able to add blogs to your site and email blog posts, as well as other pertinent information, to your members. There is no option for automating the content, although you can sub-contract the writing and automate postings across social media accounts.

Writing blogs helps to build the community and attract new members, as does using email lists to talk directly to potential members.

Event Organization and Management

This is essential to building a community. It provides the opportunity for members to meet each other and share views. At the same time, potential members can get a feel for the online community and may be persuaded to join.

Ticketing

Of course, if you’re creating an online community and posting events you’re going to need a ticketing solution that allows members to book their space at your event and pay, if necessary.

Subscriptions

In a similar vein, whether your members are asked to pay for membership or not, you need to keep track of who is subscribed. This will allow you to contact them, assess the current member stats, and devise ways to target more people with the same interests. It can even help you to diversify the appeal of your online community.

Personal and team task management

If you’re lucky enough to have co-founders or dedicated first members, they may be willing to share the running of the community and organizing events. If this is the case you need to have the right software to organize the team and coordinate the various tasks.

Calendars and reminders

You’re going to need to put reminders and important dates on your calendars and those of your team. This should be handled by the team management software but it’s essential to be aware of how important this is.

Time Management

Likewise, managing your time and the time of any helpers will help you to focus on providing quality content to your community and monitoring the community to ensure everyone abides by the rules.

Automation

Finally, you need to consider what tools are available to help you automate as many processes as possible. This will help to reduce the demands on your time which is essential if you’re going to build a successful and flourishing online tech community.

The right tools for community managers

The real aim of creating an online community is to share knowledge and build closeness between your members. You should gain as much out of it as your members do.

Of course, you’re probably doing this for nothing which means streamlining the above elements is essential; the fewer tools you have to control all the above the easier it will be for you to manage the community, and enjoy being part of it.

The good news is that you only need a handful of tools to get you started. The majority of those on offer will help you handle all of the above categories. Take a look at these, try them today, and start building and managing your online tech community!

Codemotion Community Platform

Codemotion offers the ultimate community page startup. This easy-to-use guide will take you through selecting a topic to choosing a physical location, and several other pertinent details. The page will then be approved by the Codemotion team before it can go live. Once you’re all set, you’ll get access to an in-house meetup option to create a local event and manage it, a list of speakers to invite and the possibility to manage emails. Alongside this, the system allows you to register, monitor, and contact participants in an event.

Pros

• Free forever
• Easy to use
• Covers community creation, event management, and communications
• Agenda builder feature to organize talks
• Access to other tech professionals

Cons

• Occasional bug issues (but we’re on it!)

Trello

Trello is designed as a project management tool. This means you can use it to communicate efficiently with your supporting members. It will allow you to create a project, assign it to a team member, and track its progress. All communication can be completed in the app.

Pros

• Integrates with a multitude of other apps, including Slack
• Free option with a good range of functions, extra available with the paid option
• Mobile app is excellent

Cons

• Lack of reports

Eventbrite

Eventbrite a good option for managing events and can be used to supervise subscriptions, attendance, and ticketing issues. It’s very easy to use and is especially beneficial if you want to spend time on and at the event, not sorting a registration process.

Pros

• Enforces registration for events, ideal for tracking attendee numbers
• Monitor replies to event invites and report back to you
• Syncs smoothly with email providers

Cons

• This is just for registering and ticketing, you’ll need a more advanced tool to encourage more member interaction
• Not specific for tech events

Asana

Asana is another task/project management tool. It is for the more advanced users as it has an array of facilities; a key one is workflow management. It doesn’t offer time tracking but it will ensure you’re up to date with the work in progress and any corresponding developments.

Pros

• Sleek, modern interface with a speedy response
• Plenty of useful features
• Free version
• Timeline feature allows visibility of team members

Cons

• Inability to switch between task and Kanban views after you’ve created the project
• It’s not designed for graphics-heavy applications

Meetup

If you’re looking to expand your influence then you’ll want to use Meetup to increase your appeal. It works along the same lines as Codemotion, offering events in the area and allowing you to create your own events and offer them to interested parties.

Pros

• Easy to navigate
• An array of event possibilities
• Attendee management features
• Free, except for creating meetups

Cons

• Location limits when searching for events

Discourse

This app is designed to encourage communication. The user interface is simple with Discourse and you can try this one for free. It integrates easily with Slack, WordPress, Google Analytics, and a host of other systems. You’ll also like the automatic trust system that encourages fruitful communication across the whole community.

Pros

• It’s open-source, perfect for a tech community
• Excellent integration to other platforms
• Integrated tagging system
• Mobile friendly
• Customizable

Cons

• Monitoring and managing threads can be complicated due to lack of tree structure
• Additional custom options would be beneficial

Buffer

Buffer allows you to create your content and then queue it up to be posted to multiple social media channels whenever you want. It also allows you to analyse campaigns and see reports into how customer growth is building, helping you to choose the right strategies for improving your campaigns. A free version allows you to manage up to 3 channels.

Pros

• Free trial
• Easy to use and works very well
• Drag and drop facility
• RSS feed a browser extension possibilities

Cons

• Advanced analytics only available in paid option
• Other apps may offer a broader range of features

Hootsuite

This is a fantastic tool for monitoring tweets, content, and other posts. You simply select the relevant keywords and Hootsuite will monitor what is going on across the web, giving you the necessary feedback. It also allows you to track positive and negative comments and react accordingly, so it’s invaluable in maintaining a positive reputation.

Pros

• Comprehensive monitoring ability
• Well established, known and respected
• Easy keyword monitoring and post scheduling facilities

Cons

• An array of add-ons quickly increase the cost
• Reports could use additional depth
• No free version

Final Thoughts

Starting and managing a tech community takes time, effort, and dedication. But, with the right tools and a commitment to being a good community manager, you’ll find that it can actually be fun, as well as beneficial.

The fact that you’ll get to connect with lots of interesting people and learn from them can be seen as a bonus. After all, that is what the tech community is good at doing, sharing.

If you need help to start your tech community or make it grow consistently, do get in touch with us. We will be glad to give you advice and support you for free, as we have done with 500.000 communities so far across Europe.

You can read the orginal version of this article at Codemotion.com, where you will find more related contents. https://www.codemotion.com/magazine/dev-hub/community-manager/best-tools-community-management/