How Notion leveraged community to build a $10B business | Camille Ricketts (Notion, First Round Capital)

Dec 11, 2022 1h 7m 19 insights Episode Page ↗
Camille Ricketts, former Head of Marketing at Notion and First Round Capital, discusses community-led growth and content marketing. She shares insights from building Notion's early community and launching the First Round Review, offering tips for effective strategies.
Actionable Insights

1. Align Content with Audience Needs

Approach content creation like product development by deeply understanding your target audience’s needs, anxieties, and aspirations, then create content that acts as a “painkiller” to address those specific issues.

2. Prioritize Ubiquity Over Monetization

For long-term success, consider prioritizing ubiquity and word-of-mouth momentum over immediate monetization of every aspect, as a large, enthusiastic user base creates more options later.

3. Community for Freemium/Sharing Products

Invest in community if your product is freemium or has an “atomic unit of sharing” (e.g., templates, creations) that users are proud to showcase, as this fuels aspirational self-expression.

4. Tailor Community to PMF & Market

Depending on your product market fit (PMF) and market (enterprise vs. consumer), tailor your community strategy: use customer advisory boards pre-PMF enterprise, foster champions/consultants post-PMF enterprise, and empower ambassadors/influencers post-PMF consumer.

5. Listen to Community Needs

Avoid a one-size-fits-all approach; instead, actively listen to community members through one-on-one or small group conversations to understand their motivations and how to improve their experience, then follow their lead.

6. Support Community Entrepreneurs

Nurture and support community members who build businesses (e.g., consultants, template creators) around your product by providing guides, networks, and connections, aligning their success with yours.

7. Manage Community Growth Rate

Implement a controlled growth rate for community programs (e.g., inducting 20 new ambassadors per month via a light application) to ensure new members are properly welcomed, maintain engagement, and prevent conversations from becoming muted.

8. Provide Exclusive Ambassador Value

Offer ambassadors unique incentives like early access to features, direct feedback channels with product teams, exclusive Q&A sessions with leadership, event subsidies, and promotion of their work to foster a special, non-transactional relationship.

9. Invest Significantly in Content Quality

Dedicate substantial time (e.g., 8+ hours per piece) to content creation, including thorough preparation, interviewing, and writing, to ensure high quality that stands out amidst internet noise.

10. Synthesize Content for Deeper Value

Beyond reporting facts, focus on drawing connections, connecting dots, and extracting bigger themes from your content sources (e.g., interviews) to provide more profound and valuable insights.

11. Maintain Strong Press Relationships

Invest in public relations and maintain strong, straightforward relationships with the press, as they provide an invaluable megaphone for reaching a broad audience with credibility and notice.

12. Track Net New Visitors

Measure the success of brand, community, and awareness campaigns by tracking month-over-month net new visitors to your website, indicating genuine interest and discovery.

13. Share Community Wins Internally

Regularly share updates and activities from your community with the entire company (e.g., during all-hands, on Slack) to inspire employees, reinforce who they are building for, and rally internal support.

14. Choose Accessible Community Platforms

Host your community on platforms already integrated into users’ daily routines (e.g., Slack) rather than requiring them to visit a new destination, to ensure higher engagement and reduce friction.

15. Master Your Subject Matter

Be incredibly well-versed and quick-thinking on all topics that might arise in conversations, ensuring you have all necessary information at your fingertips.

16. Convey Emotional Vision

Learn to paint an emotional picture of your vision and mission to deeply connect with people, enlisting their hearts and minds.

17. Communicate During Outages

During critical outages, prioritize clear and constant communication with users about the situation, fix efforts, and timelines, as this builds trust and highlights product vitality.

18. Authentic Founder Communication

Founders should communicate in a style that feels authentic to their personality, avoiding social media quotas and instead waiting to share valuable insights, as this often leads to more traction.

19. Learn from Community Experts

To level up community building skills, seek out resources and interviews from top-level community experts like Ben Lang (Notion’s Head of Community) for invaluable insights.