Category: Blog

In which I write down my thoughts and opinions at some length.

This website was archived on July 21, 2019. It is frozen in time on that date.

Sonya Mann's active website is Sonya, Supposedly.

Tips for Growing a Successful Slack Community

Posted on by Sonya Mann

Hi! Since you’re reading this, I assume you’re interested in starting a Slack community. But just in case you’re unfamiliar with the phenomenon: Slack is a SaaS company that sells its communication platform to other businesses. Slack has been highly praised for its design and ease of use. Because the product is so fun and accessible, an increasing number of noncommercial communities are using Slack’s free tier to host a mix of chat room and forum.

Slackbot is an automatic member of any Slack community.

In terms of concrete steps, setting up a Slack instance is super simple, and Slack itself has a great guide for newbies. The difficult part is getting people to join, and even more crucially, getting them to stick around and chat! I can’t make you any guarantees, but I have a few tips based on my own experience successfully starting a Slack community.

My credentials: I run a cyberpunk newsletter called Exolymph, which sprouted the Cyberpunk Futurism chat group. Cyberpunk Futurism currently exists as a Slack instance. I also participate in the #botALLY Slack, which is lower-volume but full of interesting, thoughtful people. I’ve joined a bunch of other Slack groups, some of which have gotten traction and some of which haven’t.

Cyberpunk Futurism has ninety-three members, fifty-one of whom Slack considers “active”. Roughly fifteen of the members hang out together digitally every day. Those numbers sound low compared to, say, Facebook’s billion and a half, but on an average weekday we rack up hundreds of messages in several different channels. It’s a lot of fun 🎉

Without any further ado, here are my tips:

  1. Target a very specific subculture, interest, or activity. Niches are the nicest! This gives you the best chance of bringing together folks who will want to talk to each other.
  2. Draw on existing communities! When I started Cyberpunk Futurism, I recruited from my own newsletter, /r/Cyberpunk, a large cyberpunk-themed Facebook group, and Hacker News. I also had a wonderful asset in Way Spurr-Chen, an online friend who helped me keep Cyberpunk Futurism lively during the first couple of days.
  3. Spend the first few days actively cultivating the conversation. Welcome every new person, and ask them questions. Share links and introduce discussion topics. The worst-case scenario is for a new person to join and see a dead chat room — they’ll leave and likely never come back. If possible, ask a buddy to help you keep the space moving. Don’t create a bunch of different channels right away — give users that ability and let things grow naturally.
  4. Keep inviting people and promoting the group! Make a clear-cut landing page where people can enter their email address to request an invite. (You can automate this, but I personally do it manually.) Growth is not absolutely necessary, and I can imagine scenarios where it would be negative, but some people will leave after a few weeks of activity. You don’t want your Slack community to dwindle away without infusions of fresh blood!
  5. Have a code of conduct — the Contributor Covenant is easy to repurpose — and make the expectations clear to group members. Don’t be an absentee moderator. Commit to creating and sustaining a safe and friendly space.

Of all of these tips, I think #2 (draw on existing communities) is the most important. Potential Slack members don’t appear out of thin air! You gotta go out and find them.

If you’re starting a Slack group, hit me up. I might want to join! Email me@sonyaellenmann.com or ping me on Twitter. Good luck 😘

Is A/B Testing Worth It for Bootstrappers?

Posted on by Sonya Mann

“Companies that use innovative and data-driven analytical approaches to marketing are found to have the highest success rate of conversions on their website.” — WeSpotlight

In case you’re not familiar with A/B testing, here’s a quick definition from Visual Website Optimizer: “A/B testing (sometimes called split testing) is comparing two versions of a web page to see which one performs better. You compare two web pages by showing the two variants (let’s call them A and B) to similar visitors at the same time.” Then you record how those website visitors behaved differently based on which version they were shown.

After analyzing the data, you keep whichever design performed better, discard the other one, and start the process again with a new tweak. Over time, you iterate toward the Holy Grail: a perfect landing page that converts 100%! Jkjk, that’s impossible — but you can certainly improve your baseline. A/B testing is a simple way to ensure that the changes you make are doing what they’re supposed to.

This is obviously a very clever idea. Equally obviously it takes time and energy to pull it off. If you have limited resources and you’re forced to be ruthless about where you focus your effort, is it worth it to A/B test? You have to come up with website variations, deploy your A/B testing tool(s), and then wait for enough visitors to be processed. The concept is simple, but the execution is often lacking. From the Kissmetrics blog:

“A/B tests are designed to imitate scientific experiments, but most marketers running A/B Tests do not live in a world that is anything like a lab at a university. The stumbling point is that people running A/B tests are supposed to wait and not peak at the results until the test is done, but many marketers won’t do that.”

As a bootstrapping entrepreneur, maybe with a day job to balance, it’s important to evaluate where your energy will have the highest impact. Of course, “is it worth it to A/B test?” is one of those trick questions: the real answer is that you have to weigh your priorities and decide for yourself.

This issue is on my mind right now because I’m personally debating whether I can justify spending time and effort A/B testing the Product Communication Basics landing page. And I think the answer is… no. Here’s why: opportunity cost.

Investopedia handily defines opportunity cost as “the cost of an alternative that must be forgone in order to pursue a certain action. Put another way, the benefits you could have received by taking an alternative action.” Right now I don’t even have enough website traffic to get statistically reliable results from an A/B test! So I’m gonna work on that first. Hi Reddit ;)

Do you need a practical guide to writing sweet landing page copy? Check out Product Communication Basics.

Why Should Landing Pages Be Simple?

Posted on by Sonya Mann

People are busy, impatient, and easily bored. They don’t have time to read through a complex list of your product’s technical features. Yes, some people will want more detail, and it should be available if they’re interested. (See what I did there?) But make sure there’s a low-investment option for drive-by buyers. “Simple” and “short” are related, even though they’re not exactly the same thing ;)

The ideal landing page format incorporates both short copy and long copy. In between those, you want a big ol’ button that people can click on to give you money. As stated in Kissmetrics’ blog post about looong landing pages:

“Place your call to action as early on in the process as possible. There will be some users who will convert early. You need to accommodate those users, by giving them the opportunity to convert.”

People can’t take actions that you don’t accommodate, and they’re less likely to take actions that you don’t encourage. Make the encouragement really obvious. Use the visual design as well as the text content to show people what actions they’re welcome to take. Even if you’re selling to adults, aim for a website that a fifth-grader would understand.

Lowest-common-denominator communication is not condescending — it’s actually very courteous! Don’t treat your potential customers like morons, but do treat them like professionals with priorities other than reading your marketing spiel. They just want to get on with their lives. If your tool can help them, awesome! But if it’s not immediately clear that you’re offering something useful, potential customers are gonna bounce.

Do you need a practical guide to writing sweet landing page copy? Check out Product Communication Basics.

The How & Why of Premium Pricing: Anxiety Included for No Extra Charge!

Posted on by Sonya Mann

Update: I decided to cut the scope of the workbook and hence cut the price as well, but the reasoning remains the same.

“There’s one easy way to find out what customers think about prices. By selling them things.” — Tom Whitwell

I’m reaching the stage where I ask people to hand over their money. Frankly, it’s terrifying. What if I fail at the very thing I’m trying to teach? A big part of me wants to pretend that I’m sure the launch will be a slam dunk, that I’m abso-freaking-lutely confident 💪🏀👍 But a bigger part of me wants to be honest about my thought process and my anxieties.

Javon McCrea dunking. Photo by Chad Cooper.
Javon McCrea dunking. Photo by Chad Cooper.

Value > Dollars

When it officially launches, Product Communication Basics will cost $34.99. That’s definitely more expensive than the average ebook. Heck, Amazon wants to cap prices at $9.99! And yet I think $34.99 is justified; PCB is more of a guided do-it-yourself consulting session than it is a standard book. Like I wrote on the landing page:

“Consider this: if you hired an excellent copywriter, you’d end up paying them $50 per hour at the very least, and you’d spend most of that time just trying to communicate your vision. How much is your time worth?”

I chose this framing for a very specific reason. Price is 100% a function of perceived value. The time, effort, and cost of materials are close to irrelevant — it’s all about what the product will do for the customer. Bootstrapping guru Amy Hoy quips, “Don’t get snared into a price conversation. Turn it into a value investigation, instead.”

If people anchor on how much hiring a consultant costs — if they perceive the value of Product Communication Basics in those terms — hopefully they won’t worry about paying $20 more than usual for an ebook. My guess is that the kind of person I want to sell to will understand my point and find it compelling. Hoy has also written that people who pay money for things “value their time more than their money.” Why? Because they understand comparative advantage and opportunity cost.

If you’re a high-impact professional, especially an entrepreneur, then spending your time compiling a bunch of information into a useful format is not worth it, and your end result won’t be on par with what domain experts can offer. Any hours you might spend researching are hours that you could have spent improving your own product, which has an order of magnitude greater effect in terms of 1) saving your future time and 2) multiplying your future funds.

Patrick McKenzie, a former bootstrapper who is now CEO of Starfighter, similarly exhorts people building products to value their time highly:

“Instead of [trying to do more with the limited time you have], build time assets: things which will save you time in the future. Code that actually does something useful is a very simple time asset for programmers to understand: you write it once today, then you can execute it tomorrow and every other day, saving you the effort of doing manually whatever it was the code does. Code is far from the only time asset, though: systems and processes for doing your work more efficiently, marketing which scales disproportionate to your time, documentation which answers customers’ questions before they ask you, all of these things are assets.” (Emphasis in original.)

An effective product pitch is a great example of a marketing asset that scales — once you’ve found the essence of your value proposition, you can and should use it again and again on your website, in emails, in advertising, etc. Do the labor once and reap the rewards continually.

Looking Forward

I think I’ve made a solid argument that my potential customers will save money if they buy from me, because otherwise they’d have to pay a copywriter much more or waste their own time figuring out an approach. I’ve also made the argument that my customers will earn more money in the first place.

But… I’m still nervous. What if the people in search of marketing resources don’t agree with my reasoning? What if no one orders the book? Realistically, in that case I’ll lower the price and try again. I’m a big believer in ~markets~ and I’ll listen to the signals as they come.

Another point from Amy Hoy: “You’re afraid of asking for money, so you think the thing to do is to ask for only a little. It feels safer.” Welp, she’s right. In the grand scheme of things, $34.99 is not a huge amount of money. You can drop that much on brunch or jeans from Target. And yet I’m still scared that it will seem like a ludicrous ask.

What are you waiting for? Assuage my fears and go buy Product Communication Basics!

What I’ve Been Up To: Cheerful Reminder + Product Comms Club

Posted on by Sonya Mann

I just sent out this email via my sporadic newsletter.

Hi everybody,

I hope you’re enjoying springtime!

Obligatory bunny photo, this one by chest-hare.
Obligatory bunny photo, this one by chest-hare.

Exolymph is going steady, and it’s sprouted a surprisingly active chat group. If you like talking about artificial intelligence and related sci-fi topics, I recommend joining. But the real reason I’m emailing you is that I recently launched two new projects:

I feel kind of skeezy about trying to sell you all something, but on the other hand I truly believe that I can deliver value far in excess of $35. Any serious businessperson who buys Product Communication Basics will be getting a great deal, especially if writing and idea distillation are not their area(s) of expertise. Even if you don’t consider yourself a serious businessperson, the workbook could help you pitch your side projects and improve your communication skills in general.

Here’s another possibility: Exolymph has amassed enough subscribers that small-scale sponsorships would make sense. If you’re interested in doing that, just hit reply and let me know. I gotta make this pay at some point ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

As usual, if you’re working on something cool, I’d love to hear about it!

Best,
Sonya

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