Positioning for your community

If you’re an open source startup, you have to position (and develop specific messaging for) several different things:

  • Your open source project

  • Each commercial product (ie, if you have a hosted, cloud offering and an enterprise on-prem offering, positioning and messaging for each)

  • An umbrella position for your company (because you only get one homepage)

I’ve said all this before. But in fact, it’s missing something: your community.

If you’re serious about building a community, you should think about your community as its own product. It needs unique positioning and messaging. In case it’s not obvious, the distinction is that when you position your open source project, you’re talking about what people get out of using the project. When you’re positioning your community, you’re talking about what people get out of participating in the community. And it had better be something above and beyond what they get out of using the project or your community isn’t going to thrive.

Not every open source startup is super serious about building a community. That’s fine. It’s a strategic decision. Some closed-source companies are super serious about building community. If community building is important to you, take the time to create community-specific positioning and messaging, paying attention to what pain points your community solves and what value it provides to those who participate actively.

Emily Omier