[00:00:00] Katie Keith: When people sell WordPress products, they tend to think of the obvious marketing methods, like SEO and ads. But today we're diving into the heart of community building and discussing how trust, collaboration, and genuine connections can take your business to the next level.

[00:00:19] Matt Cromwell: This is WP Product Talk, a place where every week we bring you insights, product marketing, business management, and growth, customer experience, product development, and more. It's your go-to podcast. For WordPress product owners buy WordPress product owners and now enjoy the show.

[00:00:47] Katie Keith: Hey, welcome to WP Product Talk. I'm Katie Keith from Barn2, and today, we are talking about building a community around your product, and that's why we've invited Kathy Zant here today. So Kathy, could you introduce yourself and tell us a bit about what you do?

[00:01:05] Kathy Zant: Sure. It's so good to be here. Thanks for inviting me, Katie.

Thanks for coming. Um, right. Yeah. Um, so I've been using WordPress for years and years and years. Um, I was previously director of marketing at a security company, um, and did a lot of community work there. And then most recently I was working as director of marketing for Cadence wp. And. There is a huge community of folks behind Cadence and a lot of my work was helping people become more successful, um, and building community around the product.

And it was, it really did help catapult the success of, of Cadence and the security product I had been representing before that. So really saw the value of, of just empowering people within a community.

[00:01:54] Katie Keith: Amazing. Yeah. So thank you so much for coming on to talk to us. Uh, we always start by talking about why it's such an important topic for WordPress product owners.

So I'll start by saying why I think it's important and then you can go into more detail, um, on your side. So I'd say we're all operating as part of a community, the WordPress community, and as well as giving back to this incredible ecosystem and helping it to thrive, which benefits all of us product owners have an opportunity to create or join sub communities, which raise awareness of their products As you've done with Cadence.

And this can bring lots of benefits, like keeping users engaged with loyal to your brand and your products, getting feedback from customers and potential customers. And over time community members can even become brand ambassadors for you and do marketing for you for free. Uh, but a lot of people overlook the community building type of marketing.

So let's talk about it. So what about you, Kathy? Why do you think it's so important?

[00:03:01] Kathy Zant: Well, a a lot of us are, are smaller businesses, right? We don't have armies of marketers out there to get the word out. We don't have huge marketing budgets, you know, um, oftentimes, at least some of the things that I've seen in developing community is when once you help a few people become really successful with your products.

They get emboldened and they get excited about sharing their experiences with others. And like you said, they become brand ambassadors. You start creating like this marketing army of, of people who help other people find success in their businesses by using their pro, by using your products and, and. They love doing it.

You know, they find, they find, uh, passion and power, and a lot of times, um, people will come in, like, like with Cadence, people would come in, okay, I've just switched, I'm switching my set over to Cadence. But like, how does this role layout thing work? How does this product even do this thing that I used to do with this other like page builder?

Because we'd see a lot of people coming over from the page builder world, and there are plenty of people who. Are building sites for other people and they'll be like, oh, here, quick. Let me show you how to do that. And sometimes people would be like, you know what, can you just do it for me? And so a lot of people in the community who are building sites for other people, they would find business, they would find new clients just by being helpful.

You know? Like they're not out there like, okay, send me a, send me a DM and I'll. I'll get you a quote. That type of thing. And they're like, no, here, lemme try to help you do it. And then people would be like, oh wow, you really know what you're doing here. Please, I wanna do this whole thing. Can you help me with that?

And relationships start forming and reputations start being built in a community. And as long as people do, so, you know, with the end. Goal of really supporting people who are trying to do more with the product. It works, right? You start building sort of like these core users who are the, they're pro users or the expert users who can, can really help other people onboard quickly and find success.

[00:05:04] Katie Keith: That's amazing because it shows that the people within the community that are supporting one another actually can benefit. Um, it's sometimes they do it for charitable reasons, but also they can get work and things, as you say. And I think cadence is a really excellent example because. Personally, I sort of gradually heard about cadence a couple of years ago through the WordPress community.

People were just talking about it more and more and you know, there's a drip drip effect. It takes a while before you pay attention, like what's this cadence people are going on about? But it was through the community that I heard about it.

[00:05:42] Kathy Zant: Yeah, yeah, definitely. I mean, especially with like software, well, well, in WordPress especially too, because people.

Have their digital home on the web and software is all about trust. You don't want to install something that might have a vulnerability or mess up your site or have some kind of problem or a developer who isn't support you want. You really wanna trust software before you install it in your digital home, on the web, and so.

People trust that word of mouth much more. They trust reviews. Anything anybody can tell you about whether or not this plugin or this theme is going to work. That word of mouth is so critically important in software. I think even more so than anything else, maybe like plumbing in your house. You know, everybody wants, you know, the plumber who's gonna do the job, right?

Because it's like you said, WordPress is a lot like a house. It's your digital home on the web, right? And so what you, what you plug into it and the people you have working on it. People really wanna make sure that what they're using is something that's really going to work. It's tried. It's true. The developer has, you know, their best interests at heart, that type of thing.

They don't want to, I've seen a lot of plugin teams that they're like, okay, I'm just gonna be quiet about who I am and my brand will just speak for itself. But people really wanna know the, the people behind products. And when you have a community of people behind a product who are all saying great things about their experiences.

It Well, it just makes marketing a lot easier. Definitely.

[00:07:15] Katie Keith: So let's define what we mean by community and community building. So where are these communities? Um, are they communities that we create ourselves, like a Facebook group or a forum? Are they communities that already exist that we go into? How would you define it?

[00:07:34] Kathy Zant: Communities, anywhere there are users. I have built community in so many weird places that I didn't think I was gonna be Build community. Well, I've, I've organized word camps, so like there's localized communities, right? So there's people who like live down the street who are using WordPress. So there, yeah.

You know, you might be just a remote worker working in your house and you think, you know, this is. I can go out with my WordPress shirts and nobody will know who I am or what I do. But there are WordPress people in your community, local people, and meetups and word camps are a great way to connect there.

But you know, like YouTube, you would never think like YouTube is a place where you develop a community. But I've seen so many communities develop around shows. Like this one. Um, live streams, cadence we used to do whenever there was a product launch, we would do a live stream and. People from the community, users and a lot, it was a lot of times it was the same people who would show up.

They're deeply invested in the product. They wanna know what's next. They wanna ask questions of the development team. They wanna know what, what's new? How can I build this new feature into my, my workflows? So community is wherever. It exists wherever you show up, whether you see it or not. So look for opportunities anywhere and everywhere to build community.

[00:09:01] Katie Keith: What would you recommend for somebody getting started with selling products? Should they create a community space of their own, such as a Facebook group or something? Or should they go out there into existing groupings?

[00:09:15] Kathy Zant: Yeah, good question. Um, I think it's a little of both. I think to get started, it's really helpful to engage in active communities that already exist.

And be show up not to sell your products. There's been a lot of people that I see in like various Facebook groups where they show up and it's just like they, all they wanna do is talk about their product. People are asking questions. There are people who are like, I'm new to WordPress. I'm new to this product.

I need to understand how do I do this? Or my SEOs, or. You know, tons of questions about that. You just look at it and it's like, oh, here we go. Our good friend caching is breaking again. Right? It's like there are people who need help, and if you have any experience in WordPress, even if it's not fully related to your product, be of service.

Be helpful when you help someone, they remember who you are and you know, it's just like. You start developing a reputation in that way, and then once you start doing that and people see you as like, oh, that person has expertise. Whenever I have a problem with cash or security or whatever, I know that that person is going to be the person that's going to be able to help me.

You start developing a reputation, and once you do that. Then it's really easy to start your own community. It happens very quickly, and then that community totally supports your brand, right support. But, but it starts with, it really starts with just being of service. Where can you help someone in need right now?

Even if it's not something fully related to your product, get in there and help someone. Even if it just takes five minutes, you start to build a reputation as someone who is service-minded and uh, and, and there to just, to just help. Right? And then you build trust. They know who you are.

[00:11:00] Katie Keith: Yeah, that's an interesting one, even if it's not wholly related to your product.

So where's the balance here, would you say, between actively marketing your products to the community and being there to help, and then kind of hope that rubs off? How does that all

[00:11:16] Kathy Zant: work? Yeah, yeah. Well, you know, like with word camps, you can't just like go and give a speech and sell from the stage. You know, you can't do that.

You have to provide information, knowledge, empowerment, and I think. The same type of rules work really well with community, show up with information, knowledge, and being helpful and. Your, your work then kind of fits in, right? So, um, you know, I was just at a Word camp. I gave a talk about remote work, um, at Word Camp Phoenix, and towards the end I mentioned, you know, the product motivation code that I'm, I'm representing right now, but just kind of in an ancillary way.

If people wanna learn more, they'll go figure it out. It, there's a beautiful website they can go look at, but it's not like the thing I'm leading with. I'm leading with. You know, we're all doing this remote work thing, like make sure you don't burn out, set good boundaries, those types of things. Like I, I was there to be of service of people who are remote workers and people who are leading remote teams with, you know, some of the experiences that I had had.

So I think the line is, um. Always lead with being of service. And oh, by the way, you know, here's this other thing. But then people will ask you, sometimes they'll come right out and say, you know, how do I do this with your product? Or, what's the difference between free and pro? And then they are giving you permission there.

It's like, show up, sell. You know, but with community, your job is to, and if you're managing a community, your job is to make sure that everyone else in the community is showing up with those same ground rules that we're here to ask questions, we're here to learn. We're here to, um. Think outside the box sometimes, but we're not here to sell, you know, and it's just not, you know, selling is when you like, walk into a car dealership and you, you just kind of expect that that's going to happen to you.

But in community, people expect, um, to learn and to be inspired by others. You know, another thing I think that's really helpful, it's not a sales thing, is like with cadence, people are developing, they're doing something new and cool with the product. I think it's great for you to like take your product.

Like if you've done something, really, if a customer, like if you're a pro, if you have a plugin and someone has done really something cool and innovative with your product, that's the time to show it off. Like you could do this too because it's an educational, like I've seen some, um. It said the ninja form guys have a, have a product called Quibi, and it's an AI writing, uh, tool and they're using Cadence on their site and they have this really cool effect with Cadence and it's like this typewriter with the page coming out.

And I'm like, oh, I still don't know how they did it, but it's so clever and so cool. I had to go show that off to the Cadence group because it was a user who's doing something innovative and cool with the product that I hope somebody else can go do something similar like that. So it's not selling. It's like, Hey, I did this cool thing, you can do it too.

You want ask me questions if you wanna know how, that type of thing where it's all the focus is on education and empowerment.

[00:14:30] Katie Keith: Yeah, that's a good idea about if you are sharing something within a community, it can be something which indirectly reflects on your products. Like, um, a true a case study or something.

Like, look at this cool thing someone's done. And then naturally people will think, oh, how did they do that? I want that on my site, and they will. I identify that it was the Plunk product, but you don't have to start with an advert or what looks like an advert in that

[00:14:58] Kathy Zant: sense. Yeah. Yeah. Another thing that I've seen somebody do that's really cool in the Cadence community, um, somebody just for cadence, they had done an integration with Cadence and to celebrate that they were giving away 10 free licenses.

That is a great way to really make yourself known is what a great offer to the community of like, Hey, just so everybody knows I'm going to, you know, I want people to try this out, first of all, so I'm giving away something for free. It, it just, it adds to your reputation as someone who's giving and more interested in like seeing how people might use something, that kind of thing.

So. Yeah. Well,

[00:15:40] Katie Keith: let's transition to the story time where we each tell a specific story about our experiences with community, um, and WordPress products. So, do you wanna go first?

[00:15:51] Kathy Zant: Sure. Um. Let's see, let's, I can start with the YouTube story. When I was working at the security company at, at Word Fence, um, we, it was right during lockdown and it's like, okay, well we're not going to be going to, uh.

We're not gonna be going to Word camps anymore. How do we stay in front of customers and help them with the product? Because our goal was always, you know, there's a lot of settings. Let's help people find success early on. Because otherwise they just, they choose something else that's easier. Right. And so we started doing like a weekly office hours because of the pandemic, and it transitioned into a live show on YouTube weekly.

A little hard to keep up with, but every week we had people showing up, asking questions. Um, little inside jokes started happening with the show. Um, to this day I have people who write me saying, um. Because I would use this Sally's Cat blog as my demo site. Like even cat blogs get hacked. Right? And so people would just like write me even after we stopped the show and after I stopped working there, uh, they would ask questions like, how's Sally's cat blog doing?

So I just keep the joke. It's my personal joke now, right? So I use it for other demos. So it, it just. It really brought people together at a time when all the lockdowns were happening. It was a place that people could come every week and see the same people crack the same jokes. It was almost like a weekly mini word camp that was happening.

It took a lot of like planning, and we'd have to come up with a topic for the show and we'd have to come up with demos. And, you know, then there's the whole live stream thing that's, you know, it was a lot of work and it was, it was hard, but it really, really brought people together at a time when, uh, when there were lockdowns.

Um, and, you know, uh, there's other stories with like there that happened at Cadence, like. So a new product feature comes out. Cadence AI just, uh, came out recently and when it was first announced last year, people were like, I just need this thing. I don't care about ai. And so there was like a lot of heated conversation and people, um.

People commented to me of like, you're not shutting any of it down. I'm like, no, I want everybody to, even if they disagree with what we're doing, I want them to feel like they have a voice. You know, as long as they're not attacking anyone, it's okay. It's okay for dissent to happen within a group. In fact, it's healthy for dissent to happen in a group.

I've seen a number of other. WordPress focused groups that are product centric where dissent happens, or disagreement happens, or people get angry at the developer for doing whatever, or a bug or something like that, and they just, they delete comments or they just start shutting down the discussions because that dissent is happening, and we just kind of let it go, you know?

And hey, it's not fun. Descent is in a community, is never fun. You never wanna hear from the angry customers. But when you let them have a voice and you're like, I see where you're coming from, thank you so much for sharing your, your views and opinions. And you know, sometimes people get a little, sometimes you do have to say, Hey, step back.

This is what's crossing the line. But when you allow that healthy descent to happen, people, people need that. You know, just like on a team, um, you know, an organizational team can, can. Conflicts can be really healthy if you let everybody have their voice and everybody feels heard. And then you can come up with win-win solutions, same type of thing with the community, any kind of group of people you need to allow them to really have a voice.

So I.

[00:19:38] Katie Keith: Yeah, they do say that it's how you respond to negative criticism. Yeah. Um, and actually that can create people's, make people's impressions more positive than if there had been no criticism as well. Um, 'cause that kind of shows you in a better light overall, so you can even win from that. Although I think social media type community, uh, can get nastier than maybe other types.

Word camps and things, people are hiding behind their computers and that.

[00:20:07] Kathy Zant: Yeah. Yeah. It's, um, yeah. It's kind of funny because they, people will say things, even with like Facebook, you know, your name's there, they'll still say things that they wouldn't say to your face just because it's easy for them to just click enter and there goes the comment and they're off on YouTube comments with the worst.

I've had a couple of YouTube videos that it just like, boom, you know, when, when Last Pass had their breach. I did some videos on that and the comments. Boy, oh boy. It was kind of funny 'cause I'd be like, okay, Dan from Ohio, you just probably spent a half an hour writing this, but boom, it's not going to make, sorry, sorry Dan from Ohio.

But you know, I mean it, you have to really, you have to manage. Your communities. It's not something where it's like just a free for all and everybody has a voice. You know, you, you have to safeguard, make sure that everybody feels safe in the group. Make sure that, um, if people are posting comments that are just wrong or that might lead somebody to believe something differently that isn't true.

I've had, I. There have been a couple of people where I've been had to say, you know, this is just factually inaccurate, and so I'm not going to let this stand. I'm sorry. I'm gonna have to delete your comment. You have to safeguard the sanctity of your group and make sure that all of group members feel safe.

That they have, they feel the right, that they can say what they. Communication is all about that. When you have conflict like that, or you have people, you know, that you have to moderate heavily, that you just communicate with them, you know, here are the reasons why I need to moderate you here, and, and just over communicate in situations like that, and it ends up really being a healthy thing for groups.

[00:21:46] Katie Keith: Interesting. Yeah. So my experience of community building is more of being part of existing communities. Um, so, and I found you need to kind of identify the place where your potential customers are hanging out. And most of our customers, for example, tend to be WooCommerce. 'cause um, most of our plugins are WooCommerce.

So there's some we found. Tried out various different like Facebook groups and things like that regarding WooCommerce. Um, my favorite one for WooCommerce is WooCommerce Help and Share, which has mm-Hmm. Lots of, um, members on Facebook. And it's just kind of a really active group where people say, how can I do so and so in WooCommerce?

And then people will give them advice. And very often our plugins are the solution. But because I know so much about WooCommerce, I. Can answer other people's questions that aren't about our plugins as well very easily. So where I know that, um, a plugin by iconic say, would be a solution to what they're asking, it only takes me like 20 seconds to set to recommend that plugin.

And so that's a way, as you said, to primarily be give, be giving back. But then when somebody does ask a question, which. My plugin is a solution for then that that's what they're asking, isn't it? They're looking for a solution. So if your product is genuinely the solution, then that can be a good way of getting sales.

And sometimes I wonder about the ROI of that because you are kind of marketing to individual customers, but as you said earlier, Kathy, it's about kind of building a name for yourself within the community and being seen as an authoritative figure so that when they've seen you around seeing you helping others, they, they build that trust, don't they?

Over time. Um, so I don't do that as much as I used to, but I used to be very active in that particular community. And now it's largely Twitter, which I only joined like a year and a bit ago. Um, but um, do a lot of work within the community advising people on Twitter, but also, um, getting a lot of advice myself.

So that's a really good way to get, um, experience. And I have actually made sales on Twitter without even meaning to, just through discussions really. People are like, I, I did one, it was brilliant. I I screwed up our Black Friday email. Basically, I got the timing wrong and so I tweeted, oh, I'm such an idiot.

And we, our email wasn't sent on Black Friday as it was meant to. And we got a sale because somebody saw it and they clicked on me. Then they clicked on my company and they were like, oh, that product solves my need. So, oh wow. They brought our plugin based on me being an idiot. So, yeah,

[00:24:39] Kathy Zant: I think there's a lot to be said for that though.

'cause you're being very vulnerable. Right. I've seen a lot of, you're very open and and transparent on Twitter and I, that's so refreshing. I think when you're not selling, you're just like being you. You're being very, and, and that just I think, builds so much trust, don't you?

[00:24:58] Katie Keith: Yeah, people do seem to really like that.

And the main benefits I get from the Twitter community is, um, learning how to build the business and business connections. Not really plugin sales 'cause my tweets are about running a plugin business, so they're less interesting. So a lot of the people wanting to build a plugin business are like freelancers or something and might use my products, but that's really a side effect.

But I get a lot out of it through the connections I build and things like that. So that's different benefits, but what I haven't done is built my own community and like we've got. Loads of customers, but we've got 24 different products and they're not all WooCommerce. Mm-Hmm. So I've never figured out like, should we have a Facebook group for our customers and potential customers to support each other and talk about our product?

'cause it's like, well, they're not gonna be interested in the other products. Um, and like, it doesn't feel like it ties in, which is largely a. Kind of identity problem we've got that we've built this diverse range of plugins under one brand. Um, so, uh, we sort of, it is interesting that you mentioned the office hours that you implemented during lockdown because, um, I hadn't viewed that as community building, but we initiated.

Did live streams in about November. I think we've done three now. Yeah. And that has been a really nice little community event, actually seeing everybody's comments and even talking to each other in the comments and things like that. Yeah, and we haven't been doing it long enough to get that kind of running jokes and culture thing going that you mentioned, but.

That is really interesting and that has helped with some of my doubts about having too many products. That's different because we do a live stream and we'll talk about whichever product people ask about, and people do seem to be interested and maybe it gives them ideas of other plugins to try that they haven't used yet or something.

Yeah. So I hadn't thought I've built a community, but, um, I suppose that's kind of the nearest to it so far.

[00:27:07] Kathy Zant: It's, uh, I think you do have a community because I know, well, I know of your products because, well of you and everything that you write on Twitter, but I. Everybody that is using your products is basically they're trying to find more success with WooCommerce.

They're trying to find more conversions, more, they're, they're trying to meet their customers where they're at more closely. So the, the goal is very overreaching. It's not just, you know, a tiny, it's not just one product. You know, functionality it, but the, the overarching marketing goals and business goals that each of your customers have there, there's definitely, I think, a wider community beyond that.

And I think I, I love that you're doing the live streams. I haven't been to one. I'll have to hopefully find my time to get to one because I think it's great. YouTube has been, especially like YouTube live streams, uh, have, has really, really been good for, for marketing. Um. Gosh, I've seen so much, I've experienced so much sort of haphazardly of like, okay, well we've done this on Zoom a few times, let's try it on YouTube and see what happens.

And then boom, it's like this huge thing that I didn't even envision it to start with. Uh, but then like with Cadence, just really finding that, really finding that YouTube. Is a very comfortable place for people to show up and have a community. And I'm seeing now I'm seeing lots more, like even outside of WordPress space, people doing live streams and then they develop a community.

And now YouTube's offering things like memberships, like you can have memberships on YouTube and, and have members only live streams and stuff. I'm like. Wow, this is, this is kind of huge, this whole like video thing with video and community, so there's so much opportunity. Interesting. Yeah. Um,

[00:29:00] Katie Keith: how, if you were like a new products owner, you, maybe you are on your own and you're doing the development and the marketing as so many do, maybe you've got a small team.

I wonder how to prioritize the community side of things with direct marketing, like, um, SEO ads, whatever, that are more likely to directly get sales. How would you kind of balance and prioritize that? I.

[00:29:28] Kathy Zant: Um, well, I think all of those things, like you have to have landing pages that convert, that clearly delineate what your product does and why it does it better than the competitors and what your unique selling proposition is.

I mean, you have to get all of that stuff right If you're just off doing all the community stuff and you don't have someplace that is. Friction free. An easy place for someone to land and buy. You gotta fix that first. Like that has to happen first. Fair enough. Right? Fair enough. Yeah. Otherwise, like if you're out there doing all this stuff and it's like, oh, well I really wanna buy, there's one author that, he's kind of a fringe author, but he doesn't have a way to buy his book.

You have to send him a direct message on Twitter and then you can buy his book. And I'm like, dude.

He's still selling books. It's just, you know, we know better. We've seen you've got to create a fiction free way of doing it. Um, and a lot of people get stuck in, you know, this has to be perfect. The brand has to execute this way. All of these, the, the, you know, your metrics, like they spend all their time in analytics.

If I was gonna say anything from my experience, I would rather spend more time. Interfacing with customers and hearing what their pain points are with whatever it is they're trying to do, and see how our product can either fit that now, or maybe there's something I could bring back to the dev team and say, Hey, can we add this quickie little thing because we've got like some people who are asking for this.

I mean, that kind of knowledge is invaluable to understand how your customers are using your product, what pain problems your products are solving, and where there are other opportunities. You do all of that, spend more time doing that and, and then hire somebody else to like, look at the numbers as, you know, sort of like, I kind of think of marketing as like, you're playing the golf game, right?

You're out there with your customers, you're out there listening to your customers, you're bringing information back to product. You're, you're playing that game. And then you can get a caddy to like sit in analytics for you and keep score and see how things are going. Have somebody who helps you like keep score so you know where you stand and everything.

But the real game is, is helping your customers achieve whatever it is that they're trying to achieve. And you're not gonna be able to do that if you're not talking to them and listening to them. More importantly? I think so. I think it has to be balanced.

[00:31:57] Katie Keith: Yeah. Uh, last week on the show we had Stephanie Hudson from Focus wp, and we were talking about how to decide when to hire or outsource something and what to do yourself.

And she had some quite interesting advice about how to choose what's important, what you enjoy, what you're good at, and like a quadrant, uh. Diagram thing. Um, but I think community building is something that product owners should probably keep on top of because as you say, it's about getting that user feedback and building that reputation with you as the brand leader.

Um, one thing that works for me is. I am pretty sure most of us will just randomly scroll social media, for example, in our free time. Um, like I often do on the sofa when I can't be bothered to go to bed. And it's just a way to procrastinate instead of getting up. Well, you could be doing that with personal social media.

Actually, it could be work social media, which is building your brand in a kind of downtime. It doesn't have to be when you are sitting at your desk actively working. So I find that that's a good way to justify the time investment when I'm kind of wasting time anyway.

[00:33:08] Kathy Zant: Yeah. Yeah. And, and also watching how your customer or your, um, your competitors, like what's, like if your competitors are active on, on social media, how are they interacting and how are their customers interacting with them?

Like, there's tons of competitive research that you can do too, because, you know, I, I tend towards like, I think. Rising tides lift all boats. Like I don't, I was never really like, oh, let's kill the competition. I'm much more like, well, what can we learn from them? What can we bring in so that we can serve in the same way?

Um, and then also, you know, especially like with cadence, cadence is sort of, um, like the post page builder world, right? So there's a bunch of different, like generate press, uh, cadence, um. I'm trying to think of who else, but those are like the big ones that are just sort of bringing, uh, more freedom and flexibility into Gutenberg, but you're staying really close to WordPress core, and that's kind of like what my philosophy always was.

So it's like, yeah, cadence and generate press. I would just kind of like market those together. Like those are like, this is the way to, to build with WordPress now. And so collaboration, learning from your competitors, but then also how can you really like. Somebody who's like using a product like, um. Like divvy that is kind of going through some painful evolutions, like how do you help that person get to closer to WordPress so they don't have that extra heavy layer on top of thing?

To me, marketing is all about customer service at scale. So when you're active on social media and you find somebody who's like needing help to get off of a page builder, for example. Help them understand what all of their choices are and why your choice might be the best for them, but maybe the other choice is best for them.

But you know, the best is to get closer to WordPress and then help the that person. Somebody sees you doing that and you're not like bashing your competition and you're elevating everyone and you're just trying to really help that customer. They see that and that's marketing. You don't have to have like banners designed, nothing happens.

You're just helping a customer in a very public place, and it resonates. People see that and they're like, oh, okay. Plenty of people came up to me and said, I only tried Cadence because you are helping this person. And I saw that.

[00:35:34] Katie Keith: Amazing. Yeah. Yeah. So you've seen it in action. Yeah. You know, there's a surprisingly small difference between support and marketing isn't there when you're doing the support side of things publicly, because like community conversation is pre-sales, for example.

If someone's got a problem, that's even post-sale support. So, and then there's this whole kind of customer success. Thing, which I haven't particularly gone into, but a lot of companies, including the brands at Stellar, have customer success managers and things here. What would you say were the different roles there for people to lead on support, customer success, community?

How does that all fit

[00:36:16] Kathy Zant: together? Yeah, I think. For me, um, you know, obviously you need people who are like primary, which each of those things, but to me, marketing is customer support and customer success at scale because if support isn't showing up. Marketing has a very difficult job selling because people see that, people complain about that in, in community groups that support, you know, I put in a support ticket ticket at X company and I've been waiting a week and I haven't heard anything.

They see that in the forums and wordpress.org. Uh, if support isn't showing up, it makes marketing job very, very difficult. Um, if support is showing up. And with bells on and hoping it makes marketing's job very easy. So I see those types of, uh, su, I don't see them as disparate things in the organization.

If support's having problems, it's marketing's problem too. If I. Customer excellence or experience is not showing up. It's marketing's problem too. So all of those things have to work together and communicate together. And if there's problems and you see it on social media, marketing needs to bring it back to support and see how can we help this person.

And you know, I know a lot of support people are like, oh, well, just because somebody complained on Twitter doesn't mean I'm going to bend over backwards for them. But I would argue that. You don't have to bend over backwards for them, but it's a very public thing and it does feel a little like bullying, but you got, you still, you still have to address that customer's problem and if they're upset.

It's at least show that you're trying to do your best, even if it's, even if they're asking for the moon, right? So I think I, it marketing's job is making sure that support is doing what they need to do. And dev, I think that dev and marketing need to be very close together because if marketing doesn't understand why a feature exists.

They can't communicate it to the customers, you know, and they can't fully like market it. Um, and if marketing isn't paying attention to what customers want and communicating that back to dev, dev is building, you know, sandcastles in the dark that nobody cares about. And so I, I feel like marketing has to be integrated.

It's everyone's job to make sure that customers find success.

[00:38:49] Katie Keith: Yeah. Um, that's a good point about when people contact you on Twitter or something because the support and haven't. They might have a huge backlog or whatever, but the customer's not happy. I actually had an email this week from my support team lead asking what should they do when a customer has gone public, but they don't fit into our priority queue.

So if it's a particularly busy time, we have different levels of priority in terms of when to get back to each customer, how to prioritize. And so we have a customer that. Lower priority is being public. This, my support team lead was saying should they jump the queue because that doesn't feel fair.

That's rewarding The customers who, uh, have got the worst attitudes in a way. Um, what do you think about that? Because it is a tricky one.

[00:39:43] Kathy Zant: Yeah, it is a tricky one. And a lot of times there's customers that are just like, well, I bought this product because it was supposed to, you know, give me the, give me the stars, the moon in the sky and my WordPress site, and why hasn't it done these things?

You know, where's, where's the promise of your product? And they, their expectations and what the product does are not aligned. It happens to every product. I think it's really important to like, not take that stuff personally, just be really cool and calm about it. I am, I have always been a fan of if they're not happy and they'll never going to be happy, let me show you a refund.

I don't care on your way. I hope somebody else can help you with your expectations. Right. Just, you know, I'm, I'm cool with doing that, but I. We have to exhibit that we've done our best to meet our customer's expectations. And if that doesn't happen, refund them and wish them well. Um, but to like really be measured in our, our responses.

Um. And then also, I mean, I've seen some co some, uh, let's see, like I put in this request two days ago and then you go look at the ticket and it was actually two hours ago. And sometimes customers like to say those types of things. And so it's just like. We've got your request. I can see that was put into like, I'm not saying well, you're lying.

I can see that it was put in two hours ago and it will be next up in the queue right after we deal with this other thing and we are so delighted that we're able to serve you, you know, in the background. You're like, ugh. You know, like, just like, you know, there might be a few Slack messages going back and forth about, well look at this guy, but publicly I.

As gracious as possible. Don't let them push you, you know, holding a firm boundary. Um, there's one, one person at Stellar that I worked with who was really smart about like, if, if you didn't do anything wrong, don't apologize. I think a lot of times people are like, oh, well, we're so sorry, we're so sorry, and like, no, if you didn't do anything wrong, don't apologize.

Get them what they need. But, you know, stand firm with knowing that you are doing your best.

[00:41:52] Katie Keith: Yeah, I prefer to thank the customer for something, anything rather than apologize. Nice. Thank you for your patience. Thank you for using our product. Thank you for getting in touch, reaching out. And so sometimes I do say to the support team, I don't think you needed to apologize there.

Um, thanking them is, is similarly kind of diffusing, but without putting you, um, on the back foot, I suppose. That's

[00:42:18] Kathy Zant: such good advice. Yes. Always, you know, being thankful even if all you can do is thank you for using our product, or thank you for giving our product a, try. Anything, you know, to diffuse the situation and show that you're gracious and that you are there to help.

You know, that's, that's just always going to be the, the pin from which everything else hangs. The only reason you're in business is to serve a customer or serve, you know, at scale, right? To serve as many customers.

And Kathy

[00:42:49] Katie Keith: has gone, um, will she be back, is the question because we are about to finish anyway.

[00:42:58] Kathy Zant: I'm still here. You disappeared. I don't, I don't know what happened. That was odd. Yeah. Okay.

[00:43:04] Katie Keith: I think I could actually tie up then if you were offline, but let's move on to best advice. So let to wrap everything up, what is your top one piece of advice to WordPress product owners on community building?

[00:43:21] Kathy Zant: Community's an opportunity. It's an opportunity. I think the number one thing that I would say is early people to your community. Treat them like the gold that they are because they are going to be your marketing army, especially if you're a small team. Help them find those early people. Find success 'cause they're gonna help the next people find success, who are gonna help them.

And that's how you. Build right. But just be so gracious and grateful for the people who first show up into your community and, and empower them to help others.

[00:43:53] Katie Keith: That's really good advice. Yeah. Mine is more about, um, where to find people, um, to network with, uh, within the community. I would say that if you're just getting started, probably go out there to existing communities and find out where the people hang out, who are.

In who are likely to be interested in your product and get involved, start becoming known, and you can have really great results with that. And I've seen people, for example, mark from WS form. By being such a big part of the WordPress community, he has got a very pretty impressive market share for, uh, given the size of the market, the number of massive competitors.

Yes, I would say it's because of his community building. He has got to where he is today and he was a guest on last year. If anyone wants to look that up, about his story, so you can see it working. Um, a relatively, um, new, uh, can come in and even join a very competitive market. Through the power of community building, and then as you get established, you get a big customer base, then maybe then it is time to start thinking about building your own communities where you can bring people together in a dedicated space.

So I'd say choose where you hang out as depending on where your business is really.

[00:45:15] Kathy Zant: Yeah, yeah, yeah. Mark is a great example because he, he really helps the people who use his products find success with 'em. And then you hear the stories of how, how great he is and how, how much he invests in each of his customers.

It's, that's hard to compete with. Right?

[00:45:34] Katie Keith: Yeah. And the reputation of his product as a result, it really has an, an excellent reputation against such strong competition.

[00:45:42] Kathy Zant: Yeah. Yeah, definitely. Well, that's

[00:45:46] Katie Keith: a wrap. Thank you Kathy, so much for joining us. Where can people find you online?

[00:45:52] Kathy Zant: You find me? I'm most active.

On Twitter, I guess Kathy Zant there. Uh, my home, my, my WordPress site [email protected], just my last name. And, uh, there you can subscribe to the Zant newsletter that I need to mail on pretty soon. And, um, yeah, I'm around. I'm so happy to have been here. Thank you for inviting me. Excellent, thank you.

[00:46:14] Katie Keith: Well tune in next week when, uh, co-host Zach and Amber will be discussing product design and Gutenberg with Tammy Lister.

Special thanks to post status of being our green room. And if you're enjoying these shows, do us a favor and hit like, subscribe, share it with your friend, put it in your newsletter, share it with your communities. And most of all, we hope to see you next week. Bye.