The 13 rules of community-led growth
The 13 rules of community-led growth
Marketing Powerups #76: Lloyed Lobo, Co-Founder of Traction Conf and Boast.AI, shares his 13 rules of community-led growth.
Hello, and welcome to Marketing Powerups! 👋🏽
Today's powerups include:
Create a LinkedIn banner that positions you as an expert.
3 types of content gap analysis to outrank your competitors.
Lloyed Lobo’s 13 rules of community-led growth.
Ready? Let's go! ⭐️
🎖 Turn more new users into lifelong customers.
The 2nd cohort of the User Onboarding Masterclass that I’m hosting with Maven kicks off in 48 hours. 🎉
I've assembled the Avengers of Growth for it:
Lyla Rozelle (Litmus, Appcues): the master of user journeys and engagement.
Andrew Capland (Wistia, HubSpot): the Captain America and coach of many growth leaders.
Kate Syuma (Miro): the genius designer behind Miro's onboarding flow for +6 years.
Georgiana Laudi (Forget the Funnel, Unbounce): the customer-led growth wizard behind many wins.
Together, we'll help you crush churn with new users and turn more of them into paying customers.
In this 4 week live course, you'll get:
✅ A framework to critically evaluate onboarding processes.
✅ A proven strategy to improve your user onboarding experience.
✅ Templates, cheat sheets, and swipe files to start making an impact now.
✅ 6 months of access to an online community for support and networking.
✅ 4 weeks of live, interactive workshops and Q&A sessions with growth experts.
Students from the first cohort loved the course! Here is what May Luk (Growth at Vidyard) said about it:
"I learned so much not just about user onboarding best practices but also about PLG. I also love how interactive and open the discussions are."
It starts this Tuesday, February 27, at 12 pm ET. Spots are limited, so save yours today.
→ Learn more about the User Onboarding Masterclass and save your spot now.
If it helps, I'm happy to share a 15% discount code. Reply back, and I can share it with you!
⭐️ Lloyed Lobo's 13 rules of community-led growth
harnessed the power of community-led growth to bootstrap his startup Boast.AI to $10 million in revenue.In his WSJ best-selling book "From Grassroots to Greatness," he shares the 13 rules of community-led growth. Today, we dig into three of them:
1. Pick your community model.
According to Lloyed Lobo, there are three main types of communities, each serving distinct needs:
First is communities of practice that bring together people interested in learning about a specific skill or craft. For example, the Marketing Powerups community fosters knowledge-sharing around marketing tactics and strategies.
Communities of product center engagement around a particular product. Notion, Atlassian, and Apple have cultivated robust product communities.
Finally, communities of play focus purely on shared interests and fun. Sports clubs, gaming communities, and niche hobby groups fall into this model.
"Consider what need your community aims to fulfill. Is it empowering members to improve at particular skills? Deepening advocacy and usage for your product? Or simply providing an entertaining escape for people with niche passions? The community model you embrace must align with your purpose and strengths."
2. Design unforgettable experiences.
While online communities enable global, low-friction participation, Lloyed emphasizes that in-person events incorporate more senses and emotions, leading to stronger connections and impact.
"Anytime you incorporate more than two senses, you build stronger connections. It's like we were hanging out in person. We'd build stronger connections. Aim to facilitate experiential gatherings like workshops, trainings, mastermind groups, meetups, and conferences that leave your community feeling transformed through memorable multidimensional interactions."
Consider what senses, activities, tools, spaces, and people would contribute to an unforgettable experience for your community members. Appeal to their emotions through humor, inspiration, intimacy, intrigue, solidarity and other feelings that resonate. Well-designed live experiences anchor the passion of member relationships and propel word-of-mouth about your community.
3. Make your community sticky.
Nir Eyal's Hook Model illustrates how external triggers lead to variable reward dopamine hits that make behaviors "sticky." This applies to making community engagement irresistible too.
Instead of a single annual conference, Lloyed suggests regular local meetups where "every week I'm sending you a different message. It's a different dopamine hit. So you don't know what to expect." The element of surprise and breakthrough realization keeps people coming back.
Consider what external triggers might spur your community to take action, whether it's event invitations or content recommendations. Then intricately design the internal variable rewards - what insights, connections, activations, and other "aha" moments will they discover through your community?
Structure your community platforms and programming to facilitate delightful unexpected moments of mutual growth and insight. Soon your community will be hooked into spiraling engagement and impact.
Free powerups cheatsheet 🔖
I’ve created a powerups cheatsheet exclusively for Marketing Powerups subscribers to apply Lloyed Lobo's 13 rules of community-led growth.
→ Download and make a copy of it here (a direct link with no email required).
In the latest Marketing Powerups episode, Lloyed further explains his 13 rules of community-led growth
Listen to the episode on Apple Podcast and Spotify now, or watch it on YouTube.
✨ Mini powerups
Fun-sized tools, links, and blurbs to boost your marketing.
⭐️ How to create a LinkedIn banner that positions you as the expert (post):
I’ve abandoned Twitter (I refuse to call it X!) since that man-baby took over it. But I’ve been leveling up my LinkedIn content with videos, images, and rap songs (yup, you’ve got to see it to believe it). This post from Ryan Musselman provides great tips on creating a LinkedIn banner with Canva that positions you as an expert. It’s inspired me to update my in the coming weeks.
🔎 3 types of content gap analysis to outrank your competitors (analysis):
When done right, a content gap analysis can help you find high-quality content ideas, monitor your competitors, and beat their SERP rankings. In this Moz post, Dorcas Adisa explores 3 types of content gap analysis to help you stand out from the competition.
😍 6 easy things you can do to improve the content experience for your audience (article):
What if you created content so great your audience doesn’t even realize it’s an experience? In this Content Marketing Institute article, Lisa Dougherty shares 6 tips to create a seamless content experience for your audience.
That’s all for now, friends!
Have a powered-up day,
Ramli John Let’s connect on LinkedIn
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Llloyed is great, I've learned a ton from his book and it was an honour to hear him speak in person, in Dubai!
Awesome breakdown of community models.