How To Make A True Community…Graphic.ly

If you’re a part of the marketing/advertising/PR/social media industry, it’s possible and likely that you read 1-7 posts a day on “being real” and “building community.” These posts are written and, presumably, read by you and many other people in this industry.

So why, when I ask for a beta invite to some “social media” app or program, do the informational emails read as follows:

“Hey Mike,

Welcome to ______, a super awesome, well-rounded, and all-powerful social media app that literally does EVERYTHING you want it to do. That’s right. It runs Twitter. And Facebook integration is COMING SOON [Ed. note: This means it does not, in fact, do everything.]. And we’re doing 10 million things to make it better in the next week so that it totally rocks your face off and you love us and we’re awesome and la da da da da….

Thanks for joining our “community,” Mike. We love you and we’re your best friends forever now! P.S. – Don’t forget to follow us on Twitter for a bunch of updates we’ll be emailing you anyway. Hooray social media!

-The ______ Team”

I’ll be honest. These emails almost make my brain explode. And not in a “this is so awesome, I’ll brainsplode from the awesomeness” sort of way. More of a “did they just copy and paste this from the last ‘Generic Social Media App Team’ email I received?” brainsplosion.

And then the always honest, always open Micah Baldwin blew those stereotypical emails away with his beta invite to Graphic.ly. While I’d love to discuss Graphic.ly in detail (seeing as it’s a digital comics platform and I love comics like NBC execs love being stupid), I’m going to focus on something important:

The “Welcome to Graphic.ly” email that Micah sent.

First, after sending the email from HIS actual account (not no-reply@randomapp.com or support@fakeapp.com, but a legitimate, to-Micah’s-inbox email address), Micah says this [with a few parts clipped a little bit]:

“The Graphic.ly Baby Beta is unique in that we are truly giving you a product before it has matured. IT WILL SUCK BADLY….

We decided to give you the Baby Beta because we know that you care about building a really kick ass product, and we know that we must crawl before we can walk. If we dont get you involved now, the end product will just, well, suck badly.

You will be disappointed. A lot, and I mean A LOT, of features are not working yet. We have included only 2 books (all free), which I bet you have read. But the plan was not to wow you with catalog (we have hundreds and hundreds of books and merchandise to upload), but to let you understand what we will be when we are all grown up. We want, when you finally see the final product, to see your fingerprints on it. To be able to tell your friends, “I built that.”

He eventually goes on to explain what beta testers will find, what they’ll think (which is that it will need work, according to Micah) and what we beta testers will do to make it better. He does NOT just go on to say that Graphic.ly is the greatest app/program/whatever ever and will only get better and better and better. He’s REALISTIC about things. Which is so refreshing.

Of course, he’s not done there. Micah then gets super crazy on us and shares not only his personal email address, but also throws out his IM name, his Gtalk name, and his phone number. All of those things.

Granted, it’s not as if the Graphic.ly community is loaded up with spammers that are going to bombard him with annoying messages/thoughts, but I can’t tell you how many apps I’ve received beta invites for and I can’t even name one person who works for them. Typically, a robot sends an email, I glance at it, disregard it and move on. The fact that, if I really wanted to, I could contact Micah himself to discuss improvements to Graphic.ly is so much more real and tangible than any invites I’ve received thus far.

Maybe I’m overreacting. Maybe I just haven’t been a part of the “right” communities and programs. But I checked my inbox on about the last six I’ve received, and Micah’s Graphic.ly email was the only one that compelled me to do more than read it and disregard it.

So, if you’re looking for a lesson on being real and authentically engaging with your community, I’m throwing this out as a prime example. The fact of the matter is that I’m already spending time on Graphic.ly and I’m looking for ways to improve it. Does it help that I’m a fan of comics and do pretty much anything I can to support Marvel Comics (a partner in this effort)? Of course.

But does it matter more that Micah and the Graphic.ly folks made me feel like I’m a true, genuine part of this team? Definitely.

Good work, Micah. I look forward to contributing to this effort and improving it. Hopefully more companies trying to “build community” look at what you and your team at Graphic.ly are doing and try to improve their efforts as well.

It could be a spectacular change for everyone.

What do you think? Does stuff like Micah’s email really even matter? Is it more of a formality no matter how “personal” it feels? Are there other great examples we’ve missed out on? Share your thoughts in the comments below or join the discussion over on our Facebook page. And, to subscribe to the Deep Bench RSS feed and have our content delivered right to you, click here.