 Why do I speak about community marketing versus community management? Because I see from various companies, where I worked for like last seven, eight, nine years since I'm in the workplace community, that this is completely misunderstood. What is community marketing and what is community management? Because these two things, you cannot even put verses behind. They're on completely different side of the spectrum. For each thing you can grab on about community marketing, it's on opposite side from community management. So those two people are driving cars on two parallel highways, which are never crossing each other. And most of the time those highways are like getting away one from another, and those two persons don't like each other. Why is that so? It's because community marketing is there to use people for the benefit of the company, and community management is to help people on behalf of the company. So to use company to help community. And that is why they're on the opposite side. So community management is spending money to help people. Community marketing is spending money to take more money from people. And that's the biggest difference. Where have I started and why I have the credibility to talk about this? I was construction site supervisor, and my formal education is architecture. So zero coding, zero programming, zero everything. And then what happened, it's world economic crisis. We all know everything about world economic crisis because countries, especially countries from kind of Eastern Europe, like from where I'm coming, felt that really hard. And where you feel the most economic crisis is construction industry. You can see that no one is building anything when there is financial crisis. And of course I decided to change my profession, and of course Google told me that WordPress is something I should do. And of course community is responsible for where I am now at this very moment. How that happened actually, I started to manage WP. I finished some WordPress course or so. And there was IT Connect one conference in Belgrade. And there was one guy, Milan Ivanovich, he's hiding behind. He was, let's say, introducing WordPress community. It was about like, there was a representative for each IT community. Serbia was in that conference, and he was representing WordPress community. And I was no one back then, like literally just finished the course, no one knew who am I. And he was speaking about that, and I was like, who the hell is this, Ivanovich? What does he talk about? What community? What is the community? Like when you're a construction site supervisor for a decade plus, there is no community. There are people working on the construction site, and that's it. There is no community of construction site supervisors. They're not meeting anywhere except in a cafe to get drunk after work. And that's it. There is no community at all. My first job I got at Managed WP through the community because I attended one meetup in Belgrade where a couple of people now in Automatic and other companies actually I talked to them and then I applied and got the job. The second job, GoDaddy, actually GoDaddy acquired us. Then the third job in RTL, I was asked to join an RTL during my talk, actually Q&A during my talk in Athens, in word competence. So I just transferred, like, sorry, but WordPress TV is recording. My boss will watch this, so I cannot accept your offer now, but let's talk later. And yes, I really will have the company and join an RTL. From an RTL, I joined Cloudways later. It was all again about the community. Daverix, the company from Bulgaria, wrote the article, I think, 10 WordPress thoughtful leaders to follow, and I was on that list. And at the same time, of course, because it's good for SEO, those articles are good for SEO, Cloudways decided to make a list of 100 WordPress influencers to follow, and I was on that list. And when they opened a couple of positions, I just asked their HR, they want to hire a person who is on your blog post, top 100 people to follow in WordPress community, and yes, of course, they hired me. Make WordPress, of course, for like six or seven years there in the community team. And I was mentoring this conference. Here, they were really cool. We had zero meetings and zero questions, so quite experienced crew. And now I'm in Indistec, again hired through the community. I know the guy right is from Visual Composer and WP Bakery. They founded the new product Indistec, and that is how I've been hired. So I did my community management really good, and my personal branding and community marketing really good. And that is what is giving me credibility to talk about this today. There is only one thing where community marketing and community management has touching points, and that is engagement. You cannot buy engagement, you have to build it. When I joined WordPress org, in Slack, we had around 6,000 people. At the moment, it's over 50,000 people. That engagement, you cannot buy that. You need to build that, you need to invest time, you need to invest resources, you need to make people interested in what you're doing. But on the other side, community marketers would say something different. It's not like just doing that, like nurturing community etc etc. They will say that if you stop advertising to save money, it would be like stopping the watch to save time. So community marketing will always be there to spend money. Community management will always be there to nurture relationship between people inside of your community. So what is community marketing? This is the definition of community marketing. And this, let's say, definition is the only thing you need to know about community marketing itself. Everything else is built on top of this definition. So it's a strategic approach from the business side. So it's always the business behind this. Where the company uses community to make money. Easy as that. So we built community. That community is promoting us to other people. The community is getting bigger. They are building our community by making money out of that. Like through affiliate programs etc etc. They're bringing more people into the community and you're making bigger community etc etc. And at the moment when that community is big enough, you have the problem because no one is managing that community and you have a problem. For community marketing, what is important? Building a community, the only touching point, engagement for community marketing and community management. Community marketing is sharing content. This is really important to remember this for the two slides from here. Feedback and communication to collect feedback and to communicate what's important for the company. So community marketing is only communicating what's important for the company and to reach the company goals. And advocacy, but you will see another advocacy in community management but this one is completely different. As I said, it's always on the different side of the spectrum. This advocacy is using your community members as your advocates in online communities, in social media etc etc. So this advocacy is using your users as your advocates, as people who are representing you. On the other side, community management is this. This is also, let's say, the definition which is the foundation for everything you're building on top of this. It's the process of seeing and overseeing and nurturing needs of your community online and offline and to make sure that it operates smoothly. I will explain later what does this actually mean and to serve its intended person. For example, our WordPress community has one purpose. To have something which is free, will be free and stay free forever. And Matt Malewick said that that is how WordPress started. Do you know the sentence? What actually Matt Malewick posted on Caffe Lock and how WordPress actually started? Who knows that conversation between Mike Little and Matt Malewick? You know, the conversation was like this. They were using B2 Caffe Lock. It was blogging software, but it was not maintained for some period of time. And Matt Malewick had the whole blog there. And he said, I'm afraid that something happened to Valdiriji. Michael, wait, Valdiriji, yes, who was founder of. Back to Caffe Lock, he said, maybe I will lose everything I have here because he's not maintaining the product. It would be so cool to make a product which will be always free and if something happens to me, someone else can continue maintaining it. And so it serves the purpose even if I don't exist. And Mike Little responded the other co-founder of WordPress. As WordPress said, well, I have a couple of friends and me as developers, we could help building something like that. And that is how WordPress started. It was not Matt, it was actually Mike Little, the guy who later left the community. He was always there, but let's say he left the community as active developer and contributor. What is important for community management, as I said, on completely opposite side, moderation, you need to take care of the community and to moderate the conversations because it's quite easy for the big community for the things to go down the slippery slope. Number two, engagement, the only thing which is the same between those two. As you remember, I said sharing content for community marketing. So they're just sharing content. Content curation is actually community management is deciding what content should be written and shared with the community because they're interested to read something like that and that is what they want to read and learn more about it. And community marketing at the same time is sharing only what's valuable for them to convert and sell. So again, completely different sides of the spectrum. Conflict resolution, of course, there are all these conflicts in every community. I mean, in your house, there are like four people living your pretty much similar DNA because you're the family, but you have conflicts every day. Here at this room, we are all different. We are not same and equal. Whoever says that has like biggest misconception and not a misunderstanding of the entire planet because my background is architecture and I was the single child in the family and my parents were in architecture and construction industry. But for example, your parents are maybe musicians and your parents are programmers and your parent is a teacher and your family was like 10 kids and parents. We all have different backgrounds. We are not equal and we cannot be equal because our starting point is completely different for each one of us. Some of you guys, you completed like programming in university and I'm a graduated architecture. We are not the same. We are not equal and we cannot be equal. And embracing that we are all different and there is no equality, but we are all different is what is making one community great and good. Not having a problem that someone is different from you is the most important thing. And number five, advocacy. Again, we had that advocacy if you remember with community marketing but this is completely different. This is where community manager is advocate of community in front of the company. So when community wants something, community manager is actually going to the right place in the company and says like our community wants this feature to be implemented by the end of the year. And community marketing is using in an opposite way community to use community as advocates to sell their products. To completely different people and I have to say the community manager is a better person. You can see that like community marketers are lying, community marketers are just trying to sell and to reach goals and community manager is there to understand community and to be the part of that community and best representative of the community in front of the company. And you will see that actually understand that in the next couple of slides. Focus of community marketing revolves around leveraging their community or a network like 90 individuals to promote and enhance a brand product or service and it emphasize using the community as a marketing channel. So there are people who are actually abusing you. You can see that in all communities for like you can check Facebook groups of all plugins teams, premium plugins team, et cetera, they're always using marketers or always using the group to upsell something to their members to offer some affiliate scheme or whatever. And that is fine of course, because all of us need money to do things. But community manager is always like a nicer person in that story because it centers on overseeing and maintaining the community itself. How? By creating positive engagement and well-structured environment there, where community members can connect, interact and support each other. That is why rules are important. In the WordPress community, rules are extremely important even though very often you think there are no rules. But the moment when you try to break those rules, the entire community will see you as a person who does not belong to that community. And that happens very often. No one has to tell you like, don't do that. You will understand that you did something wrong even if you never read the code of conduct or anything else. It happens occasionally that people do things like unintentionally. We had situation in WordCamp Vienna. There was a guy in a t-shirt which was like quite inappropriate for any woman who see the text on. And when we asked him like, bro, you cannot wear the t-shirt. Because I was not aware that I'm wearing this t-shirt. I just pulled it out of the wardrobe. And he took of course the t-shirt of the conference, put it on and said, sorry, I never meant to insult anyone. It was just a joke t-shirt. And I was not even aware of that. And that is happening and it's fine. We are not perfect. Who is perfect can throw the first stone. Like that's something. If you're perfect, then you have zero sins throw the first stone. Goal of community marketing is of course to abuse you. The primary goal of community marketing is to boost brand awareness, reach and loyalty through the engagement of community members, which involves always like treating you well for being good. 10. I'm nailing it, you see? I'm literally around that number. Yeah, he's a time keeper and they're showing us like how many minutes we have until the end. Very, very important role in both games because we can talk for hours, to be honest. What they want you to think community marketers that you are important and then they're like rewarding you for being good, for behaving nicely, for representing the brand. And you think they're doing that because you're good but they're doing that because they want you to do more. That is why they're rewarding you. At the same time, community management's goal, primary goal, is to ensure that it operates smoothly, remains respectful and serve its intended persons. It's like, as I said, resolving conflicts, fostering a sense of belonging. And this is the place where we community managers are kind of, sorry, breaching code of conduct assholes. This is where we are assholes because we are fostering a sense of belonging. So we want you to feel that you belong to something but you cannot belong to my company because we are not paying you. You're just our user. But I want you to think that you're part of the family. You know, when you say something and I say, kudos, good job. I like what you just said, thanks for your contribution. Sometimes I really think that but sometimes I'm like, I don't care what you just said but you're active in the group. I see you're very active. And very often you're giving some meaningful answers to other members of Facebook group, for example. But at that specific point, you said something stupid but I don't want to insult you. So I will say like kudos for that but it's not what I think. But you will have that sense of belonging because for every time you post something, you comment something, someone from that community, some manager from the company will tell you how cool you are and you will feel better and you will feel that you belong to that group of people and we all like to belong to something. If I say today, here, today, Drupal is better than WordPress. What to do the reaction? How many of you would say, yes, we agree? How many of you? Zero. WordPress is better than Drupal. How many? Everyone, yeah. Imagine that I did this in DrupalCon. What will happen? Completely opposite direction. Because you like where you belong. You feel here that is safe, et cetera, et cetera. But also Drupal people feel really safe and I see DrupalCon. More, activities. Community marketing, the most of their activities is pulling more money out of the community and growing the revenue and reaching the goals and breaking the revenue from the previous month, next month, year on year, year on month, month on month. That are the only numbers they understand and they read and they want to read. No one cares about you, who you are, what you're doing. You are $27,000 more in revenue this month. Community, through community channels, 17% out of that was through community channels. That is who you are for community marketer. You are the number in reaching the goal. For community manager, you are not that. For community manager, you are someone who is there to help building a better product because from really useful people who, especially those who are from the very beginning there like early adopters, you had the best feedback. Like, guys, this button is a bit on a weird place because every time I'm thinking where should I click to learn something because it's kind of hidden. Why not putting that button on the other place? And then you have really useful feedback and thousands and thousands of people will be happy with that. Because when one person complains about something in your product, there are 28 people not complaining but thinking the same. And that is like one of the stats I very often share even though stats are there just to support my opinion even though very often they are not correct. Okay, things to take home. How many minutes? Nailing it. Things, take this home. Number one, go for the community marketing. Offer incentives for advocate and start-ups for early adopters. Offer them something. Marketing is doing that. Offer them something to make the money for themselves so they will make money for you as well. Affiliate programs, referral programs, lower prices for them, the LTD licenses. I mean, a lifetime deal is the biggest scam ever. When you say lifetime deal, there was a communication couple of days ago with Brizzy on Brizzy Group, a page builder with Brizzy. The guy was complaining because they can see that on Paddle dashboard where they're paying for the lifetime deal, expiration date is set to 2035. And he was like, why is 2035? I mean, it's lifetime deal. I was like, bro, it's a lifetime deal of the product, a lifetime of the product, not your lifetime. Because tomorrow company can say, okay, we are not supporting this product anymore. And that's it. That's the end of the life cycle of the product. A lifetime deal is not your life. It's life of the product itself. But lifetime deals and that kind of stuff that is how you actually promote the product at early stages. And that is when you use advocates and early adopters to promote your product. Take this home as well. Take care of lunatics joining the community. And clear of users there everywhere. So it's like in church, we have a priest in our local church. He says like, in church, you're either completely crazy or normal. There is nothing in the middle. And that's the same with the community. We have even one person in our community who thinks that he is God of WordPress. And if you check his Twitter account, you will see his name and God of WordPress. So they're like really different kind of people coming into your community with again different backgrounds, but also some with delusions that there's something there, but more to take home. Reward the active people and listen to their feedback, learn and improve. Learn and improve is something that if you're not doing regularly, learn and improve, your company is prone to die. So you're either learning and improving, improving and you're learning from your customers because you cannot see the forest if you're standing in front of the one tree because if the tree is in front of you and it is when you're inside the product, inside the company, you're in front of the tree. But your customers are actually looking at the whole forest and they see better with you. More to take home, maybe only the bigger box to take all of this home. Stand your ground but don't be rude. Every time stand your ground and someone is accusing you for something, you know they're not right. Because when you say like, well, Boeing is a crappy airplane. I crashed it on the runway. Well, you don't know how to fly Boeing. Maybe you've flown Sassna or some small airplanes and you know how to drive that but you don't know how to fly Boeing. So you think the Boeing is crap just because you don't know how to operate it. That is when you're standing your ground. You have to say like, we understand your frustration but it's just because of the lack of knowledge not because our product sucks but only when you're right. But the rude is not equal to sincere and you need to remember this. Rude is not equal to sincere. Very often people are justifying their rudeness by saying, yeah, but I was just sincere. I was just honest. And if that hurts, it's not my problem. It is because being rude is a fake representation of the power of weak people. Weak people think when they're rude that they're actually in power but they're actually weak. And it's not something you ever do in your community. More to take home. Maybe you will need a van in this case. Watch out. There is a lot of toxicity in every community. One toxic person or one rotten apple will destroy all apples in the basket. One toxic people will poison dozens of people. More to take home. You will need a evaco truck. I used evaco because it's from Italy, of course. There are different people and I will take one minute from questions and answers because these three are extremely important things to remember. Assume misunderstanding. Don't play like Italians on the first ball, like on the volley. When the ball is dropping, you take the volley and hit the ball. Let it touch the ground. Stop on the ball, think about it and then react. Why? Because there are language barriers. You're Italians. You speak English in one way. Serbs are speaking English in another way. Americans in a third way. The same sentence pronounced by me, you or American can have a different meaning and that is why you need to have that. Understand those language barriers can be a problem. If you tell to American, can you click the green button? They will be like, cool, I will click the green button, cool bro, thanks. If you say the same thing to a British person, can you click the green button? They will understand that as imperative as you're forcing them to do something. So you need to use could you or something like that. It's even in the same language and imagine the difference with different backgrounds. And cultural differences. What is normal for me from patriarchal country, Serbia? And what's normal for you in Italy and what's normal for someone from Pakistan? Those are three completely different normal things. So you need to take into account our backgrounds and our cultural differences. And if you do all this wisely, your community should be fine as our group is community is fine. And we grew from 7,000 to 50,000 people only on Slack in the last six or seven years there. So we did a great job as well with that community. And Grazie Tutti, I'm WP Alex Aleksandr Salković. Thanks for being here today.