Hi Neil, nice to hear from you!
One thing that’s important to point out is that ProdPad and Mind the Product are different companies with different teams and goals. I’m the co-founder of both, as I was simply an energetic product person who both wanted tools and wanted to meet other people who had the same struggles I did.
At one point in time, I tried to split my time between both ventures: building ProdPad, and growing Mind the Product. As you might expect, it was way too big of a job, and so I largely stepped back from an operational role at MTP about 5 years ago.
ProdPad’s growth is almost entirely down to inbound leads that we generate from writing and sharing our insights, and working with a wide range of communities. We often sponsor Mind the Product as well as lots of other product, design, UX, and customer success communities and events that happen. By working with other groups this way, it meant that the ProdPad team wasn’t bogged down by the immense amount of work involved with running events, moderating communities, or doing otherwise distracting activities. Instead, we can focus on building a great product and a great experience to go with it. My advice is to not try to build a vendor-specific community, but instead look at where the community happens to already be gathering, and support those groups. It’ll save you a lot of time and aggravation, and give you the freedom to reach a lot more people by being a supporter of a wider range of groups.
That’s not to say to not engage the community that naturally forms around your product. Here at ProdPad, we opened up a Slack group just for ProdPad customers, which is a great place for them to share tips on how they use the product, and generally be closer to our team for two-way conversations. It’s super low-fuss, and adds value to everyone who joins. We wrote about our Slack group here: Our Slack Community Has Reduced Churn Rate