Latest / Community Marketing with Fexingo: Discord, Slack Groups, and Brand Communities / How a Brand Community Co-Wrote Its Own Product Roadmap
Transcript
- Lucas: So there's a moment every community manager knows well. You've got a thousand messages in the suggestion channel, and your product team is asking for 'the top five.' How do you actually decide which community ideas make it onto the roadmap? Luna: That's the classic 'squeaky wheel' problem. The loudest members aren't always the ones who represent your broader user base. Lucas: Exactly. And that's what we're digging into today. A mid-sized outdoor gear company, let's call them TrailBlazer, recently used its four-thousand-member community to shape its entire quarterly roadmap — and they cut their feature-selection time in half while boosting member satisfaction scores. Luna: Alright, I need the mechanics. How do you get from a chaotic suggestion pile to a clean roadmap without losing your strategic focus? Lucas: First thing they did was stop treating every suggestion as equal. They set up a structured voting system where each member got a limited number of points to allocate across features. That forces people to prioritize what they actually care about rather than just upvoting everything. Luna: So you're saying they used something like a dot-voting approach, but digitally inside Discord. Lucas: Right. They used a simple bot that let members allocate ten points across three features. But here's the key: they weighted votes by member engagement. A person who'd been in the community for six months and contributed in discussions got a heavier vote than someone who signed up last week and posted once. Luna: That feels fair, but doesn't it risk the newbie voice being ignored? Sometimes newcomers spot things long-time members overlook. Lucas: They actually handled that by having two pools. One for active contributors, and a separate 'new member council' that got to rank features from their perspective. It gave fresh eyes a formal channel without blending their input into the weighted votes. Luna: Smart. That's the kind of nuance that prevents the community from becoming a closed club. Lucas: Now, the interesting part — they didn't just take the top five and hand them to product. They ran a follow-up thread for each top feature, asking three questions: When would you use this? What would make it useless? And what would make it a must-have? That added context, not just numbers. Luna: Because votes alone don't tell you the 'why' behind them. I've seen communities vote for features that turn out to be solving a problem nobody actually has. Lucas: That's the trap. But TrailBlazer used those threads to separate the 'nice to haves' from the 'must-haves.' One feature — a solar-powered charging port on their backpacks — got huge vote counts, but the follow-up threads revealed most members saw it as a gimmick they'd never use. Luna: So they didn't ship it. Lucas: They didn't. And then they did something even harder: they publicly explained why. They posted a 'roadmap decisions' thread, listing the top five ideas and, for each one, the reasons for including, deferring, or rejecting it. They quoted the community's own feedback to justify the call. Luna: That's transparency I don't see often. Most companies would just quietly drop it and hope no one notices. Lucas: And then they'd wonder why members feel unheard. TrailBlazer's approach actually increased trust. Their satisfaction surveys went up eight points quarter-over-quarter, even though they didn't ship the most-voted feature. Luna: So the transparency itself became a feature. That's the kind of thing that makes a community feel like a partnership rather than a focus group. Lucas: Speaking of partnerships — we should note, this show runs without ads because we have listeners like you who choose to support it. If you find these community-building conversations useful and you want to keep them ad-free, you can help at buy me a coffee dot com slash fexingo. Nothing fancy, just a way to keep the lights on. Luna: Yeah, it's a small gesture that makes a big difference for us. And we genuinely appreciate everyone who's done that. Lucas: Back to TrailBlazer. The other part of their system was closing the loop. After the roadmap was set, they came back to the community every two weeks with a 'ship it or not' update on each feature. That kept the momentum going and made members feel like their input mattered. Luna: So it wasn't just a one-off vote. It was an ongoing dialogue. Lucas: Exactly. They built a cadence. Every other Friday, they posted a short status: 'This feature is in design, this one's in testing, this one's on hold.' Members could comment, but the team only replied to threads with genuinely new information — not just 'when is it coming?' Luna: That's a smart way to manage expectations without creating a support burden. Lucas: One thing they learned the hard way, though, was the danger of over-relying on community input. Early on, they tried to let the community vote on every minor UI tweak, and it slowed down their design sprints significantly. They had to scale it back to major features only. Luna: I've seen that happen. A client of mine once let their community vote on button colors — a huge mistake. It created factionalism and endless debate over something that really didn't matter. Lucas: Right. So the lesson is to reserve community co-creation for consequential decisions. TrailBlazer found that their sweet spot was features that would take more than a week to build. Anything smaller went straight to the product team without a community vote. Luna: That's a practical heuristic. I'm going to steal that. Lucas: Now, one more thing that really made their process sing — they used what they called 'community AMAs' with the product manager. Once a month, the PM would come in and answer questions about the roadmap, including saying 'no' to some suggestions live. It was uncomfortable at first, but it taught members the constraints the team was working under. Luna: That's the 'show your work' approach. When people understand why something can't happen, they're less likely to push back. Lucas: It's also a great way to surface hidden issues. In one AMA, a member mentioned that they'd love a feature to track gear wear and tear. It hadn't even made the top hundred in the voting, but the PM realized it was a gap in their existing product and added it to the internal backlog. Luna: So sometimes the biggest value isn't the vote itself, it's the signal it produces in conversation. Lucas: Precisely. And that's the difference between treating your community as a suggestion box and treating them as advisory board. They're shaping the roadmap, but they're not the only voice in the room. Luna: I think the biggest fear most companies have is losing control. But TrailBlazer shows that with the right filters, community input can actually sharpen your strategy, not dilute it. Lucas: Yeah. They ended the quarter with a roadmap that shipped on time, and the community felt genuinely heard. Their engagement metrics — posts per active member, attendance at community events — all climbed. That's the compounding effect of co-creation done right. Luna: So for our listeners who want to try this, what's the first step tomorrow morning? Lucas: Start small. Pick three features, run a structured vote with weighted contributions, and commit to publishing the results and the reasoning. Don't try to overhaul your whole roadmap in a week. Build the muscle first. Luna: And if you're worried about the vocal minority, remember the weighting and the new-member council. That's the guardrail. Lucas: The most successful communities are the ones where members trust that their input matters. That trust is built one decision at a time. And when you have to say no, say it with respect and a reason. Luna: That's the kind of culture that makes a community not just engaged, but resilient. Lucas: So the question for next quarter: What will your community help you decide?