Latest / Community Marketing with Fexingo: Discord, Slack Groups, and Brand Communities / Why Your Brand Community Needs a Shared Vocabulary
Transcript
- Lucas: So there's this Slack group of about 300 indie SaaS founders — it's a community I've been watching for about a year now — and they've developed this whole vocabulary that sounds like gibberish if you're not in the room. Terms like 'white-glove onboarding' that started as a joke about one founder who literally wore white gloves during a demo, and then it became their shorthand for any hyper-personalized setup process. Eventually, that term showed up in their product UI. Luna: Wait — a community inside joke became a product feature label? That's wild. But I've seen something similar in beauty communities where they say 'panning' to mean finishing a whole product. It's like a badge of honor. Lucas: Exactly. And that's the thing — shared vocabulary is one of the strongest signals that a community has real cohesion. It's not just about engagement metrics like messages per day. When people start coining their own terms, they're saying, 'We have a culture here.' And culture drives retention way harder than any gamification feature. Luna: So should community managers actively try to create shared vocabulary, or does it have to emerge organically? Lucas: I think it's a mix. You can't force a catchphrase — if you try to mandate a term, it'll feel like corporate-speak and people will reject it. But you can create conditions where language evolves naturally. For example, you can name recurring events or roles with a consistent, memorable label. Amazon's 'two-pizza team' is a textbook case — that phrase wasn't a decree from on high, it came from Bezos observing that teams should be small enough to be fed with two pizzas, and it stuck because it was useful and vivid. Luna: Right — it's functional. It solves a communication problem. But what about terms that are more exclusive? Like, doesn't that create a barrier for new members? Lucas: Huge risk, yeah. Vocabulary can be a gatekeeping tool if you're not careful. In that SaaS Slack group, they actually have a glossary pinned in the #new-members channel. It's not a big formal document — just a few lines — but it helps newcomers decode conversations without feeling stupid. And the act of writing it down also reveals which terms are truly shared versus just a few people's pet phrases. Luna: So you're saying the glossary itself is a diagnostic tool. If you can't list ten terms that the community uses, you might not have a real community yet. Lucas: Exactly. And if the list includes terms that only exist in a channel of twenty people, that's fine — but then you know where the cultural gravity is. For community managers, tracking emergent language is a more interesting leading indicator than daily active users. Because language use means identity adoption. Luna: Let's talk about the downside though. What about when a community's vocabulary becomes too insular and scares off potential members? I've been in gaming communities where the acronyms are so thick that new players just give up. Lucas: Yes — jargon can be a moat, but you want it to be a permeable moat. The difference is that healthy communities actively translate for newcomers. They have people who say 'oh, that's short for this' without being asked. You can foster that by celebrating the explainers — give them a role like 'community translator' or just publicly thank them. But you also have to watch for cliques that weaponize language to signal status. Luna: So how do you balance letting vocabulary emerge naturally while preventing exclusion? Lucas: I think the best approach is to deliberately introduce language for community rituals — things that everyone experiences. For example, in the SaaS group, they have a weekly thread called 'Fail Friday' where founders share mistakes. That name is now shorthand for vulnerability and learning. New people see it and immediately understand the norm. It's a low-stakes entry point to the shared vocabulary. Luna: That's smart — it's like giving newcomers a starter pack of a few key phrases. And then they can pick up the rest by lurking. But what if the community is too large for that? Like, can you have a shared vocabulary in a 50,000-person Discord server? Lucas: I think at that scale, you end up with sub-communities that have their own dialects. And that's okay — you don't need one monolithic language. The key is that each subgroup has a sense of shared identity. What you lose in global cohesion, you gain in intimacy. The question is whether the platform supports those smaller pockets. Luna: Quick honest thing — this kind of deep community work takes resources. A handful of listeners chip in monthly through buy me a coffee dot com slash fexingo, and that's literally what funds making as many of these episodes as we do. If these marketing conversations have sparked something you've actually used, that's the only reason we can keep going ad-free. Lucas: Yeah, it's a small group, but it makes a real difference. And we try to make every episode worth your time. Luna: So back to vocabulary — one thing I've noticed is that some communities have terms that are almost like inside jokes about the product itself. Like, there's a project management tool community that calls overly complex workflows 'Frankenstein boards'. That's a critique, but it's affectionate. Lucas: Right, and that kind of language is gold for product teams. When users coin a term for a pain point, that's a feature request wrapped in cultural context. The SaaS group I mentioned — their term 'white-glove onboarding' eventually became a product tier. The community didn't just use the language, they shaped the roadmap. Luna: So how do you systematically capture that? Do you have a community manager combing through channels looking for new terms? Lucas: You can, but it's better to have a feedback loop. Some communities have a #word-watch or #lingo channel where people submit terms they hear. Others use a simple bot that tracks unique phrases over time. The goal isn't to catalog everything — it's to notice when a term gains traction across multiple conversations. That's when you know it's real. Luna: What about the risk of over-formalizing it? If you put a term in a glossary, does it lose its magic? Lucas: Sometimes, yeah. The term 'viral' in marketing used to mean something specific, but now it's been co-opted and diluted. In a community context, you have to be careful about canonizing slang too early. Let it breathe. A good rule of thumb is that if a term has been used by at least ten different members across multiple channels for more than a month, it's probably safe to acknowledge publicly. Luna: That's a practical heuristic. So for community managers listening, what's one actionable takeaway here? Lucas: Start a simple term tracker — a spreadsheet or a shared doc — and encourage your most active members to add to it. Don't make it a chore, just a shared curiosity. Over a quarter, you'll see patterns that tell you more about your community than any survey. The words people invent are the truest signal of what they care about. Luna: And if you only have a small community of fifty people, does this still apply? Lucas: Even more so. In a small group, every new term is a big deal. You can trace exactly who said it first and how it spread. That's a story you can tell. And storytelling about your community's language reinforces the culture. It's self-reinforcing. Luna: I like that — treat the vocabulary as a living artifact. So next time someone in your community says something that makes you smile, pay attention. It might be the start of something. Lucas: Exactly. And if you build a glossary, give it a fun name. Don't call it 'Glossary'. Call it something that reflects your community's personality. That in itself becomes part of the vocabulary.