Latest / Community Marketing with Fexingo: Discord, Slack Groups, and Brand Communities / How Notion Built a Community Without Community Managers
Transcript
- Lucas: So Notion is now valued around ten billion dollars. It has millions of users. And it pretty famously does not have a traditional community management team. Luna: Wait, no community managers at all? For a company that's basically built on user-generated templates and grassroots adoption? Lucas: That's the thing. They have a tiny team that calls itself Community Programs, but it's maybe four or five people. Compare that to HubSpot, which has dozens of community managers. Notion's philosophy is more like: build the tools, then get out of the way. Luna: But how do you ensure quality and prevent spam? I've seen Notion templates that are genuinely incredible — full project management systems, personal dashboards, even recipe planners. Someone must be curating that. Lucas: The users do it themselves. Notion created a template gallery where anyone can submit a template. But instead of a team reviewing each one, they rely on community voting and usage metrics. The most popular templates rise to the top. There are now over one million templates shared in the gallery. Luna: One million templates. That's insane. And each template is essentially a piece of marketing — it shows new users what's possible with the tool. Lucas: Exactly. The templates are the product and the marketing at the same time. According to internal data, about thirty percent of weekly active users engage with community-created content — templates, dashboards, or wiki pages. That's a huge proportion of your user base acting as both creators and consumers. Luna: So it's like a self-sustaining loop. Users create something cool, share it, other users adopt it, and then they create their own versions. But how do you kickstart that loop? Notion wasn't always this big. Lucas: They started super niche. Early on, they targeted developers and power users — people who were already creating templates for themselves. Notion's first community program was called the Notion Ambassadors. They recruited about a hundred superusers who got early access to features and a private Slack group. In return, those ambassadors created templates, wrote blog posts, and answered questions in the official subreddit. Luna: So the ambassadors were essentially unpaid community managers, but they had genuine enthusiasm. That's more authentic than hiring someone to pretend to be a power user. Lucas: Exactly. And Notion was very hands-off. They gave the ambassadors guidelines, but no strict rules. The ambassadors ran their own local meetups, created their own content. One ambassador in Japan built a whole Notion template for small businesses that became one of the most downloaded templates ever. Notion didn't ask him to do that. Luna: That's the dream scenario for any brand. But what about when things go wrong? Like if someone creates a misleading template or starts spamming the gallery. Without moderators, how do you handle that? Lucas: They do have some moderation. But it's reactive, not proactive. They use automated filters for obvious spam, and users can flag templates. The flagged ones go to the tiny community team. But the interesting thing is that the community itself self-polices pretty well. Because templates are public, users leave comments and ratings. A low-quality template gets buried. Luna: So the community acts as a quality filter. That's efficient. But does this hands-off approach work for every brand? I'm thinking about Lululemon or Sephora, which we covered earlier. They have very active community managers who host events and engage constantly. Lucas: Notion's model works because the product itself is a creation tool. If you use Notion, you're already a producer. For a brand like Sephora, the product is makeup — you can't create a new lipstick and share it with the community. So you need a different approach. But for any SaaS product where users can create value, the Notion template is compelling. Luna: Speaking of creating value, I heard that Notion's template gallery actually drives a significant number of new signups. Do you have a sense of the conversion rate? Lucas: Notion doesn't publish that number publicly, but analysts estimate that template searches account for maybe fifteen to twenty percent of new signups. Think about it: someone searches 'project management template Notion', lands on a free template, and then signs up to use it. That's bottom of funnel content that costs almost nothing to produce. Luna: And the template creator gets a little dopamine hit from seeing their template shared. It's a virtuous cycle. But here's my worry: as Notion scales, won't the template gallery become bloated? One million templates is a lot. Lucas: It's already a challenge. The search and discovery algorithms have to improve. Notion has started adding categories and featured sections, but it's still not perfect. Some power users complain that it's hard to find quality templates. But you know what? That's a good problem to have. It means the community is thriving. Luna: Fair point. Let's talk about the ambassador program today. How has it evolved from the initial hundred-person Slack group? Lucas: It's now a more structured program with tiers. There are about five thousand ambassadors globally. They have a dedicated forum, monthly calls with the product team, and some perks like early access and Notion swag. But it's still relatively low-touch. The ambassadors are expected to be self-sufficient. Luna: Interesting. And they don't get paid, right? Lucas: Not in cash. They get free Notion accounts, sometimes a subscription to the premium plan, and recognition in the community. But the real incentive is status. Being a Notion Ambassador is a credential that looks good on a LinkedIn profile. Some ambassadors have built side businesses selling Notion templates or consulting on Notion setups. Luna: So Notion essentially created an economy around its product. That's brilliant. But it also raises the question: what happens if the product changes dramatically and the community revolts? Lucas: That's the risk. When Notion redesigned its mobile app last year, there was a big backlash in the subreddit. But because the community had such deep investment in the product, the feedback was constructive. Notion actually walked back some changes based on that feedback. The community became a sort of advisory board. Luna: That's a powerful dynamic. Instead of fighting the community, they listened. And that probably increased loyalty. But I want to circle back to something you said earlier about the template economy. Do you think that's the biggest differentiator for Notion's community? Lucas: I think so. The template gallery is the engine. It's the reason users stay and invite others. According to a survey by a third-party research firm, over forty percent of Notion users say they discovered the tool through a friend sharing a template. That's viral growth without a traditional referral program. Luna: So the templates are the referral link. That's elegant. And it ties into something we've talked about on this show before — the idea of community as a product feature rather than a marketing channel. Lucas: Exactly. Notion doesn't have a separate community site. The community is integrated into the product. The template gallery, the comments, the sharing — it's all inside Notion. Compare that to a brand that has a separate forum where users go to discuss. Notion's approach lowers friction. Luna: If these marketing conversations have sparked something you've actually used at work or in your side project, it might be worth considering supporting the show. We keep it ad-free because of listeners who buy us a coffee. That's at buy me a coffee dot com slash fexingo. Lucas: Yeah, it's a small way to keep this conversation going without sponsors dictating the topics. And honestly, it's what lets us dig into case studies like this one without worrying about advertiser conflicts. Luna: Exactly. Anyway, back to Notion. One last thing I'm curious about: what's the biggest mistake you see other companies make when they try to replicate Notion's approach? Lucas: They try to force it. They launch a template gallery before users are actually creating templates. You need organic creation first. Notion spent years building a core of passionate users before they even launched the gallery. And they never tried to control the narrative. Most brands want to curate everything, but Notion let go. Luna: Letting go is hard for any organization. It requires trust in your users. But when it works, it's incredibly powerful. Lucas, thanks for walking through this. Lucas: My pleasure. Next time you open a Notion template, remember — it's not just a template. It's a piece of community strategy.