Most marketers agree that community building is a great growth hack. However few have actually done it for themselves. Shivam Ahuja from SkillCircle.in is an exception. He did not talk about it he just went ahead and did it. SkillCircle trains individuals in digital marketing. How it’s different from DSIM or the likes was my first question. What I know is SkillCircle depends on effective use of social media marketing instead of huge AdWords budget and unpayably hefty course fees.
Shivam started the Facebook group Delhi Startups and if you are in any way connected to the startup ecosystem in Delhi chances are you really know about the group or that you are part of it already.
The growth hack
All startup in NCR region are part of the group and it’s become a sort of go-to place when looking for recommendations. An example
I knew from my past experience that the recommendations in the group are pretty good. Currently, I am looking for candidates for a well paid digital marketing internship at MakeBizCards.com (my latest venture) and so I went to this group and posted a link to the internship. And then I saw this in the pinned post in the group.
The beauty of the growth hack
SkillCircle.in trains freshers in digital marketing and then 25,000 startup entrepreneurs across the NCR region who are part of the group reach out to Shivam when they need a digital marketing intern/employee. I know this because I did. And if you have ever done any work in recruiting in India you’ll know it’s much harder to get quality employers and even a full-fledged, paid HR and Corporate Relations department won’t be able to do as good a job as the Facebook group that runs almost entirely on it’s own.
Even freshers looking to connect with entrepreneurs are part of the group. And guess who these freshers will go to when they decide that they need to upgrade their skills in digital marketing?
Sheer beauty! This is what I call Growth hacking that actually works.