How Arc grows by creating ambassadors

Arc (2/3): How Arc has created product evangelists by making users feel like insiders

Making you feel like an insider

You may have noticed by now that I’m a little obsessed with Arc.

That might sound ridiculous considering Arc is a browser. But if you read last week’s deep dive you’ll understand why I’m so obsessed with Arc as a product:

It’s delightful to use.

But obsession doesn’t necessarily mean someone will share a product with their friends. You also need to feel a personal connection with the product.

This connection is vital for fans to become advocates and share your product with the world (or at least their nerdy tech friends, like you and me). And is the reason people post annoying (my girlfriend forced me to say this instead of helpful) posts on LinkedIn telling you why they love Arc.

Creating this personal connection with your users isn’t easy though.

It often requires you to be honest and vulnerable with your audience. Publicly. Everything corporates have previously shied away from.

Arc has built a deep connection with its users led by founder Josh Miller’s efforts in building in public.

The core principle underlying their strategy?

Making you feel like an Arc insider.

One of them.

How they do this revolves around 4 key pillars:

1. Creating content with a personal touch

2. Building not just for you, but with you

3. Release Notes, but make it a series

4. Giving Arc names and faces

Let’s get into it.

1. Creating content with a personal touch

The typical way companies do content marketing is exactly what you’d expect: very corporate.

Not Arc.

Personality and connection are the core of their content efforts. Closer to a creator than a company.

The Arc socials feel like a platform hosting the personalities running the company. This is why it has been so successful.

It’s hard to build a connection with a company.

Think about the companies you feel an affinity towards. They’re typically massive companies that have been around for years, embedding their brand into you. Think Apple.

Or they’re companies where you feel a connection to the founders or the team themselves first and you automatically attribute this to the brand.

There are exceptions for products that you fall in love with the product itself, like many did with Notion, but that is a lot harder to achieve.

What makes Arc so special is that it fits into that rare space of being both a product people fall in love with and a team people want to win.

A powerful combination.

This has all been a bit theoretical to now. Apologies. So let’s make it practical.

Embrace your inner-creator

Nobody cares about typical boring B2B content. We don’t care that you’re announcing a new update (unless you make that fun, but more on that later).

At the end of the day. Companies don’t buy from companies. It’s the people in those companies that buy from each other.

And people want content to feel human.

Why? Because we care about people. Not companies.

So while you didn’t set out to become a creator. Your goal is now the same as any creator when it comes to content: To tell better stories.

Just like Arc as a product gives you moments of joy. So does its content. I feel a part of something bigger than myself. I feel a part of a movement.

The bottom line?

Don’t be bland. Learn how to tell your story through content.

Be vulnerable and open

Watching Arc’s videos and listening to their new podcast, you can’t help but want them to win.

They give you an awesome bts look at the team’s thoughts. With this unique rawness. That gives you belief in the founders. Belief in the team. It doesn’t feel like everything needs to be perfect. And because of this it feels real.

It doesn't feel like corporate selling or like you're being marketed to. But rather that you're part of the journey along with them.

Josh shares these moments of doubt. Of wonder. Unsurety.

And it really brings you in and sparks your emotions. Your desire to see Arc win.

The other part of this is that they show things you wouldn't expect to see from a company. For example:

• Board meetings

• Unfiltered meetings with designers

• Q&As with the founder

And topics you don’t typically see:

• Whether the business will survive or not

• The direction of the business

• Product decisions

• Brand decisions

You get a true view of the company and its culture. Plus you get to see how it plays out in real-time. And people love that.

I love it.

It makes you feel like you're part of something that others aren't. It's exclusive, right? You feel like you're an insider.

You don’t need to be hyper-produced

If you look through Arc’s content you’ll notice very quickly that it isn’t always production grade. A lot of the content is intentionally amateurish.

Yes, they have some very well-produced content with high-quality editing and graphics. But a lot of their videos are not like this.

In some videos it’s just a Zoom call with members of the team. In others, it’s a vlog following Josh around. Typical YouTube content.

It feels like the team is talking directly to you.

And this is super powerful in giving you the feeling of being an insider.

A little trick they also do is show you things like Slack messages or chats between the team members. It makes that make you feel like “Oh, I'm part of this channel”.

Now Arc is a B2C company, so they can get away with being a bit more amateur. It doesn't necessarily work for all companies.

But what does work for all companies is humanizing your messaging and focusing on the art of being a creator rather than a corporation in your content.

2. Building not just for, but with you

I'm a big believer in speaking to your users. You need to stay in touch with what your users want.

Now this doesn't mean completely scrap your strategy and build exactly what users say. You need to find a balance between where you want to go, your mission, your vision and incorporating what your users are telling you they want to see.

Arc does this exceptionally. Making it obvious that they are bringing you along the journey with them.

Josh often speaks to users on Twitter:

• Which feature do you prefer?

• Which design do you prefer?

• How would you build something to achieve xyz?

Not just open-sourcing ideation. But also A/B testing live with his audience. Importantly, this helps keep you in control of your product direction. Where it’s the details your users have a more direct impact on, but they still feel a part of the development

So think about how you can not just build for, but build with your users.

It not only helps with prioritizing your product roadmap, but it's also great for building buy-in from users and loyalty going forward.

Arc also makes sure to recognize their users who were involved in the process. With public thank yous and recognition. A great way to reward this super fandom.

3. Release Notes, but make it a series

A lot of products give you updates on their new features. What almost no one does is create a habit around it.

Arc does weekly Release Notes. Something the community anticipates every week:

Now to do this, you have to be shipping fast. But you also need to be great at storytelling, or else no one will read the updates.

And if you haven't read it before, you're probably thinking, why on earth would I read a product update?

The ones you do get, you ignore. What makes this different?

It’s about story and personality. Arc makes every edition interesting, unique, and personal. And have done this consistently for years - leading to the creation of a habit for its users.

You get this feeling that it's the next episode in a series, rather than some boring technical spec.

And fans love it.

How does Arc tactically do this?

To get off to a good start, Arc make each release visually interesting. Not a boring email, or typical blog post.

But rather Arc uses one of their own features: Easels.

Which is similar to an interactive digital whiteboard.

Almost like a fun website announcing each of these updates. Bringing more joy into using Arc, with:

• Hand-drawn arrows and icons

• Bts of how and why features were built

• Who fixed the bugs and built the features you love

• Video demos

• Tweets from customers and employees

And a whole bunch more - take a look for yourself.

It’s just another example of Arc being intentional with great storytelling, with everything interwoven into the story of feature and product updates.

So, you don't just get the update, you get the why and how it happened.

This also inherently makes it personal. It's not just announcing a feature. It's giving you a quirky story behind it.

Another great thing that the release notes do is create a hub for Arc ecosystem. You don’t need to scroll through all their social medias for new updates, you can come here and deep-dive where it most tickles your fancy.

Hosting the story that is Arc.

4. Giving Arc names and faces

Very often the only people who get the praise for successful products are the founders. But the reality is teams build products that win.

And with Arc, you know that.

Arc intentionally tells you about more than just the founders. Thanking the team members who build the product.

When you listen to Josh talk you immediately get the feeling that he understands that his role isn't to build everything.

He knows that to build a great product, you need great people. And he wants to make sure that those great people get the recognition they deserve.

He is leading a ship, not building every part of it.

This is great for company culture, but it also gives their brand more personality. Because there are more names and faces to associate the brand with.

Giving you a team of people to connect with and not just a single player.

My picks to take your business to the moon 📽️

• Lessons from not finding PMF (link)

• Paul Graham’s advice on pitching (link)

• Why your persona should be highly precise (link)

• Traditional founder advice that doesn’t always work (link)

Tools of the week 🔨

• Dux-Soup: LinkedIn Automation for sales.

• Hyperbound: AI Sales Role-Play & Upskilling Platform.