One of the ways to become successful in the industry is to stay updated with the key trends in the market.  Some of the most valuable resources are public groups, online forums, and other discussion platforms that allow industry professionals to stay updated on the current trends in the industry.

The Young Entrepreneur Council (YEC) provided a list of some of the most popular communities that will provide the most valuable information to the industry. Some of them are:

1. Online Geniuses: It is a large Slack community of entrepreneurs and marketers who actively discuss the different areas of business activities. The community has Q&A sessions with some of the top leaders in the industry. They also carry out link exchanges or guest posting giving the young entrepreneurs the required business partnerships across multiple verticals.
2. Product Hunt: It is one of the topmost energetic and active community of business people that develop a new product on a daily basis. The community not only gives you exposure to like-minded people who will contribute to your success; they will also give you ideas to discover some of the most innovative and exciting products. This will let you stay on the cutting edge of the latest technology before they come to the mainstream.
3. Lean Luxe: This hosts both a Slack channel and a newsletter and is an incredible resource for any entrepreneur. The community helps people to develop a consumer-facing business.
4. Indie Hackers: It is one of the best online communities for anyone who is planning to start a start-up. The forum gives a lot of valuable advice and resources to the people who really want to make a strong position in the market and the community. This place is perfect for networking, learning, and sharing information.
5. Akimbo: The community is run by Seth Godin, who has a great website and shares a series of seminars and groups. They have a lot of activity around them.
6. Quora: The platform has a number of entrepreneur based topic threads that business professionals can follow. This is one of the best places to take start-up advice and gather industry insights. Entrepreneurship and startups are two of the most popular topics. Each one with more than four million followers. One of the most powerful features of the platform is, you can have a look at the most viewed writers associated with each topic. This allows you to follow the thought leaders across the individual topics as well as the subsections.
7. Problogger Community: This is a Facebook community that is one of the most powerful places for entrepreneurs. The group is developed to offer resources and business advise to some of the newest business owners. Members of the community can give each other advice and share a personal experience that can be valuable to the people in the community.
8. Facebook Ad Buyers: A set of Facebook Ad Buyers were highly helpful when we were planning our social media marketing campaign. The group includes both industry experts as well as first-time business owners. The group is a good place to get information about Facebook Ads that can be helpful to grow your channel and get more traffic to your business website.
9. SaaS Growth Hack Facebook Group: The group best suits the Software As a Service (SaaS) entrepreneurs to seek help and guidance. The group features 23 000 members all over the globe and features discussions that are rich in industry insights and healthy advise. People are also ready to offer to help you if you need to advise on a certain aspect of your SaaS business.
10. Pinterest: This is one of the best places that young and aspiring entrepreneurs must follow to get the best tips on business management, marketing, and growth hacking. This is one of the untouched areas for many of the entrepreneurs who want to make their busi8ness a success.
11. Digital Marketing on LinkedIn: LinkedIn is one of the most popular places for entrepreneurs, which has a group known as Digital Marketing. The group has over one million followers and contributors sharing a lot of valuable information related to marketing, testing, design, and so much more. This is the best place to seek information if your startup is marketing based.
12. Entrepreneur Subreddit: This is one of the best places to get advice, develop a network, and seek collaboration. The group has over 900k members who are the top industry experts. Reddit is already a well-known community among industry professionals. This is also one of the best places to soundboard your new ideas or sees what others have to share from their experiences.

All these places have a set of different values for the entrepreneurs. You can join one or multiple among them to get all the insights that you need for your business. Getting connected with the community and seeking advice from some of the industry experts is going to benefit you in your business.

Source – Small Biz Trends