Community creation. It's the du jour term for what everyone in marketing/PR is now scrambling to do. However, what if you have a community already? You've done the hard work of nurturing, building, engaging and growing a successful community. However, can a community be truly successful if all it does is exist and provide value for the consumers?
No. In order to have a successful community you need to be able to leverage it for campaigns, outreach, and a variety of other ROI driving initiatives. I think that in order for a Community Manager to truly become a C-level position, you need to understand how you can manage expectations, actions and initiatives effectively.
You basically need to solve this equation for x: community+x=profit. If you can fill in the x (and a wide amount of options already exist to do this) you will have accomplished a truly great thing. Not only did you create a community, but you took that community and did something with it.
A tactical, strategic approach is required and you need to be able to manage the expectations of your company with that of your community. A balance needs to be struck and transparency needs to be in full effect.
So what can you do? Monetization can be extremely devastating and may even destroy your hard work. However, the flip side is irrelevance and losing the faith of your company.
Solutions? I want your input, but here is what I came up with.
1. Focus Groups. Simple, clean and easy to put together. They are already talking about your product...make them give feedback on new ones. These can be used to test products, campaigns and a variety
2. Create Evangelists. Extending your marketing tentacles is the ideal way to spread word of mouth and overall buzz. If you can reach these individuals through your community and empower them? Fantastic. You just doubled the size of your marketing department.
3. Go for a mission oriented approach. Drive your community to achieve something for a campaign, cause or other related product push. Get them to do something even if that something is small.
Have some others? How can you leverage a community effectively? I'd love to hear your feedback.
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tagged as community blogging, community creation, community creation isn't enough, community monetization
Good post Stuart.
You could make the community more exclusive, by making the members have to pay a monthly fee to be members. 99% of the people who were part of your free community wouldn't go for it, but if the benefits of being members are appealing enough the 1% who do stick around could make up for it.
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