We recently completed a project for a client with the objective of creating a community of advisors. Our client wanted frequent, highly qualified input to gain an understanding of market requirements as they developed a series of product plans. This leading edge community would help us recommend to our client the best way to put in place the services, training, support, future program feature sets and market programs to best serve the market.
We conduct research of all types for our clients, and we sometimes develop communities (some call them panels, see my post on “What’s Your Market IQ?”, and Karen O’Brien’s post on social community success). When developing this community of advisors we learned that:
- online recruitment didn’t work,
- third-party “panel vendors” didn’t work,
- banner ads didn’t work.
What did work was a personal approach. We eventually had to get on the phone and talk with the potential community members. This is a more expensive, time-consuming approach, but an approach that works. Why?
- Potential community members can ask questions about the benefits, structure, and goals of the community; and realize that they could personally profit from their participation,
- Phone recruitment is much more personal and real (online solicitation has a much more “spam” feel),
- Potential community members feel much more comfortable divulging their personal contact information to someone on the telephone, as opposed to via an online form.
We learned to start with human contact to most effectively create the community. What ways have you seen community building work?
(Marek Ranis of Crimson Consulting Group, contributed to this post).
Glenn — Recently, the CEO of a TX-based consulting firm (serving the financial services industry) set out to create a community of financial services-minded people. The end result — www.banktastic.com — has been pretty successful, in my opinion, and there are two things they did that I think helped contribute to that success:
1) They initially invited a bunch of people they knew to join, and gave each invitee the ability to invite 2 other people (so they kept it self-limiting, but not too exclusive). Personally, I’ve still held on to one of my invites.
2) They created a “Q&A” core construct. Meaning, community members often pose questions to the community for feedback, input, and discussion. Sometimes they’re work-related questions, other times just questions geared to generating discussion.
The community has a good “feel” to it (i.e., like-minded members), and the content is interesting. Can’t beat that, eh?