The 10 Rules of Building Community

The blog was resurrected yesterday and already I'm dropping bombs!  Today I'm providing the ten rules of Building Community which I included in my Community Manager pitch to talkto!  Enough of the dramatics andon to the value added info:

Community Manager is the buzz term for Social Media Marketers.  A firm's community manager is responsible for engaging customers through social networks with the following goals:

1. Coddle prospective users
2. Gain user feedback
3. Mitigate criticism  
4. Spread the Message

These goals are all aligned with the principles of Inbound Marketing which is the gospel of Hubspot (note they've been voted the best place to work in Boston...cough...cough...look over here).  I don't need to preach the benefits of social media or Inbound Marketing (their blog and book cover it thoroughly) but can interject on the subject of Community Building.  Community isn't something you can build overnight.  It also isn't something you can buy or expect to produce immediate benefits.  Your community efforts can fail miserably if your only interest is to find sales.  Here are my ten rule rules for building community:

1. The user is always right
2. Go where they are
3. Always be fresh
4. Be Responsive 
5. Foster Relationships
6. Encourage your evangelists
7. Amplify your supporters 
8. Address your detractors
9. Get outside voices
10. Be Patient

By no means is this an exhaustive list of best practices for building community but it is a good start.  Looking forward to comments and will elaborate on each of these rules over a few upcoming posts.

So you're similar to...fill in the blank.

My favorite question to ask entrepreneurs is the: so your company is similar to Ning?  Or the Khan Academy? Or Skillshare?  It's the question entrepreneurs hate the most but must be ready to answer immediately.  The answer demonstrates how they've positioned themselves which is critical to success in every aspect of starting a company.  It will lead your marketing campaign, impact your financing options, and set the direction for your product development.

We ask the question because having context helps us better understand a product or company.  It also helps us categorize the company which improves recall.  It's a necessary evil and one I love seeing a person answer as they tend to cringe or jump with excitement.  It really differentiates those who are prepared and know their market from those who still have plenty of work to do.

The reason they hate the question is because being compared to your competition (whether you see them as competition or not) sucks.  You end up living in their shadow if you don't demonstrate a clear difference in value or functionality which can become a tremendous barrier for future activity with the person asking the question.  Know why you're different, be ready to demonstrate it, and out execute your competition.

Hopefully I'll actually start my "How To Get a Job" series on Thursday.  Like the best consultants,  I'll be offering advice without my own successful outcome.  Only difference is I'm not getting paid for it.

Joyus SWOT Analysis and Market Opportunity

As promised in Tuesdays post here is my expansion on Dan Primack's article about Joyus, specifically his Pros and Cons, by creating a SWOT analysis and going through a simple Market Opportunity exercise.  For those that don't want to read his article, Joyus is a QVC (TV's home shopping network) meets eCommerce meets social experience in home shopping.  The startup will produce ~4 minute infomercials for women-focused consumer products and distribute them on their website where viewers can purchase the item.  Joyus expects to charge a fee for producing the videos and will earn a share of the revenue from sales.  Most of my information for this exercise is from Dan's article as well as the NY Times and Media Beat which all appear to be working off the same press release.  Unfortunately, I haven't had the pleasure of using the platform myself after determining it wasn't worth registering for their Beta (Sorry Joyus not sure I'm in your demographic).  


The SWOT analysis is my interpretation of Dan's Pros and Cons as well as some additional comments I pulled from the article.  Embedding the full Doc was a mess (Not an HTML expert) so I decided to load an image while providing a link to the original Google Doc: