Month: January 2018

Introduction

If you don’t have a clear and simple strategic plan you’re either relying on guesswork or using whichever tactics drive the most engagement.

Doing this work at the professional level is all about executing a strategic plan. It’s where you know your goals, you know your objectives, you know your strategy, and then you execute the tactics best designed to achieve that strategy.

In this post, I want to outline six broad strategic plans which have been successful for clients we’ve worked with in the past (or, in one case, a course student). Consider these ‘off the shelf’ strategies you can use for your community work.

A community’s ‘type’ is similar to a movie’s ‘genre’. It should provide you with a set of rules which should focus your community building efforts.

Community work varies greatly by the type of community you’re developing. Building a Q&A community for support is very different from building a community where your members proactively share their best ideas.

In this post, I want to highlight the three common types of community, how to build each type, and the constraints of each type.

If you completely understand what type of community you’re building, you can align everything you do to match.

You’ve launched your online community. You’ve got hundreds, maybe thousands, of active members.

But there is a problem; you’re not sure what you want them to do.

You’re not alone, this happens to the majority of companies we’ve worked with. Many have invested a lot of time and resources to get members to participate without ever answering the fundamental question; ‘what do we need our members to do?’