How To Develop A Community Strategy

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At this stage, you need to convert your tactics into very specific steps you and your team can perform.

This is also where you need to make compromises in exactly how good a tactic might be.

Let’s breakdown the steps involved in executing the ‘Experts Interviews’ tactic from earlier at a world class level.

Three Quick Definitions

  • Tactic = an action to fulfil your strategy. E.g. host a webinar with a guest expert.
  • Task = something that executes the tactic well. E.g. Find an amazing guest.
  • Step = a simple action needed to complete the tasks. E.g. Decide who qualifies as an expert.

How To Find A Great Expert

The first step is to find really great people.

  1. Decide who qualifies as an expert. This means scheduling calls with members and asking who they most admire. It means using a Google search to see who has the most influence within your sector. It means identifying who has spoken well at comparable events. It might mean identifying who has something new and interesting to say.
  2. Create a list of contacts for potential experts interviews. Build up a list of possible candidates to speak to ranked by order of priority. You will need the contact information of these. Collecting this contact information might involve networking, securing introductions, or otherwise searching around for some time.
  3. Schedule calls with experts and identify those with something interesting to say. Now you speak to each of the experts over a period of time and identify who would make good interview subjects. Who has something interesting to say? Who is entertaining? Who sounds enthusiastic? When are these experts available? You can schedule a large number of these over several months in one batch. A major part of this process is to establish relationships with the people you wish to speak to.

Great Advice

The next step is to make sure the message contains the best possible advice. This might include:

  1. Clarify the key points the experts will make. Undertake a pre-interview to identify the key points the expert will make.
  2. Clarify questions to ensure it’s most relevant to the audience. Ask your community to submit their questions in advance and make sure you are asking the most relevant questions to the challenges your audience faces.
  3. Checking timing. Check that you have enough time to ask these questions and prioritize questions by order of importance. Make sure your most important questions aren’t left out due to a lack of time. By the end of this, you should have a clear plan.

Great Medium

Next, we need to figure out what is the best medium for this interview. Is this a one-hour webinar or a professionally recorded session in a studio? What is likely to be most popular with your audience and what can you afford?

Let’s assume it’s the latter. This might include:

  1. Find and book a filming studio for the expert interview. You need to research possible venues, compare different studios, get quotes and references, check availability, and then pick a venue.
  2. Arrange travel for the expert. Now you need to arrange flights, pickup, hotels, and expenses with the expert.
  3. Book a photographer for imagery. If you want good photos from the interview to use in your promotion, you need to book a photographer (filming studio would probably take care of this).
  4. Hire a designer to help design the intro slides. Again, the film studio might cover this. However, if they don’t, you will need to hire a designer to help develop the intro slides and any images you want to incorporate into the interview.
  5. Book an editor with availability to edit the video. You might then need to find an editor who can edit the videos to a high standard and upload it for you (believe me, you don’t want to be doing this). This might mean researching options, asking for recommendations, creating a list, getting quotes, and booking time.
  6. Select a hosting platform. Now you need to decide where the video will be uploaded. Is this going to be on multiple platforms, or just one? This might be YouTube, Vimeo, Wistia, etc.

Big Audience

Finally, you need this video to reach as many of your members as possible. If it doesn’t, then everything else becomes moot. This might involve several elements.

  1. Write an email series to promote the expert. You might write an email series to solicit questions before the interview, and then promote the interview once it has been published.
  2. Arrange for other sites to cover the takeaways. You might strike partnership deals with other sites to provide segments of the interview for free in exchange for referrals to the content itself. You might also check to see if there is any newsworthy material that might extend beyond the initial interview.
  3. Creating a digest of key points. You might create a digest of key points and quotes which can be shared on social media platforms to promote the video once it is live. You can create a document with key quotes highlighted to be shared by others.
  4. Set up a reward scheme for referrals. You might set up some form of point reward scheme for people to share the video with their friends.
  5. Paid advertising. You might pay for advertising, either on social platforms or via Google on relevant keywords. This could also collect email signatures in exchange for keywords.

Jump Straight To Planning

Once you have done this for a single tactic, you can usually jump from your tactics to this planning stage.

The key thing is determining exactly what would make the tactic succeed at the best possible level and identify what needs to be achieved at each stage.

Summary

  1. Break down the distinct steps to make the tactic succeed. Be very granular at this level.
  2. Outline the number of days the steps will require and plot these on a GANTT chart.

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