VIP Members
Don't target influencers when you launch a community.
The people with the existing audience and reputation are the least likely to convert into regular active participants.
They have little to gain from participating in your community at your beginning.
You might succeed, if the community is super-exclusive. A community solely for the top influencers is hard for the top influencers to avoid. Yet the community would have to be super-small too.
Here's another approach. Offer a VIP membership application form. Have an area of the site where those who consider themselves VIPs can apply and join. Give them a unique profile, badge, and introduction to the community. Interview them for the community. Create a forum thread titled "Ask {VIP name}". Create a list of expectations. Collect a testimonial from them and put that on the site too.
You can even create a unique link for the influencers to invite their audience to join too.
Now you can approach the key influencers with something special. You have an existing community to participate in (and build a bigger reputation), a way to please their ego in every interaction they make on the site, and using them to promote the community to future prospective members.
On October 29th to 30th, the world's top 250 community professionals are going to SPRINT in San Francisco. Will you be one of them?
