Technical people are brilliant people. Truly, I’d be a mess without these beautiful creatures. But too often a company asks them to build the infrastructure before bringing in a community manager.
How about finding the community manager first and letting her scope out out the community a little? Let her develop the online profiles of the audience and then hire the techies…if you need them.
If the people you’re trying to reach only use Facebook, then a dazzling blog with an integrated wiki/YouTube platform, wrapped snugly in the client’s branding, isn’t helpful. Worse, the client will want to use it, because it cost a lot.
The difference, is the community builder has a vested interested in building a thriving community. I like to point to previous communities I’ve built and say “see, I can do this”. A techie wants to point to the best-looking infrastructure possible and say “you see, I build that. It looks great!”.
Which will work best for your business?
