Recruit help to share great content in your community.
So far in this module we’ve talked about creating relevant content, and how to curate content you find from other sources.
This lesson is about leveraging teamwork to clone yourself.
Your community will be more successful if you include a variety of voices.
This makes the content more engaging, and it relieves you (and your team) of the burden of programming every single piece of content. (That would be a boring community, anyway.)
Here are some ways you can invite others to bring fresh ideas to your community:
- Invite a researcher into your community
If there’s an organization that might benefit your members, and would also be interested in talking with them, consider inviting them in for a chat or event. - Do an interview series
Recruit a volunteer or active member to interview people and share the video or audio in the community (or simple text interviews). - Invite a partner or sponsor to create specialized content
This is a good way to attract sponsors, just don’t go overboard with the partner content, you don’t want the community to become a giant ad network. Be sure that the content is something useful to your community members. - Conduct a community survey, and then share the results with commentary
In this case, it’s your members’ voices you’re amplifying. Ask a thought-provoking series of questions, and then share the insights with everyone. - Set up a forum for a subject matter expert to directly answer questions for a week
This type of specialized content is great for exclusivity too. Consider making the forum accessible to only registered members, or only members who have a certain number of activity points (if you’re using gamification). - Offer space in your community to an organization that is related to your mission
Think of two nonprofits who could mutually benefit the audience, or related hobbies (like Star Wars and LEGO builders).
Another benefit you could offer potential content partners is access to your segmented member list. (Be sure that you’ve been transparent with your community about any co-marketing emails you might send, and don’t go crazy with this idea or you’ll repel your members.)
Offer to feature or share content from the partner to a filtered subset of your members. That means it’s targeted for the partner, and relevant for your members. Win-win.
- What types of content will be most valuable to your members?
- How to curate content for your community.
- Recruit help to share great content in your community.
- Keep tabs on what works (and what doesn’t) for your members.