Communities are not some new human-shaped version of the web. They have been around as long as humanity has. The web just enables us to build communities in ways we humans never have before. Communities are probably the most powerful tool you have as an entrepreneur with a small business.
I’ve blogged about building an online community of your customers. I wrote a post about building a community of other businesses in your market space. I even wrote about how to use online communities to help your business do more with less. If you’re not convinced by reading my posts, here’s a great post by Mitch Joel about communities and business.
So, today I wanted to mention one more community concept: mini-communities within your current customer base. The ingredients for this type of community consist of a handful of customers with whom you have developed a good relationship, a large helping of mutual trust, and some frank discussions about needs, plans and the future of the business. Here are a few ideas on some things you can do with this group.
Start a customer advisory board.
Many start-ups use the concept of a customer advisory board to help focus their product development ideas. This is a small group of trusted customers who are given special access and insight into the future plans of your company. Try to meet three to our times a year; start with a face-to-face event and then you can make the rest of the meetings via conference call. Done right, this can get your customers excited about what you will be doing in the future. Make sure this is a two-way conversation though. You want to hear from your customer what they think of your plans and where they need to go too.
Create an invite-only beta group.
A great way to launch a new product or even start a new community is to tap into your current user base. Launch an invite-only beta version of a new product. Find users who are already connected to your company and invite them to participate in some new project. Ask for feedback. Make them part of the process of making the product better.
Find sub-groups of like-minded customers.
Build a series of sub-communties within your user base. Is it possible for you to sub-divide your customers into smaller logical groups? Maybe you have a product that spans industries, but you have a number of customers in the legal profession. You have some more who are CPAs. Another group in the medical field. Each of these sub-groups is likely to have special needs and interests. Get a small group of people in each group together and talk about what they need from your company and ways that your company can serve that group better.
Get started. If you’re a local business, invite five customers to coffee or breakfast. If you’re a regional business, host a small dinner. If you’re customer base spans a larger area, start with an online event. Become the core element of this group; be an Agent Zero who connects and builds communities. But make sure that you connect the members of the community to each other, not just to yourself.
So, what are you waiting for? How are you going to build your community? I’d love to know. I’d love to help — let me know what I can do.
photo credit, Grzegorz Łobiński
