Phantom CTO

When considering web communities as a way to reach out to your market, there are 5 key ways people will come together to form and uphold an online community. For memory’s sake, here are the five P words that illustrate the thriving online community market and what it can mean for small businesses.

5 Ways People Come Together to Form a Community

1. Proximity: users share a physical location. Ex, Craigslist by city
2. Purpose: users share a common task. Ex, eBay as community builder for market reputation
3. Passion: users gather to share a common interest. Ex, Specialty forums on model airplanes
4. Practice: users share a common industry or craft. Ex, Professional user groups and trade groups
5. Providence: users discover connections with others. Ex, Facebook and the status updates

Now that we have listed the different kinds of communities, let’s take a look at ways you as a small business or you as a start up can benefit from getting involved with and make a positive impact on the members of the communities.

Proximity: Location driven communities

This is for users that give attention based on a specific location.  Location based communities, for instance Craigslist, utilize its specification to location. Small business owners can use this to their advantage by spread the word on any events, promotions or hiring notices within a physical community.

Purpose Driven Communities and Your Business

These are the communities where people contribute to the overall value. Communities like eBay have meaning because buyers and sellers keep each other honest by means of public feedback. Amazon has a loyal following of users who review books, movies and music that add to the overall level of trust of their online store.

What a small business can do to leverage those who are looking for purpose?

• Give your market, potential customers and current customers a way to leave feedback on your products and services.
• Let your market speak out on what they like or dislike about how your company treated them.
• Let your website or online community be a place where your market can help each other by sharing their personal experiences, offering strategies and exchanging information where they are on a current project. This level of interaction and trust between your market and your clients boosts your level of credibility because you openly let those who are filling a purpose to help others like them.
• Have a member’s only or client only forum or wiki so that your customers can help others like themselves.
• Have interactive features on your website, rating of posts, open commenting, a public forum where those who you want to serve can get to know each other.

Passionate Communities

This is where most small business need to have a very focused view of what the most active enthusiasts of your niche are doing. When passionate users are in a community they devote time to the very thing that your business is about.

If you are not building a community around the passion of your users be aware and participate in the places that they go for that attention and news.

Since every niche has a community to belong to, the question is are you watching and adding value in that very same place?

Practice Centered Communities

These are communities that are formed around a trade or a job in a shared space.

Etienne Wenger defined the community as this:

They develop a shared repertoire of resources: experiences, stories, tools, ways of addressing recurring problems—in short a shared practice. This takes time and sustained interaction.

For more on communities of practice visit Etienne Wenger.

How can a small business make use of the practice centered community?

Become involved and add value to your market in ways that help them become better at what they do. This is more so for professional practice focused businesses. This could be a nursing forum or it could be a LinkedIn group, that reaches out by asking questions, commenting on new work or offering to reuse your existing assets to a peer.

Providence and Your Business

Communities of providence is about seeking to make connections. These communities are where people are looking to belong to someplace, or something. An example of this is Facebook’s networks and groups that users can join.

How does the connection seeking community help business?

The value in the Facebook community comes from the connection and display of actions, thoughts and links within a trusted network. The most valuable feature to a business that Facebook offers is the Status Update page. On this page everyone that you have ‘friended’ gives off an activity alert. These alerts have a level of trust that advertising can’t offer. When someone in Facebook mentions your service or links to your website they are also sending their credibility to everyone else in their network, furthering their networks trust in your business.

Marketing Your Business with Web Communities

These five broad community types give an overview of what communities represent and what it can mean for your business and for every market, or niche. People are always drawn together around a common purpose or goal, online or in person. A business should have a presence within the communities where their market is and add value to its members.

How will your business enrich your market’s web community?

Here are some presentations and walk through I’ve recommended to clients and business owners who are looking for a foundation or starting point on using Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn as ways to increase their visibility and capture the attention of their market.

Twitter for Business:

A 60 minute presentation by Sarah Milstein from Oreilly

Technology gets so caught up in its own potential that it fails to realize that technology is never the answer to building a business.  It is the infrastructure that builds a business.

I’ve seen a lot of news on the role of technology on business growth or that technology is starting to fail as the centerpiece of a business. I came across a post at ChaosPlay called technology should not drive business and had to pause at this:

At some level, I always knew technology is just a tool for a solution but not a solution. But I never really put that into practice. I guess thats why so many of my previous ventures failed cause every time I learn about something new, i want to go out and build a business around it.

What a common problem small businesses face! Many are so focused on the how part of the equation they are not paying attention to the who is the market and what are they asking for.

This common problem is one of knowing what role you’re playing in your business– even when it’s just you. As a business owner, your responsibilities are different than when you are the technician. The technician is the person who does the actual hands on work. This is a common pitfall of new businesses that are built around the technology.

From the eMyth website, here are the descriptions of how the technician works in the present moment getting it done role and the entrepreneur works at the big picture level.

• The entrepreneur’s work is strategic in nature, and involves focusing on the future and developing a vision of where s/he can take their business. This vision is specific in terms of what the company will do to serve the wants and needs of the owner.
• The manager’s work is both strategic and tactical. The manager’s focus is on the present and achieving results through others. The manager is the pragmatist, planner, and organizer who turns the vision into action.
• The technician is directed by the manager, and follows the guiding structure of the company’s systems to get the work done. The technician’s focus is on the present and performing the hands-on work of the business.

While its a seemingly easier road to building a business around your strengths in the present moment, either as a developer in ChaosPlay’s case or as a local plumber, the path to successfully building a business does not end with the work performed. The big picture must be defined and all the roles beyond the technician must be accounted for.
Here are three questions to ask yourself or your start up team to avoid this scenario:

Can I easily explain the company’s big picture?

Am I a part of the market I want to serve or do I have a deep, close relationship with the market?

In balancing my businesses resources, do I spend all my time IN the business, never any left to work ON the business?

Your business idea doesn’t have to be great but getting momentum is critical.

If you wait to be great before you get out there, you’ll never move. Get out there when the edges are rough and keep on improving it while your out in your market. Let your market shape what you give them. Use technology to get the feedback and reiterate what your market demands from your products.

Tech breaks borders: location, location, location doesn’t mean the same thing anymore.

Email, blogs, video conferencing, wikis, and skype are some of the tools that are breaking down walls. What tech helps make happen is build interactions that foster trust and value. The key is to building relationships with your market and within your company. You don’t have to be in the middle of the hottest town to grow your business or start up. You have to provide value to your market, and they don’t care where you are while you do it.

Starting with little cash means focused better business discipline and good spending habits.

You have to choose options with better value. Limitations are your best friend to finding creative solutions to problems your business will face. Technology has made many improvements on how to get better value for your business dollars.

You do not have to be the next Google-sized business. Seriously.

Do you really need to be the next 450 billion dollar business? Heck no. Consider being the next level up from where you are today. That’s got a much higher chance of success and it’s completely within your reality. Let technology help your business move forward, not have you follow a business idea that has a gigantic chance of failure.

You don’t need a huge budget to get your business in front of your market.

Technology makes it cheap to do so and lets your message be the focus of the interaction. How much does it cost to be on YouTube versus to be on a 30 second TV spot? How much does it cost running an ad in print versus writing a blog post on your company website? How much does it cost hosting a live event versus a doing a video or teleconference?

In the early days of your new business, don’t focus on finding money. Focus on solving customers problems and getting feedback.

You might think you need lots of capital to start your new business. But what you really need is to get immersed in your customer’s world and identify their problems. Present solutions to those problems and ask them what they think of your results. At the start of your business, no amount of money will help more than being in sync with your market’s needs. It’s the ultimate litmus test: do you provide answers your market is looking for? Is it a business idea only on paper: in a business plan or through market research? Have you had real experiences with providing value to make a genuine decision on the likelihood of success?

Don’t write a business plan. Write a blog, post when you want.

Ah!! The MBA woman is saying screw the bplan. Yeah, that’s exactly what I’m saying. Why is that? First off, who’s reading this plan? Investors? Banks? Your Future Partners and Employees? Do you really think someone wants to wade through 50 pages of a future potential with 5 year projections of million dollar revenue. Not really.
On the other hand, what do you think people interested in your business vision want? Bite sized chunks of value that they can get. Think ‘Thousand Songs In Your Pocket’ as the way to describe the iPod. That phrase was enough to get people to buy it.

Do small sampling size value with a blog post or a short video that you can continually trickle out to your market and get immediate and visible feedback from the people you want to serve. Not the imagined people your research tells you about. No business starting out ever has all things figured out. Be real with your market and tell them that you’re working with everything you’ve got to make their lives better. That’s what a business should be writing for. A business plan should be a living and breathing plan that changes. Make your company blog into the channel that shows your market and your peers what your business stands for. That kind of writing is what creates paying customers who will finance your business, not borrowed money from someone who is looking to turn a profit on your work.