Belated Boston recap 1 of 2: My Online Community Development Workshop … how it went (presentation slides included)

Reference: Belated Boston recap 2 of 2

Beyond well; small but intimate; very interested attendees

Presenting @ the Business of Community Networking Conference in Boston, Massachusetts on March 24, 2009I thoroughly enjoyed leading my online community development workshop on March 24, 2009 in Boston, Massachusetts. The attendees were warm and very interested in learning more about online community development strategies.

Handouts and seats await workshop attendees

Of particular interest, what each attendee wanted to know most about was how to:

• keep an online community up and going once you’ve developed it
• attract new members to join up to belong to the community
• keep the community vital, active and relevant

Boy, if I had a dollar for every time someone asked these questions pertaining to online communities, I’d be laying up on a beach somewhere … bumming under the sun!

Good students

Seriously, though, there’s no easy answer or quick thing one can do to keep an online community positioned as one of value worth joining and participation. It’s a series of many things in parallel to each other including, but not limited to:

• monitoring community trends, traffic patterns
• assessing community feedback via posted comments or inbound communications to the community manager (via email, twitter, etc.)
• encouraging participation through activities that the community wants and/or can best benefit from
• ongoing communications and outreach to ensure community members are “ok” and content
• establishing regular communications to promote new membership and encourage existing member participation

I can come up with several more factors off the top of my head but what it really boils down to at the end of the day is essentially marketing. Internal marketing within the community as well as external marketing to attract new members.

Here’s what attendees had to say

Yours truly posing with some of the workshop’s wonderful attendees

All and all, a good time was had by all and I feel I learned as much from the workshop attendees as they learned from me. Some of the comments from the evaluations include:

“Very enthusiastic, willing to listen and lead conversation where participants needed to go. The case studies were fun and helpful.”

“Mayra was an excellent, engaging presenter. While my business challenges are…in developing social networking opportunities for my company, I feel inspired now to pursue it with our CEO. Thanks Mayra!”

Cheesing with conference planner Meghan Jacobi (a total sweetheart!)

My presentation is below for reference purposes

New LinkedIn group for Online Community Marketing

Hoping some of you will consider joining me on my new LinkedIn group meant for folks responsible for marketing any online community. Looking forward to sharing ideas and resources … (fyi: I launched the group before leaving for Boston but only now getting the word out about it … see you there ??)