Mack Collier - Building Successful Online Communities #OMBC

Six steps to building a successful online community

• Creating value for members
• Giving members the ability to create and share content
• Rewards the efforts of your community evangelists
• Give your community multiple feedback channels ( not only back to you and but to otter channels)
• Sharing potential revenue with your community
• Be a part of the community
• Community is a group of people that share a sense of ownership
• Community do not form over the idea of being monetized but monetization can happen as a result of the community
• Example SavvyAunite.com  (http://savvyauntie.com/defaulthome.aspx) do you know what PANK is ? comment here and ask me or ask Mack Collier .
• http://laststraw.usewd40.com/ WD40 evangelist community "The Last Straw"
• A Thousand Words - Kodak Blog
• Creating content and sharing leads to collaboration
• When members work together to create content ownership is then transferred from the individual to the group ( example Flickr , #Blogchat on Twitter)
• @comcastcares is a great example of a customer service and community around Twitter
• Threadless.com is a incredible business model. Customers will tell them what they will buy , designers publish ideas online and customers vote on it. Value first leads to revenue.
• Liz StraussBZlog is a good example of community
• make sure contributions and content created is acknowledged
• Opensalon.com
• Huffingtonpost.com inviting people to contribute from among commenters
• Look for ways to put the spotlight on your community
• If members have more channels to create content they will find more ways to interact with each other
• You encourage individuals to get a greater sense of community
• members should feel respected and have multiple ways to communicate to you.
• Dell's ideastorm is a feedback channel and a way to suggest product Improvements. great way for Dell to give the customers a sense of empowerment and also get feedback and product ideas.( Congrats @lionelatdell)
• ChrisBrogan.com provides different channels for people to interact with him.
• Sharing with your community
• Special deals with sponsors
• Cash ( Threadless gives cash for winning design submissions)
• Improving the overall site)
• Built in mechanism to incent people to promote the website
• A community is not an island in the distance
• Feed off each others strength with community members
• Your community wants and needs become your wants and needs
• Remember your community is filled with real people with real lives
• Community members are not numbers

Mack Collier is a social media consultant, trainer and speaker. He has been actively immersed in social media since 2005, and in that time, has helped advise, teach and consult with businesses of all shapes and sizes on how they can better connect with their customers via these amazing tools and sites. While being passionate about the social media space, what truly excites Mack is the human connections that can result from the proper use of these social tools. His motto is “Don’t focus on the tools, focus on the connections that the tools help facilitate.” His goal is to help his clients create those connections with their customers, and nurture them into relationships that help grow their bottom line.

His social media ‘homebase’ is The Viral Garden, which in 2 years time Mack has grown into an influential marketing/social media blog with a monthly readership of over 100,000. He is also a frequent contributor to the website Marketing Profs, as well as their marketing blog DailyFix, and small business blog Search Engine Guide. His writings have been referenced in several mainstream publications and websites, including The Washington Post, MSNBC.com, Ad Age, CNET, and The Boston Globe.Mack is also a requested speaker and has presented at some of the top social media conferences and events, including South By Southwest Interactive, Marketing Profs Digital Marketing Mixer, and Small Business Marketing Unleashed. He is also passionate about teaching companies how to use social media sites and tools more effectively, and offers training and seminars privately to companies, in addition to his public speaking schedule.