So I’ve heard a lot of folks kind of starting down here and saying, “Community is really important. This is something we have to get off the ground for our business.” And I’m not quite sure that’s always, in some cases it is the right way to go, but always the right direction to go.
I’d much rather start up here and invest a little bit of time, test to learn and understand is community and building your own actually the right way for you to go for your brand, your business’ brand, whatever it is that you’re trying to achieve.
So getting started, you have to find a relevant community. I have a post on LinkedIn with a step-by-step process to do that, that we can link to in the notes. Become a member and engage and learn. So this is a super important part when you join a community. You are here to help. So do not sell. If that is one thing you take away from this, it is do not go into a community that is not yours with the intention of selling.
I would actually even say if you build your own community, do not make it with the intention of selling. You are here to help. You are here to get things out of it, of course. But you are mostly here, especially in the beginning, to put things into it. So engage, learn, help, answer questions, provide resources, offer opportunities, amplify others.
These are the things that you can do to be a helpful member of any community.
So let’s say you go through this process and you’re like, “This is working. I’m getting what I need out of it.” Then you can maybe decide you want to partner up with that community. You’re going to have a little bit more of a time investment, and you’re also going to have a monetary investment at that point.
So as you go down this, increasing your level of effort, increasing your time, increasing your actual monetary investment, but you also should be increasing your impact on what this community can do for your brand. You’re putting more in, so you should be getting more out.
So let’s say you do this. Make sure when you’re partnering, you also maintain your membership. You’re also continuing to be helpful. These all build on each other.
And then you decide this is great, this is working, and you kind of have two paths. You can expand within the current community that you’ve chosen. You can expand into other communities. Or you can say, “I’m ready to build my own.”
There’s a bunch of wonderful resources out there, including the founder’s of Women in Tech SEO book that dropped a few months ago, “Community Building for Marketers” that can help you do that.
So a couple of benefits that we have to community actually helping your SEO.
