Time 30:49

There are only a few ways humans show they value something… give their time or give their money.  Another, for argument’s sake, is to lend their name, but that isn’t a good example for this post so I’ll leave it as a side note.

This podcast with Bryan Person of Live World is about building communities, and the elements necessary to make them successful.  It’s focused on how companies should evaluate whether they have what it takes in both culture and potential to establish a community.  Live World is both a technology platform and provider of social media services.

In the last podcast with Steve Rubel, we talked about communities really being an ecosystem, not necessarily a destination.  In this segment, we are focused on communities as a destination.  One of my favorites is Campbell’s Kitchen   – an address on the web and a place to get and give information about food.  Hey, as a father of five and the maker of a few meals in my lifetime, soup is more than just opening a can, heat and eat.  Enchiladas, anyone?

Community Manager Essentials

1. 1) Write, talk, communicate and understand all formats (please don’t say duh, this may well be a new title in the profession of journalism.)
2. 2) Personality, and the sense to understand how the individual’s personality aligns with the brand he or she is representing online (that’s not easy either!)
3. 3) No egos allowed. This is about the community and its members, remember?(managers need to facilitate and fade into background. Here’s where I love talking about personal brands. It is an outright clash with a company’s objective of building community. Please do comment because I’d love to take this issue on. :>) )
4. 4) Domain expertise in the area of the company or organization you are facilitating  (you can’t talk the talk if you have a limp in your walk.)

Do communities sell more soup?  Well, successful communities at their core get people engaged in each other and their topics.  Without their interest, there is nothing.  Companies that build two-way channels to listen as well as share are able to capture ideas.  Acting on these ideas allows them to be more responsive, gain more credibility and the circle goes on. 

Can companies with successful communities draw a straight line to sales? Probably, but more importantly they can connect the other value currency, time spent with your company.  Time is a zero sum value currency, the time I’m able to capture from you is time not spent with something else. That’s the value successful companies treasure.

Bryan the Person

Bryan and I also get into his social baby, the Social Media Breakfast.  Talk about community managing and stepping back… Person started the Social Media Breakfast a couple of years ago.  He encouraged and gave wings to many others in cities across the country. 

We recorded this conversation in late May when Bryan was in Minnesota to speak at the Social Media Breakfast of Minneapolis/St. Paul – It is regularly a very well attended monthly event sometimes dealing with advanced concepts or at other times highlighting the basics.    Bryan’s vision to create the offline event for an online audience includes some of the elements of successful community building: sharing, personal connections, the dynamic created by some regular gathering that requires an investment of time and effort. Let’s face it, writing 140 characters is easy. Getting in your car, fighting traffic and meeting new people is hard. 

Check the list of cities that have a Social Media Breakfast. If there isn’t one in your community, maybe you can be the spark to draw people together, and then step back and watch it grow. That’s what the organizer of the Minnesota chapter of the SMB, Rick Mahn,(pictured) did and now the online SMB Minnesota community has reached 830 members and the social media breakfast held on Friday, June 26 had more than 150 attendees, that’s a lot of bacon!

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