On another podcast of mine, I recently had an interesting conversation with Sarah Robinson about building community. And I wanted to share it with you here.
[if you are reading this via email, click this link to listen!]
Sarah has just published Fierce Loyalty: Unlocking The DNA Of Wildly Successful Communities. The concept of "building a community" is one that many in our target market have heard about, but probably roll their eyes and spit on the notion that they need to worry about building a community of their own.
And this positioning would be wrong.
Building a community, one of the tenants of e-Rep, is critical for ANY organization. And it certainly doesn't just apply to B2C companies. In fact, I'd argue it is even MORE important for B2B.
You see, the problem is this: when people are told by some guru that they should build a community, their first inclination is that this community must number in the thousands and thousands for it to matter and be effective.
Wrong.
In fact, I'd argue that if you use distributors to move your product, and you want more distributors to add you to their line card, AND you want to win the battle for mind share...
Building a tight knit community of passionate people in your distributor corps is one of the most important strategic sales and marketing moves you have to make.
So don't just summarily dismiss this article, just because it talks about building a community. You are trying to build a community, you just don't know it yet. Or you don't call it that.
And tactical moves like e-Rep, podcasting, and content marketing are just pieces of the puzzle to help you do it.
Listen to the podcast with myself and Sarah, and you will come to understand that building a tight network of raving, passionate fans (customers, prospects, distributors, suppliers, partners) is, in fact, an important investment of your time.
Here's the podcast again:
[if you are reading this via email, click this link to listen!]