Get Slightly Famous

Tips for a Successful Niche Community (Pt. 4 of a 4-part series)

Define your niche and do your market research. As a Slightly Famous entrepreneur, you already know your marketplace. Go further and identify what your prospects want and need and provide that in the form of a niche community.

A clear and realistic set of community goals.
Absolutely paramount is knowing what your community "is," how you intend it to function, and what the overall goals are. Write yourself a candid "Mission Statement" and make careful note of the expectations you have of both the community as a whole and of individual participants.

Actively recruit new members.
Use a registration process, even for free events, which allows you to capture contact information to add to database. Use short feedback forms to solicit input about events, with “Please contact me about” with your calls to action at the bottom.

Provide more value than expected.
Your niche community will thrive if you deliver a dynamic, benefit-oriented experience for participants.
Be continuously creative and keep the community fun and interesting.

Take responsibility for the leadership and outcome.
Most communities fail due to lack of leadership. Create an organized system and plan events well ahead of time. Determine a realistic game plan for managing your community and stick to it.

Involve participants.
Niche communities prosper when participants “buy in” and feel a sense of connection and ownership over the community. Be responsive to participant issues and requests
Ask members to get involved, form committees, or volunteer to greet, host, set-up, break-down events activities as needed.

Don’t do it alone.
If your group is successful, you may find that your time in short supply. When practical, outsource administrative functions to free you to work on your business and serve your clients.

Form strategic alliances.
Your niche community is an ideal platform to pursue joint ventures and cross-promotions with related businesses. Look for ways to collaborate with other like-minded professionals and network with complementary organizations.

Actively promote your niche community.
Use a website, newsletter, schedule of future programs/events, e-mail distribution list, and conference calls to communicate with participants and prospects and keep them engaged. Alert relevant media about community events.

Building a Niche Community: Getting Started (Pt. 3 of a 4-part series)

The first consideration in building a niche community is how you will structure your community and bring people together. You have two choices: create a “live” community that meets in a physical location; or establish an online community that meets virtually through telephone and the Internet.

Live communities are straightforward. Taking David Steele’s cue, develop a statement of purpose for the group. Then, market the group to niche market prospects within reasonable physical proximity to one another, choose meeting times and a location, and bring them together around a structured agenda.

Whereas live communities are more limited by location, virtual communities offer the possibility of attracting members from all over the world.

Online or virtual communities gather people in an online "space" where they come, communicate, connect, and get to know each other better over time. The idea is to bring members of your niche together virtually where you combine on-line interaction (e-mail, web forums) with telephone conference calls and classes, as well as information and support services.

Online group interactions do not always "happen" spontaneously. They require care, nurturing and facilitation.

The core of facilitation and hosting is to serve the group and assist it in reaching its goals or purpose. Some describe this role as a gardener, a conductor, the distributed leadership of jazz improvisers, a teacher, or an innkeeper. It can be this and more.

If you take the plunge, be patient. Online communities don't happen overnight. Often they take time to coalesce and form themselves into something valuable and sustainable. It's crucial that patience is exercised, since it WILL take time for momentum and a critical mass to develop whereby the community becomes solid and established.

Next installment, Tips for a Successful Niche Community

Own Your Niche by Building a Niche Community (Pt. 1 of a 4-part series)

In 1997, David Steele was making the transition from a professional therapist to relationship coach. Part of his strategy was to become a center of influence and THE Relationship Coach for his community.

David decided to launch his own virtual community as a weekly “Friday Night Social” singles gathering. After a one-month pilot program and some market research, he designed a community for the singles in his area, unlike any other setting available, that would meet their need to meet other singles in a safe, fun setting.

The community also furthered David’s mission to provide relationship education and position his firm prominently within his target market.

Several years later, his Friday Night Social continues to be a vibrant singles community that supports the businesses of the four coaches who collaborated to make it happen.

“It is a lot of fun, and the time and effort needed to make it happen is minimal,” says David. Many attendees pick up his marketing packet--which features a picture of a happy couple basking in the sunlight.

“We feature a guest speaker each week, a local professional who speaks on topics like nutrition and stress management and who is usually a good referral source,” says Steele.

“We’ve become well-known in our community and have a loyal following of singles. On a typical Friday night, 25 to 40 people show up, and many people continue to attend with their partners when they are no longer single!”

From Therapist to Singles Guru of Silicon Valley

Slightly Famous entrepreneurs are learning that in today’s world, given that most of us have an unmet need for community, one of the greatest services you can offer your clients and prospects is simply to get them together.

The goodwill, contacts and status David has developed as a leader of a niche community has boosted his business. It has minimized the need to aggressively market his services by transforming into a guru and center of influence and trusted advisor to his target market.

Why does this work? There is a basic human need for community. We survive and thrive in relationships. In today’s world, given that most of us have an unmet need for community, one of the greatest services we can offer the clients and prospects in our niche is simply to get them together.

Next installment, Building a Niche Community: Targeting Your Niche with the Right Message

Cultivating Referrals as a Marketing Strategy

Why are referrals so powerful? As warm and fuzzy as it sounds, people like to do business with those they know, like and trust. Remember: we are all people first, and business people second.

When a prospect comes to you by referral, they are more predisposed to want to do business with you. A referral is, the opposite of a cold-call-- an endorsement from somebody who already knows and trusts you.

The easiest route to referrals is realizing this principle and cultivating referrals with those who know and trust you. This includes satisfied clients (both active and inactive), business associates who know you personally and anyone who trusts your firm, and the quality of your work, enough to recommend you to others.

“Focus on the incredible contribution or benefit your product or service made possible. Never focus just on the generic commodity value of what your product or service does,” says Jay Abraham, author of Getting Everything You Can Out of All You’ve Got (St. Martins Press, 2000).

“Instead, look at each and every client as a dear and valued friend. A lifetime friend, because that is precisely what your client is to you: dear and valued friends. After all, they’ve befriended you and your enterprise; they’ve trusted you with critical and intimate buying decisions that impacted and affected their very security, well-being, comfort, happiness, or prosperity. They trust you. They depend on you.”

E-Mail Bolsters Social Bonds

by Wendy Davis, Thursday, Jan 26, 2006 6:00 AM EST

FAR FROM ENCOURAGING ISOLATION, THE Internet actually facilitates stronger social ties, according to a new study released Wednesday by the Pew Internet & American Life Project.

The report disputes the notion that increased use of the Web will lead to a dystopian future in which people interact with their computers at the expense of spending time with each other. "There has been this enduring fear that the Internet would turn us into a nation of hermits--that technology would take us away from people-to-people contact," said John B. Horrigan, associate director at the Pew Internet Project. "This study persuasively finds the opposite."

The report's major conclusion is that the heaviest e-mail users are more likely to also meet with friends and acquaintances in person--or talk to them on the telephone--than are those who don't use e-mail as
often. Horrigan said that this finding held true for all age groups, not just the young adults who increasingly turn to specific social networking sites such as MySpace.

Specifically, the study found that those who e-mail between 80 and 100 percent of their "core ties"--defined as those with whom they are closest--

Rest here:

http://snipurl.com/socialb