On Wednesday, 7th March I attended the latest London Content Strategy Meetup at The Mermaid Centre. The topic this month was Community Management, Creativity and Content Strategy. There were two presentations. The first talk by Rob Hinchcliffe, Community Strategist at TH_NK, was about Content Strategy and Community Management. Next up, Randall Snare, Content Strategy Lead at iQ Content, spoke about Content and Creativity.
Here are a few of my takeaways from Rob Hinchcliffe's presentation about Content Strategy and Community Management:
Genuine Communities I really liked Rob's description of a genuine community being more than the sum of its parts. It's a place, real or virtual, where members get more value out of it than they put in. Community members build aggregate value for themselves and other members.
Passion If you are creating or developing a community based on something that people care about it's vital that you share your plans and ideas with them. Work with them to gain insight and feedback and get them involved as much as possible, after all it's their passion and input that will make the project a success.
Motivation Community members need to be motivated to create good, valuable content. Rather than adding gamification or pointification from the outset it can be useful to wait and see how your members behave and then create a reward system based on your observations.
Ownership Giving people ownership of the content they create will in turn incentivise them to create valuable content and in turn you may also find that members are happy and willing to play an active role in maintaining the community.
To end the evening there was a fishbowl-style discussion panel and speed dating with speakers and attendees both of which provided great opportunities to spark interesting conversations!
Looking forward to the next event!