Winning by joining communities

I just spent a day in Miami with my friend Carlos Garcia who has asked me to help his Scrapblog company go live. I helped Carlos get ready for DEMOfall, where his six-minute presentation went quite well. Most people who saw their presentation of a multimedia scrapbook was impressed.

[Carlos and lead developer Omar-Photo by Shel]

If you are among those who have seen the product, take it from me that you ain't seen nothing yet.  These guys are going live in February, a few months later than planned, but the new online Scrapblog service has come a very long way in making it easy to include music and video along with your pictures, 3D clip art and ability to personalize it. Don't look at the website pictures. Just wait for the new stuff.  Trust me, and I'll save the product pitch until there's really something to show you.

What I think may be interesting is how you launch a new company in these days when the word marketing itself is held suspect? You want to get the word out, without spending your energy on shameless self promoting chest-beating.  You don't want to fall into the contrivance of starting a blog that spends day-after-day talking about how great the product, will be and is. You know communities are formed by people not companies, unless you think people will willingly join some sort of Information Age Factory town.

Carlos is in the process of hiring somebody whose job it will be to join communities, rather than start one; who's job it will be to join conversations, some of them having nothing to directly do with Scrapblog.  The result, we expect will be that this new community enthusiast will become known and trusted in the community, and when Scrapblog has authentic news, other community neighborhoods will be involved.

There is no job description for this person. You cannot go to an HR manual and find the requirements. In fact, the only person I know so far who has had a job anything at all like this is Tara Hunt who tried it for Riya, before she co-founded Citizen Agency. The good news is that Citizen Agency is working with Scrapblog as well and it will be nice to have the role model available to our Scrapblog community developer.

[Citizen Agency-Photo by Shel]

Tara and I were part of a team that broke new ground at Riya. With Scrapblog, we hope to take what we learned in one experience and extend the impact of online community relationships still further. In Scrapblog we have a technology that we hope and believe a great number of people who enjoy sharing video, sound and photos will embrace, if we make them aware if it. After that, it's up to the community to decide if Scrapblog is as cool as we believe it to be.  It is up to the community also, to let us know how to make it better.

Likewise Carlos needs to join the conversation. He is the spiritual fountainhead of the company and the online community needs to know him better.  Like most CEO's he's extremely busy, not to mention he and wife Margarita will be having their second child at about the same time as Scrapblog goes live and public. But he has agreed to resusitate his blog and to post regularly.  I'll save my link until that happens.

What about traditional media--despite my recent post, traditional media is still alive and a great many people still read newspapers and watch TV when they are not online. So we will use a traditional PR person to handle media relations.  But we are choosing someone who understands online and blogging and is already known and trusted in the growing universe while continuing to be effective in the shrinking one.

I don't want to be cagey about the two unnamed people in this post.  But deals that are almost done and not quite done can get screwed up if names are announced prematurely.

I just wanted to talk about this, because it is personally a very interesting opportunity. It has a good deal to do with the sort of consulting I enjoy most--helping to get something started and going well enough so that I am no longer needed. In Scrapblog, I see a framework being built--sort of like the house-building scene in the movie Witness.

Comments

[Timothy Post]

Carlos:

"Community Enthusiast?" I'm interested and available. We've spoken before and I can't wait to see the next iteration of Scrapblog. All my info is at Flyingseeds.com

Cheers, Tim

[Steve Bridger]

Shel...

"There is no job description for this person..."; well, there's a conversation going on among a dispersed community of bloggers where we've labelled this (sort of) role buzz director or social reporter...

[Carlos Garcia]

Apparently another of Shel’s many talents is headhunter… my inbox is flooded with emails from those interested in helping us build a community around Scrapblog. As Shel mentioned, there is already someone taking this illusive role of spreading the word and building a community. I’ll post about that when all is formalized. While on the subject of community building, here is my take on it. You have two ears and one mouth… if you use them in that proportion, you’ll see the community grow.

[Gerald Joseph]

Good luck to Carlos Garcia and Scrapblog.

Marketing and branding does seem to be dirty words. However, I guess most of us still have to do it in one form of another to popularize our companies.

You can hire someone to do the "job", but long-term traction is often generated when the Founders become evangelists and "actively" popularizes the brand's personality (and their own).

Rather than joining communities and participating in other conversations you should consider building a community one person at a time at your own url.

Again, good luck to Carlos and Shel. My neighbors have a scrapbooking club and I'm definitely going to pass the word.

[bree]

I'm also interested in that job! Sounds like a lot of fun. Glad to hear that sort of opportunity is popping up more often now.