Using Online Communities to Network and Establish Business Collaborations

Much is written about collaboration as it is practice both within corporations and amongst corporations. Far less is written about collaboration as practiced by individually owned small businesses and home businesses. But the benefits are similar:

• the creativity needed to develop new products,
• the leveraging necessary to promote one's own business,
• the opportunity to increase one's own brand exposure,
• the opportyunity to expand one's contacts, prospects, and/or customer list,
• and, taken together, increased profits.

Increasingly, small and home business owners are recognizing the benefits, but many still stumble over the practicality of making it happen.

This article looks at one slice of making it happen: finding potential entrepreneurial partners with whom to collaborate. And, in particular, using online communities as one area in which to look.

But first, a video with the big picture.

There are an array of activities that can happen in an online community that can lead to the development of an offline collaboration with other entrepreneurs. Some online communities do a better job of facilitating these things than do other communities.

This "array of activities" can be organized into four categories, each of which deepens the degree of communication between the members and can lead to a collaborative project with other entrepreneurs. The video reports my own experience with one online community known as the Renegade Professional. I will use that experience to illustrate the four categories of of online communication.

Here is how the Renegade Community does a good job of this -

• There is an immediate connection with an assigned "Guide." Typically this is the person who referred the newcomer to the group. But if there was no referral, one of the Community leaders will be assigned.
• There is a back office link to the list of site "Trainers." The trainers are the individuals who have created one or more of the 250 step-by-step, click-by-click video tutorials in marketing subjects ranging from keywords to list-building to video production. The list gives some good background on each trainer and links to their tutorials. The list could be improved with some type of contact information for each trainer. Still, it's not difficult to do a search and find the person when you know the trainer for whom you are looking.
• There is a back office link to a list of leaders providing coaching. This is a great idea, and the cost ranges from "No Charge" to $100 an hour, depending on the demand for and experience of the leader. All of the coaches have been qualified by completion of an intensive 6 month course in coaching skills.
• There is a list of "SuperGuides" who are available to answer questions. I took excellent advantage of this, judiciously contacting several of the SuperGuides for help from time to time over the telephone. The impact was like that of a welcome wagon. I had very encouraging and motivating conversations with several of these people during my first six months in the community. It is safe to say that I would have accomplished very little in my business without the connections I had made with them.

There are two parts to "conversing" - namely: 1) becoming aware of other members of the community (their names, frequency of their participation, quality of their comments), and 2) engaging with some selected members. Here is how it occurs at the Renegade Community -

• A new member begins to notice other members who participate by commenting in a wide assortment of Community blogs. Some are long-time members and others are beginners. Some of the commenters ask questions; others post helpful replies, hearty support, or useful tidbits.
• The active participant will become aware of yet more Community members. In addition, people who were only acquaintances through blog posts become very real in context of projects, course work, or meet-ups. This happens by involvement in one or more of the subgroups like: The SuperGuide Program, The Coaching Cognition course, The Breakthrough group, and the Live Events.
• The really "smart" beginner will open conversations with the members with whom s/he has become acquainted. But someone must initiate the conversation. It can start with a Facebook follow, evolve into e-mail exchanges, and bloom into phone or Skype chats. The member that does not initiate conversations cannot expect to develop collaborations or their benefits. This activity (conversing) is similar to networking. This is the part that makes all the difference. This is where the networking books recommended in the video might be helpful.

The reality is that, for most members of online communities, engagement never takes place. In fact, many casual members are largely unaware that there are so many invisible "conversations" taking place!

It may be advantageous to communities, including the Renegade Professional, to get members to highlight their off-site conversations in a prominent on-site location. Such an action might help open the eyes of those who mistakenly think of the Renegade Professional as "just a training site" and who may not grasp the idea of a community.

In an online community, contributing can be as simple as posting a comment to a blog post or as major as creating an entire blog for the benefit of the community. It can be standing up to give a Community testimonial at a live conference, or it can be taking on some responsibilities for the conference planning and production.

As a person contributes to any community, they gain attention. It doesn't matter if the community is large (a city) or small (a church or VFW post); whether it is offline or online. Furthermore, if the contributor focuses on a type of contribution or a particular theme or idea, it can lead to branding. By branding I mean association of a person or business name with a niche product, target audience, specific message, level of quality, or type of service. If done well, it is positive branding.

The Renegade Community does a spectacular job of promoting "contributing."  The members contribute so many good things, one can lose sight of the fact that the place is owned by two well-known internet marketing gurus. And that is a good thing. It is not "all about" Ann Sieg or Mike Klingler, but about the elevation of the members. And the secret sauce that makes that happen is contributing.

Here is a sampling of things done by some Renegade Professional members that have helped to bring them attention, providing them with varying degrees of name visibility. While hundreds of members have done a few of the things, several have acted repeatedly on several of the bulleted points. These are naturally the ones who have become recognized as highly valued, by both the site owners and the site membership. 

• Posting comments on at least eight different Renegade-related blogs.
• Creating a blog for the benefit of the Renegade Professional community. Several of these were created and each has a cadre of regular blog posters.
• Creating video tutorials for the Attraction Marketing training area or the Personal Development area. Most of these, at least where applicable, are step-by-step, click-by-click, procedure-type tutorials. During the first months of the life of the Renegade Professional, owner Mike Klingler created most of the tutorials. Increasingly, as time advanced, many of the students stepped up to the plate as trainers. This is an example of Mike's excellent strategic development of the site: a careful balance of top-down oversite with highly encouraged individual initiative.
• Creating promotional articles, backlinks, and bookmarks to support the growth of the group.
• Creating unofficial social gathering points at Ning and Facebook to support official Renegade Professional courses or events.
• Volunteering to help with course or event registration and other behind-the-scenes tasks. 

The fact that the Renegade Community increasingly has so many and so varied opportunities for participation, while maintaining the philosophy and values of the owners, is what makes this site so unique. Compare -

• Many sites are indeed "training sites" with no way for members to even know who the other students are. There is no opportunity to contribute; the value is solely about the training.
• Many sites are led by "gurus" who do not want to give away their pedestal. Their name, face, and words predominate every corner of the site. There is no opportunity to contribute; the value is solely about the information known by the guru.
• On the other hand, many forums are free-for-all discussions without clear philosophy or values, and nothing more. There is plenty of opportunity to contribute in the sense of starting a forum topic or adding to it.  Some forums, like the Better Networker, do take it a step further and allow a limited amount of branding by writing articles and similar. But leadership is not fostered, as in the Renegade Professional.

Contributing, or individual actions for the benefit of the community, leads easily to collaborating, or joint actions with other members for the benefit of the community.

Examples of collaborative projects at the Renegade Professional include:

• A group of site members committed to create a blog around the theme of specific target audience. Each team member contributed several articles a month over the course of a year.
• A group of site members committed to bookmarking articles created on several Renegade related blogs.  A list of articles was created and a schedule and system for implementing the project was agreed to over several conference calls.

The beauty of these projects is that they appear to be all about supporting The Renegade Professional. Yet each of these individuals gained experience working with one another. Such experiences are internships, practice sessions if you will, enabling the participants to translate the the skills into their own personal business collaborations.

I have used the example of The Renegade Professional to help describe specific features and activities that promote networking amongst its members.

If you are evaluating various communities to see if they can help you with developing collaboration partnerships, then ask yourself how well each of these things are promoted: connecting, conversing, contributing, and collaborating.

The key consideration for prospective members should be - "Does the site foster community and does it provide training in collaboration?"

However, no matter how good a job that a site does in creating a member-centered environment, it won't do much good unless the individual member takes the initiative. The business owner who successfully uses online communities to attain collaboration goals will:

1. Take stock of what skills they bring to the table. (See video above.)
2. Take stock of what the member is looking for. (See video above.)
3. Study site forum posts, blog posts, and especially comments to see which members are active and seem to be a possible match with number 1 or 2 above.
4. Initiate conversations through comments, posts, and other kinds of online support.
5. Follow up on conversation starters via email and phone calls.
6. Contribute to the site in positive ways and receive positive attention.
7. Find ways to collaborate with members on site-related activities.

My experience with The Renegade Professional is that the site does a good job providing for experiences that can lead to collaborating relationships. The site is dynamic with changes expected ahead, yet, if anything, I expect it will continue to provide a good basis for small business owners to learn marketing skills while networking to set up collaborating relationships.

What about other groups?  Some brief mentions:

Facebook is not an online community. Wow! Did that get your attention? It is, however, a site made up of an endless number of online communities, not to mention potential communities that anyone can assemble. The potential for networking is staggering. It would be wise to seek out information and training on the use of Facebook as a networking platform. It is easy to make colossal business blunders on Facebook.

Third Tribe Marketing. (ThirdTribeMarketing.com) This is a membership site that began in February, 2010. There is some very limited training, but lots of opportunities to connect.

Special Focus Blogs that Foster Community. Darren Rowse at ProBlogger.net is an excellent example of this kind of site. Darren goes out of his way to foster community amongst his followers. For instance, in 2009 (and previously) he ran a training program from his blog called 31 Days to Build a Better Blog. In conjunction with that, he opened a forum for participants and encouraged sharing progress with each day's assignment. More specifically, a whole area of the forum was devoted to finding collaboration partners. Blog collaborating can include:

• Guest posting
• Mutual commenting and linking
• Critiquing
• Co-Blogging