Create Initial Content for Your Community – SMPG Community Building Checklist

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In our previous post, Create Your Community Policies, we discussed how to design your community policies, a part of our community building checklist.

In this post, we continue posting our exclusive checklist that you can use to execute your project for building your community – The Social Media Performance Group Community Building Checklist™. We discuss creating the initial content for your community.



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Create Initial Content

  • Set the stage by designing various forums around key issues of interest
  • Seed each forum with starter questions
  • Have a forum for newbies called “Introduce Yourself”
  • Have a forum called “What <product> Means to Me”
  • Test with a few volunteers, and get the discussions started
  • Invite community influencers
  • Be careful to not look artificial or staged
  • Gradually widen the discussion
  • Initial testers invite their friends

Launch

  • Get enough volunteers to staff the site for initial phase
  • Blitz all your online and offline contacts
  • Create a media package to distribute if you get press interest
  • Target a soft launch to work out bugs and test engagement. A soft launch is where you go live, but don’t do publicity, and only invite a small group to participate.
  • Launch early in the week, early in the morning
    • Tuesday or Thursday are high traffic days on the Web
  • Ensure the initial page tells your story, and includes pictures of your team / clients
  • Include a survey or quiz
  • Ensure that your site has Facebook “Like” and other social media badges so your members can spread the word
  • Give something away
  • Reward people for creating a complete profile
    • Perhaps just a white paper or other downloadable content
  • Create an offline launch party and invite your board, clients, supporters
  • Video the unveiling of the new site and post on YouTube
  • Create an online event within the first two weeks
  • Plan major new content within the first month

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