Tips Down

I met recently with a friend of mine who’s starting a online news site as a side project. I helped him a bit with go to market strategy and then asked if he had a plan to build community.

His answer: “Why do I need one?”

I thought about this because I always imagined the need was implicit. Here’s why you need a community.

Path of a customer:
1. Get the attention of Ideal Customer
1a. –engage–
2. Customer
3. Long time customer
4. Evangelist Customer

The growth towards evangelist customers is time consuming - but this group is extraordinarily valuable. These are the water-cooler conversationalists, the ones who invite their friends to a great new service: the leaders of your soon to be created community.
Most consumer orientated sites today have ‘users’ - you’re still making a sale to them whether you’re convincing them to buy something or take some action. In more general terms, customers could refer to users who make conversions.

For the past 9 months, Obama and his campaign has said that, shortly after graduating law school, Barack Obama gave up a high-paying job at a law firm to be a community organizer on the south side of Chicago. This was supposed to demonstrate his humility, his dedication to the community and the social good: he could have chosen the corporate track, but he choose to do good instead.

McCain’s VP nominee Sarah Palin expertly turned his strength into a weakness with one line: “I guess [being a Mayor is] like being a community organizer… except you have actual responsibilities. (paraphrased)”

Obama’s campaign is immediately put in a position to backpedal and defend a line they’ve used hundreds of times. Interesting: the most damaging attacks are often the most simple.

Hi. Thanks for coming to my blog. I’ll be writing here a bit about entrepreneurship, the internet, life as a young professional, and some other things that interest me.

You can always contact me by email here: nathanielrdean@gmail.com.

Thanks.