Tips on how to build a local Support Driven Community from scratch
Each local ecosystem is unique and has its own dynamic. You know better than everyone in your town, your country, and your people. You know how they prefer to interact and network with each other, what are cultural aspects affect their work and what are their core values. However, some aspects are common to all communities.
Professionals live in a really noisy and hectic environment. People only respond to events or content, if they can recognize the clear value. Keep that in mind while building your community and be sure that you will thrive!
Here are some tips:
- Set the goals and values when you start. You can write a blog post where you will describe who you are and what is the purpose of this community. This is a great way to make your statement.
- Invite people to join your community. LinkedIn is a great tool to start with. An idea would be to share the article you have already written in professional groups that are support related. You can also use meetup.com to broadcast your local event.
- Invite people that are already well-known in the community for their work, They will be your best advocates and they can influence people to join.
- Involve companies that care about customer support and customer success. They can be companies that already have corresponding departments or startups that need to build their support team.
- Ask people to join Support Driven Slack. Create a zlocal-[yourtown] channel and make it your online meeting point.
- Εngage all your members. They could create content, present a topic at the next Meetup and share resources in Slack. Make them feel comfortable, regardless if they are at their first steps or senior professionals.
- Make people feel safe. Make sure there is a code of conduct and that everybody is welcome in the community.
- Find some local sponsors to assist you with the first expenses. You have to be careful though, and try not to be too aggressive with the ads.
Would you like to know how we’ve built Athens Support Driven Community? Take a look at my SD Expo Europe talk I gave in April 2019 in Belgrad.
This article was first published at the Support Driven blog: https://supportdriven.com/2019/02/19/where-to-start-to-build-a-local-support-driven-community-from-scratch/