Community: Not your bad date, but your one true love!

"It'a match" is always a great feeling. It also means, you will want to chat, know each other, probably go for a couple of virtual dates and then you would meet your match.

After a couple of dates maybe, when you have this feeling: "This ain't my cuppa tea," then you would not want to take it forward or make any sort of commitment. We are fortunately in a generation or period where we have the right or choice to do that.

But, when it comes to community, a bad date does not mean break-up. You have to make it work. Please read to know why I am getting all emotional about 'One True Love'.

Community = Commitment

When I say the above statement, I actually mean it, and it's definitely not for the alliteration sake. When your business finds a match with community (as a concept and a platform to host), you are fascinated about the beautiful dates you are gonna have; You are also excited about the conversations and what not!

But, when there is going to be some silence and some low enthusiasm from community, you need to have a dialogue, probe and analyse what went wrong. Not curse, not fight but understand what keeps your community away from engagement or lack of participation and work towards it.

But, the best solution to avoid this mishap is to ask yourself some solid questions before you find your match. Specifically this time, you are not going for a date, but you are gonna settle for "One true love" and that is your community.

Before you decide...

These are the questions you should ask

1. What is your understanding of Community?
2. Why do you want community in your business?
3. What value do you seek from your community?
4. Who is this community for?
5. What is your community budget and What do you expect out of it?
6. How do you incorporate Community as a Business Strategy?
7. What is your priority: Building long lasting relationships with customers or profit?
8. Are you planning to hire a dedicated community manager? How are you aligning your resources for the community?
9. What do you expect from your CM?
10. Are you willing to wait at least a year or so to see the results?
11. What should be metric to keep track of Community progress & what to expect after a year?

KEEP IN MIND: "Focus on 'Return Of Expectation' rather than, 'Return Of Investment', as mentioned by Vineet Nandan Gupta, Growth Consultant, who helps scaling your business with Community .

NOTES
The above questions are crowdsourced. A couple of Community Professionals helped me with these questions that sided with the discussion on, "if businesses are community ready."

Thanks to Biswajeeta Rath, Himanshu Khubwani, Parul Gupta, Ankita Tripati, Vineet Nandan Gupta for helping me out.

Here is the link to my LinkedIn post: https://www.linkedin.com/posts/varalakshmi-dwaraknath-430533b8_thank-you-for-all-your-amazing-questions-activity-6810489861850697729-OLKr