Joe Budde Jr.

via dklimke on flickr

Whether your community is your co-workers, employees, or the group of people you interact with online, success is directly correlated to the strategy in place to achieve engagement.

At school teachers give you a syllabus.  They provide the “what to do” to learn what you need to.  In the real world, we must create our own syllabuses to drive results.  Here is the syllabus I follow to get results with my communities:

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1. Have a Plan – Put the Who, What, Where, When, Why and How on paper.  Make the Why answer drive the other answers.  The Why is the keystone for the entire plan.  Crafting a great How based on a community focused why is what makes marketing authentic.
2. Execute/Engage – Don’t just talk about it!  Go do it!
3. Listen – Put your ear to the router.  Put yourself in the feedback loop so you can actually hear the positive and negative conversations about your engagement. And don’t forget to ask for feedback as well!  People want you to improve!
4. Adjust – Take the feedback seriously.  Go back to your plan and make changes to ensure your plan aligns to your goals and the feedback you received.  Communicate this feedback loop to the community.  Create a conversation about the feedback and start the changes to the plan, accept your shortcomings publicly: truth and understanding is the foundation of healthy relationships.
5. Execute/Engage – When we adjust our actions, it is easy to feel like efforts to engage the community have failed.  Feelings of failure often lead to quitting.  DON’T DO IT! If we listen and care about our new relationships, we can care enough to improve.

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