Building a Community Around Your Brand

This week, I'm answering my first ever 'video question' from Crystal Beasley, who is starting a YouTube series on Neuroscience and Virtual Reality (pretty cool, right?). She has a question that I think many people have:

How do you build a community around a project or a brand if the area is pretty new and fresh?

I've talked about the importance of tapping into online communities of interest to build your brand before, but Crystal asks the specific question about CREATING a community of interest. This is a tougher one because you have to create quite a beacon to bring the people to you.

As I talk about in the video, there are a few things you can do beyond creating content (which I tell Crystal is a great start), but the most important thing to note is that you can't make it about you.

I also re-invoke one of my favourite quotes of all time, as told to me by Tim O'Reilly:

If you see a parade, get in front of it.

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Truly Social is a web series that you can share with your boss or client when they're not really "getting" social. It's also the name of my company - where I work with clients on helping them develop their own web series.

I've been working on this social stuff for over 18 years and I've been a participant in the social web since 1992. My videos will come out every SUNDAY...with ~5 minute "lessons" on what are truly social practices (and what are NOT).