Toucan Event Series x Marjorie Anderson

Have you heard?? At Toucan, we’ve recently launched our first ever speaker series. For our four-part event, we invited community experts from around the world to co-host an event with our CEO, Antonia. Yes, these are really awesome events and we really hope you join us for the upcoming ones!

Two weeks ago, we hosted the first one with Marjorie Anderson. She is a community expert with a background in community management for nonprofit organizations. On top of this, she’s the founder of Community by Association. Basically, when it comes to community, Marjorie knows what she’s talking about.

She and Antonia discussed her experiences starting a community from scratch and how leaders can foster meaningful connections and relationships between members. Starting with a fireside chat and followed by an audience Q & A, we learned a ton from her. If you missed it, we wanted to share three key takeaways from this event.

Do your market research

Before starting a community you need to stop and ask yourself, does anyone want this? I know it sounds harsh, but this advice could save hours of your time trying to build a community.

Once you decide what main topic and audience you want to build around, do some research. This can come in many different forms. One way to find out if there’s any interest is to reach out directly to people who would be your ideal members directly and find out if they would be interested. If they are, go even further. Find out what it is they would like to gain from the community.

Don’t hesitate to ask questions

Imagine this: you’ve got the ball rolling. Your community is set up and the first members have joined. Now what?

You have to ask yourself these key questions. What is the purpose of my community? What are members looking to gain from this community? How do I deliver what they want?

The best way to get the right answers to these questions is to go directly to the source. Reach out to your members and find out! To grow a community, you need to have a collective aim or purpose. The best way to reach that aim is to get in touch with the people right in front of you.

Pro tip: this is also a great way to get the conversation started and connect with new members.

Reward your top member

This question came from one of the event's attendees. They asked Marjorie, ‘How do I reward active community members?’.

The answer is simple, reward them in any way you can! Active, engaged, and helpful community members are hard to come by. So if you have one or a few, congrats! To show your appreciation send them a personal message, give them a public shoutout, or if you have the resources, send them some swag. They probably won’t expect it, and it may even encourage other community members to get involved.

What’s next?

Marjorie’s event was only the start. We’d love for you to join us on October 13th for our second event with Brian Oblinger. He’ll be discussing how to form an effective community strategy once you’ve already gotten the basics of your group nailed down. Brian’s worked with hundreds of companies like Acer, Autodesk, Comcast, eBay, The Home Depot, HP, Playstation, and more.

What are you waiting for? Sign up to learn from the best:

https://www.toucan.events/events/brian-oblinger