Let's Launch Your Community
Day 2:Â Set Up Your Database
Â
Are you ready for the second day of learning how to launch a community using Social Workshops?
At this point, you should have defined your community’s mission and identified your potential community members using personas. If not, please review these instructions.
If you’ve got your mission and personas, you’re ready for the next step: Setting up your email database.
Â
The Key To Growing A Community:
An Email Database
Â
Building a community is all about creating connections and nurturing relationships. It's a crucial part of growing your brand or organization. One of the most important tools in your arsenal for community building is a robust email database. You will use this database to maintain regular contact with your community members, letting them know about upcoming events, encouraging them to participate in an online group, and guiding them towards your content. With an email database, you can engage and build trust with your community, ultimately leading to increased participation and revenue.
After creating personas to understand who you want in your community, the next step is to establish a dependable system for collecting data from community members. This involves using specific software tools that help you build online forms and pass data into your email database. A reliable data capture system helps you keep your community members engaged by sending them the most relevant information.
Selecting Your Data Management Tools
Creating a data management plan for your community can be a daunting task. To start, identify the tools that you will need to use. If you are starting from scratch, you have the freedom to select the tools that will work best for your community. However, if you are already using certain tools, the challenge becomes how to integrate them seamlessly into your data flow. Don't worry, though. With the right strategy, it can be done efficiently and effectively.
Seamless Tool Integration
Â
When selecting your tools, one crucial consideration stands out: integration. In order to maximize the power of your data, you need tools that can seamlessly pass information between one another. After all, what good is all that information if it's stuck in silos that don't talk to each other?
This is where API integration comes in. To unlock the full potential of your digital toolbox, make sure your tools have APIs that can easily share data.
If you come across a tool that doesn't integrate seamlessly, Zapier is always there to help you bridge the gap. To ensure effective data management, it is crucial to prioritize the integration process.
Â
Recommendation:
Zapier allows you to connect tools that do not have built-in integration so that you can pass data from one to the other. You may not need it, but it's handy if your tools don't integrate out of the box.
Explore Zapier
I will show you how to use a virtual event platform called Remo to launch your community using Social Workshops. I’ll discuss Remo in more detail below, but before we get to it, let’s take a look at the tools you’ll need…
1. A Website
Â
Chances are, you already have a website. If not, it is still possible to host virtual events using Remo’s online forms, but I don’t recommend it. Building a website should be your first priority
Recommendation:
There are a number of platforms that you can use to build a website, including inexpensive solutions for people who are not technically inclined, like Wix and Squarespace. However, I recommend using a self-hosted Wordpress website because it is free, popular, and flexible.
Go To Wordpress2. Form Building Software
Â
To collect data from community members during registration for Social Workshops, you will need to create forms on your website. To ensure that the forms are user-friendly, I highly recommend using a platform that is specifically designed for building forms.
Â
Recommendation: Â
If your website is built in Wordpress, Gravity Forms is a popular form-building plugin that will give you the flexibility you need.
If your website is built on another platform, Formstack will allow you to build forms that you can embed on your website.
3. Email Service Provider (ESP)
Â
When it comes to creating a new community, it's important to have a central location to store all the data you collect from your members. Building a new community, it's important to have a central location to store all the data you collect from your members.
One option for such a central location is an email service provider (or ESP). An ESP is a platform that enables businesses and organizations to send marketing emails, newsletters, and other types of communications to many people. But it can also be used to manage your community's data, as many ESPs offer features like email list segmentation, automation, and analytics. An ESP is a critical tool for community builders to track and maintain strong relationships with their members.
Recommendation:
If you don't already have an email database set up, Mailchimp and ConvertKit are two popular ESPs worth looking into.
4. Remo, the virtual event platform
Â
In order to successfully build a community, a virtual event platform is also crucial. This platform provides a virtual space where members can come together and interact with one another.Â
I am going to show you how to host Social Workshops on the Remo platform. Not only does it facilitate seamless communication among members, but I have discovered that even first-time users find it incredibly user-friendly.
Get RemoDo You Need a CRM?
Â
A CRM, or Customer Relationship Management system, is a software tool that helps businesses manage customer interactions more efficiently. Email service providers are helpful for sending mass emails and newsletters.
However, a CRM offers more because it helps manage customer data, tracks communication histories, and automates tasks. If your organization already has a CRM, you can include it in your data flow. If you don't have one, you don't need to get one.
Setting Up The Heart of Your Data Management System
Â
After identifying the necessary tools, you need to decide where your data will flow and be stored. This central hub is crucial for keeping everything organized and easily accessible. Unless you’re using a CRM, your data will live in your email service provider.
Â
Collecting Community Member Data for Email Segmentation
Â
Once you have all of your tools in place, the next step is to decide what data you will collect from your community members. Gathering details about your workshop attendees is crucial to ensure you're sending them the most relevant information.Â
Some essential information to collect includes their name, email address, and location. But, to cater to your specific members, you can ask for more information such as their job title, company, industry, and interests. Asking for too much information can discourage potential registrants; only ask for information that you will actually use.
Â
Using Personas to Set Up Your Email Database
Â
You created personas to represent your potential community members. Use them to identify the information you need for your email database. Creating personas helps you understand your audience better. This understanding will guide the content of your emails.
I helped the producers of a comedy festival build a community of stand-up comedians. They wanted to gather specific information so they could book comedians for the appropriate shows. They wanted to determine if each comic's material was appropriate for all audiences and when the comic began performing. This way, when the producers wanted to send an email soliciting comics for a corporate gig, they could easily search their database for comedians with 10 years of experience and is capable of performing a clean set.
Key Question:
When you created personas to represent your community members, you examined four factors:
What information related to each of these concepts would you like to collect?
Integrating a Form Builder With an Email Service Provider
Â
After deciding what information you need from your community members, create a form to collect it. While it can be tempting to stick with using your email service provider (ESP) to build forms, I recommend using a form builder designed specifically for this task. Gravity Forms and Formstack are two options that provide you with more flexibility and control over the design and functionality of your forms. Moreover, these platforms have useful features like customizable confirmation messages and integration with other tools.
This means that you will really need to build two forms: one in your form builder and one in your email service provider. The form created with the form builder will be embedded on your website for community members to fill out. The form in your email service provider is not for the public. It is used to set up your ESP, so it can collect information from community members.
You can establish a connection between these two forms by using field mapping. This process involves assigning the values collected from the form to matching fields in the email service provider's database. It ensures that the data collected is accurately passed from one tool to another. Field mapping is beneficial because it saves time and reduces the risk of errors by automatically transferring data between systems.Your form builder’s website will have instructions for passing data to your email database.
Create a Master Registration Form
Â
A master form is a form that you create once with the basic fields that should be on all forms or a certain type of form. You can copy and modify this form to fit the requirements of a Social Workshop without starting from scratch each time. It is easier to maintain consistency between your forms this way. It also saves you time.
Design an Email Onboarding Campaign for Your Community
Â
Congratulations! You've successfully set up your email database and form builder to start collecting data from your community. Now that all the pieces are in place, it's time to shift your attention towards crafting a captivating onboarding email campaign to be sent to participants following your Social Workshop. This step is crucial to building a strong and engaged community.
The campaign includes post-event emails that are sent to people who attend or register but do not attend your Social Workshop. Topics for the emails in this series might include:
- A link to the recording of the presentation from your workshop
- A link to register for the next Social Workshop
- A link to more content on your website related to the topic of your Social Workshop
- A link to a survey where people can provide feedback on your Social Workshop
- An invitation for people to follow your brand on social media
- An invitation to join your online group (if you have one), such as a Facebook or LinkedIn group
Your Homework Assignment:
- Set up your email database to collect the appropriate information from your workshop attendees.
- Create a master registration form and integrate it with your email service provider.
- Create a simple email follow-up campaign for your Social Workshops.
Up Next: Setting Up Your Social Workshop in Remo
Â
With your email database and post-event email campaign set up, you’re ready to turn your attention to your first Social Workshop.
Need More Help?
Need more help producing your Social Workshops? I teach an online course called “How to Launch a Community Using Social Workshops.” I am also available for one-on-one consulting to help you get your workshops up and off the ground.
Learn More