Christina Garnett: Becoming a Chief Community Officer - EP 123
Christina Garnett is a writer and an online community builder.
When I first reached out to Christina, I was curious about her involvement in #marketingtwitter. The hashtag has created a thriving community and a movement on Twitter, and Christina has been a center point is growing that movement.
I wanted to know if it was something she started. I reached out wanting to learn more, and I was pleasantly surprised to learn about Christina's community building expertise in all areas of marketing.
What I loved most about talking to Christina is that she approaches community building from a tactical standpoint.
The word "community" has turned into a buzzword recently, especially with Covid. Everyone is trying to build a brand and "create an engaged community."
Isn't this just another marketing gimmick? Isn't it something that gurus can talk about to make it seem like they have more knowledge than they do?
I was skeptical, but Christina totally changed my viewpoint with her approach.
When I asked her specifically, how someone can go about building a community, she gave 3 amazing guidelines to follow.
1 - Awareness
Every business needs to get some momentum by building awareness. This means that an upstart business could do things like...
Reach out to micro influencers
Reach out to other small businesses for cross promotion
Take out local ads or set aside a small Facebook budget
The awareness stage will only get you so far, but without some initial awareness, you'll never find the traction you need.
2 - Human Touch
Now that people know who you are, how can you truly connect with them? What are some person to person actions you can take that will build a connection with other humans?
This could include...
Getting good reviews for your business
Developing an "army of fans"
Networking directly with your customers and going the extra mile
In this stage, you need to get people talking about you. You should be building a fan army of people who are doing the marketing for you.
3 - User Generated Content (UGC)
UGC is all about leverage. It's difficult to keep a human connection when you have 1000, or even 100000 customers. How can you possibly develop meaningful relationships with all of those people?
The trick is to get your army of fans to start developing these human connections for you. This is how your community can create scale.
To say again, I loved my conversation with Christina. I especially loved the part in the end when she talked about developing a new position called the "Chief Community Officer."
I have no doubt we will see her in that position soon.