Value of Communities

What Is A Community?

Excellent question as there are a variety of communities, in person and online. We're going to touch on both here.

A "community" is basically a group or "tribe" of people with similar interests. This can refer to both your potential clients and your colleagues. 

This week, we'll focus on colleague communities. There may be potential clients in these communities! But they're less obviously your client market and typically not your purpose for joining.


Why Consider Communities
Many in my audience work solo or with the assistance of very few. 

• It gets lonely out there on your own!
• Colleagues are very good sounding boards to work through challenges and ideas.
• Communities can inspire you to achieve goals with an "in it together" attitude and possibly group challenges to incentivize you to make progress on those goals.
• Education opportunities may be available.
• Networking opportunities are everywhere, including with colleagues. 

Connect, Collaborate, and Serve
Per this blog post, this philosophy is perfectly suited to community membership.

• Connect: Colleagues in communities can connect you with business assistance and potential clients.
• Collaborate: Communities are a natural place to build collaboration opportunities to mutually build visibility.
• Serve: While the purpose of communities isn't necessarily to sell each other on services available, it's a natural group that develops a familiarity with you, your services, and your expertise which may be useful to members. 

What Communities Are We Talking About?
We'll share ideas related to each of my client types here. 

Nonprofits

• Nonprofit Tech for Good: The website is linked as a starting point. The right side bar has a number of ways to connect for resources including a weekly newsletter and courses. The social links are at the footer of web pages. More of this community lives in LinkedIn groups and a Facebook group. This organization has the most active groups on LinkedIn that I've seen and includes four different focal points. Search LinkedIn groups for "nonprofit organizations" and you should find them. Email me if you need a hand to find them. 
• Nonprofit Hive: This organization offers weekly free 1:1 networking opportunities with nonprofit organizations and those supporting nonprofits. The website shares additional resources as well. 
• PLAI (Purpose Led AI): This community focuses on AI training and use for nonprofits. If you're interested in learning more about bringing AI into your nonprofit, this community offers a number of free resources. 

Solopreneurs

• LifeStarr: This organization offers a number of free resources from blogs to events to podcasts, but the biggest advantage is joining their free community. 
• GeekPack: I've noted GeekPack in other blog posts. This is an excellent community of fellow solopreneurs, supportive of helping each other out and brainstorming. 
• Facebook and LinkedIn groups: I have discovered a few that focus on email marketing and female entrepreneurs. I highly suggest searching groups on these platforms for options that my interest you. Pay attention to the Follow or notification options to check your preference for how often you wish news from each group. Facebook remains king in group options available. Just be careful to see if the group shares your mindset and drama threshold. LinkedIn groups can be hit or miss for type of activity (can feel spammy or salesy rather than collaborative). It feels like LinkedIn admins forget about checking their groups for new interest to the point where requests to join are simply ignored.
• Alignable: I'll admit I only just discovered this community but it looks promising! There are in person groups around the US. They do note it's free but also have a monthly fee option. I've been assured by many that the free discussion board and events are perfectly fine as resources. 
• Meetup: This is a great place to enter search terms for your location or topic. I've connected with a couple of local small business groups here and my weekly library author group uses this service. It's an app that shares in person meetup activities within your interest area.

Authors

• Local author/book groups: Search your local region and your writing genre to see what may pop up. 
• Libraries: Libraries often host writing sessions or author visits to meet others in the local community.
• Co-working online: No need to stay local or in person if times don't suit you! There are some groups that only meet online as a way to get writing done with chatting time at the start and end of the sessions. 

Topical
There are a number of fabulous communities that may not neatly fit into my client profile niche but may be very useful depending on your business challenges. 

• LinkedIn: Lynnaire Johnston, John Espirian, and Scott Aaron have paid membership communities to help you with LinkedIn best practices.
  
• Email marketing: Liz Wilcox has an amazing paid membership community that's very affordable that's hugely supportive, includes co-working sessions, and a library of resources to optimize your email strategy.
  
• Business practice: All of us "sell," whether we have a business or not. I've shared this on a prior blog post after reading a Daniel Pink book. However, when you're talking about your business, there's a lot of mindset to work through. Outside experienced eyes are helpful for you to sell in a way you're comfortable. Renee Hribar and Tracy Beavers have communities at both free and paid levels with a ton of resources to help you move forward. 

Get to the Point
I'm in a variety of communities for a myriad of reasons, each serving as resources for me to Connect, Collaborate, and Serve. I enjoy a mix of in person and online networking communities. Many of these communities live on apps such as Circle, Mighty, Skool, or Slack which you have access to once registering or signing up in some way.

Some communities are free, others paid, and still others offer a mix of free and paid versions. You definitely get what you pay for, meaning if you're paying to be a member of a community, you're likely going to receive high value from the resources and the conversations inside. However, many offer a lot of connections and resources for free.

I have a paid membership with a couple of communities for resources beyond their free level, but my focus tends to be free options. I find them extremely useful, for my business and frankly my well being. Being part of a community brings me great joy.

• For introverts, it's totally fine to "lurk" and learn. There's zero pressure to post comments or initiate anything. You can jump in where and when it feels comfortable for you.
• For extroverts, you can choose to be as active a contributor as you like and have time for! Most community or group leaders (or "admins") are grateful for assistance to whip up excitement and conversation. 
• It's a great way to test out ideas for your business. Communities typically have a broad range of experienced people, from those starting out to others who have been on the path for years. You'll find yourself ahead in your journey compared to others and plenty of mentors to learn from.
• As a solopreneur, you miss the "water cooler" chats of being in an office. Community chat boards and online networking sessions fulfill that need to get out of your head and share experiences.

Your Turn!
Are you in communities within your niche? Any recommendations or suggestions of communities you adore?

​Love to hear them - Let's Chat, leave a comment, or message me on LinkedIn or Substack!

---