Supporting our community members in new ways!

Let me run something past you…

Imagine you’ve built up a following on your Google+ Page of 10,000 people and you get great engagement when you post content.

Would you give anyone admin rights to this Google+ Page?

I mean, would you ‘just let people post their content’?

You’ll probably say ‘no’. Right?

Well, let’s take this thought experiment a step further.

Let’s say your page, with 10,000 people associated with it, was actually created in a way that enabled other people to simply be able to share what they wanted, and instead of being a page it was called ‘a public community’.

There is a culture that communities are there for people to use as distribution channels.
And for a long time I’ve been troubled by this.
Why? Is that what a community is?
When people simply share their content into a community, and don’t care about a conversation?

I am increasingly seeing a different view:

A community is there to support its members.

And the members support the community.

As such, we are putting the members of the Plus Your Business Academy members at the heart of our business.

We are seeking members who want to improve themselves and their business.

And we give them the keys to the castle - the place to distribute their content.

Right now people at Level 4 and Level 5 can submit content to be shared via the PYB Page, and can share their content (inc. events) into the community as well.
This will become open to ALL members soon (as long as they understand the basic G+ principles of serving good content to the audiences).

This is the privilege of being an Academy (paid) member or a supporter i.e. working on a project with us.

"What is the reach people will gain by being a part of it?"

In fact we have the following...

Plus Your Business:
Page - 11,500 followers
Community - 17,000+

Plus Your Life:
Community - 13,000
Page - 200,000+

“As a non-payer, what is ok to share into Plus Your Business then?”

Questions/Help, yes.
Content, no. This will now be removed.

Support, you know we are super friendly, and will do our best and give advice, and links to blogs wherever we can.
I am working on shaping up Plus Your Life in the same way too.

Why make a change now?

Running communities take time, effort and energy; and I feel after two years we need to reflect on why we are doing what we do.

I love the broader ‘community’ on Google+, but we had that before the advent of ‘communities’. Now they are established - and I am talking primarily about Plus Your Life and Plus Your Business - we have can support our members better by shifting our minds a little to the right, freshening our perspective.

If people want to connect with me in general, I post every morning on Google+, just come and say hi. Or email me at martin@plusyourbusiness.com

I know this is not how many people see communities, and that is AOK, I am talking about the ones I run myself. And I like to do experiments, and see what happens when we change the culture, the expectations, of how things ‘should’ be around here. Onwards!

Image credit: http://ift.tt/YVtNgY

The post Supporting our community members in new ways! appeared first on Plus Your Business.

from Plus Your Business http://ift.tt/1FIxzwt