Interview with Ken Ross, CEO, ExpertCEO, Inc.

Situation: We have built a good online community. Between our site and newsletter, we are in contact with tens of thousands of executives weekly. We constantly seek new ways to encourage active participation in our discussions. What have you done to effectively build regular participation in meaningful discussions?

Advice:

• Know your audience and focus on topics that engage people. For example, we do a semi-annual compensation survey and get a great response when we publish the results.
• We often learn more from mistakes than we do from success. Also, people love to talk about business blunders, particularly if the discussions include some well-intentioned humor.
• Reach out to individuals with interesting backgrounds, experience and situations. Encourage them to post, or feature them in a discussion.
• We send out weekly emails with titles and synopses of articles posted in the last week. This enables newsletter recipients to quickly scan topics and click on those of interest.
• A common challenge is filtering posts which are trivial, self-promoting and lack relevance to the focus of the site.
• The bottom line is that there is no magic bullet. Social networking sites are rapidly evolving so you must continually seek creative additions. This takes time, work and investment.
• Now it’s your turn. What has drawn you to a social networking site? What have you done to effectively build regular participation in meaningful discussions?

You can contact Ken Ross at [email protected]

Category: Sales & Marketing, Strategy, Technology

Key Words: Online Community, Social Network, Social Web Site, Participation, Discussions, Mistakes, Humor, Newsletter, Creative

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