What Happens When a Thriving Organic Community Collides with a Growing Business?
How VidCon, MeltingMan, and #LinkedInLocal navigate those relationships
On the “Get Together” podcast Bailey Richardson and I talked with Anna McAfee about the organic movement she sparked to connect the “people behind the profiles” on LinkedIn. At its height, #LinkedInLocal had more than 1,000 hosts leading events in 650+ cities across 92 countries.
Listen to the full episode here:
It brought me back to the early days at YouTube, when organic communities would spring up around the brand and we wondered how to handle it. I’m thinking of specifically the first time I heard about VidCon, YouTube’s creator conference. I remember that as a team, we initially kept it at arm’s length.
Part of it was wanting to see how it would turn out because they had big ambitions for the event. And the other part was this belief that the YouTube community is a self-made meritocracy that didn’t need us, as kingmakers, to thrive. In those early days, the brand felt like it had to take a backseat to what was happening on the screen. You could even see that in the design of YouTube — how generic it is and how it’s developed to let the creator do the talking and shine.
I feel like what happened with LinkedIn and #LinkedInLocal followed perhaps the same path, where initially the brand kept it at arm’s length and then gradually saw the value and wanted to get involved.
These kinds of real-world events and splinter communities, whether generated by the brand or by the community itself, are so integral to strengthening bonds and helping people feel more invested in the community that they are literally helping to build.
At this point, I think this kind of organic traction is something that any community manager would see as a sign of a community’s health — assuming that the entity upholds the same values.
So if you notice this happening in your community, I would say, embrace it! When I look at how Burning Man Project has navigated this, for example, their community grew out of a single event in the desert. They could have kept this exclusive but instead they encouraged people to take the principles and the cultural tentpoles and add some regional flair. There’s Fuego Austral in Argentina, Melting Man in North Dakota, and Kiwi Burn in New Zealand (to name a few).
It’s so cool — they each have different versions of “The Man” and the ritual burning of the effigy. By empowering the worldwide community, Burning Man Project helped turn a local event into a global community.
I would also say be really clear about what is and isn’t OK with regards to the usage of your brand. At Flipboard, we provided assets or guidance such that people could easily promote non-official events like a Twitter chat or conference talk. Or maybe it’s really important that the community not use your name or logo: that’s on you and your team to make super-duper clear with the community organizers.
Finally, send swag or figure out other ways to show these people some love! They are doing the good work for you. Think about how to say thank you, learn what motivates them, and give them more of that.
