Founder and CEO of CMX, the hub for the community profession. Working to make the world more connected, collaborative and compassionate.
There are a whole lot of methods for reaching a new audience with content and for keeping your existing audience engaged. Blogging, email, social media, video...I've had the chance to play around with them all. If you you have any questions around content strategy, I'm here to help.
Building a community or community focused product? Before you start creating a community strategy, hiring a community manager and investing in purchasing or building community tools there are some very common mistakes and challenges that you can think through which will save you a lot of time and money down the road.
I've spent my entire career building companies and helping businesses build communities that drive increase user retention and improve their over customer experience. I'm the founder of CMX Summit, the conference and online hub for the world's leading community builders. I'm also the cofounder of Feast, an online community for learning how to cook and thecommunitymanager.com. I've built community for LeWeb, Zaarly, Udemy, SeatGeek and have advised hundreds of other startups and brands on community strategy.
With a 30 minute call I'll make sure you have a more clear idea of what questions you should be asking and how you can build your community the right way. Feel free to drop me a message first to get a better understanding of how I can help you out.
The YEC is a great option: http://yec.co/ I'm a member and have gotten a lot of really solid connections, intros and press out of it.
You'll want to get the right names in there first to make it more compelling to people. Offer free membership to influencers that your potential customers want access to or look up to. You may also want to offer a steep discount or free membership to existing members and just start charging future members. This way your existing members feel special, they'll keep the community active and future members will get more value for their money since there's already an active community going on. There are a lot of other little tricks and things you can do to get the community started on the right foot, but those are two simple things you can consider starting with.
David was very generous with his time and helpful with his advice. Thanks very much!
Very knowledgeable about creating successful communities from his great experiences with top notch online portals, and clearly keeps his experience uptodate. Super appreciate David's straight to the point attitude. Great call!
David is awesome! He totally changed my perspective on communities - "think of them as products". He also gave me actionable advice which is helpful for putting together & implementing our community building strategy.
If you have community-related questions and doubts, he's definitely your man!
David is enthusiastic, hard working, and embraces challenges and responsibilities. He has a knack for understanding the big picture and always tries to critique and improve his deliverables. He is a great colleague.
David always came to work at Zaarly with a great attitude. He was asked to work on mission critical projects to build a community around Zaarly that required out of the box thinking, creativity and strategy. It was a massive challenge but he was always up for it. He also was asked to manage our office in New York city--no easy task. He is an all around great guy and has tremendous upside.
David is thoughtful yet hustles. Great guy, respectful and always there to call out the elephant in the room to get everyone thinking about things most haven't even thought of.
A friend, great guy and all around great worker.
David was a great asset to the team moving forward after Scribnia's transition out of DreamIt Ventures and into the hands of new management. He managed multiple projects that directly impacted Scribnia's success. I added a good set of tools to my skill set for managing a community using social media and I thank David for that.
I started following David’s blog and Twitter stream several months ago. It is not news that David is a very smart and dedicated young professional. However, I didn’t realize the scope of everything he does until I needed help from him and his community of young professionals (#u30pro). During the chat, I realized how overwhelming and intense this weekly commitment is. Only someone with sharp mind, focus, great communication, organizational and information sorting skills can moderate such a fast-paced chat and David definitely fits that description. He and the rest of the #u30pro team have nurtured an amazing community and it was a pleasure to work with them.
David is one of those people that leaves a lasting impression on you - even if you only spend 5 minutes talking to him. He's innovative, savvy and professional, which is not something you see in someone just out of college. His motivation and dedication to both social media and Gen Y issues led me to ask him to co-mod the successful #u30pro chat on Twitter. #u30pro is aimed at both Gen Y and seasoned professionals as a way to bridge the generation gap and discuss various issues. David's quick and innovative mind sparks the discussions each week, and his blog is a true testament to the type of social media professional he is. If I had to sum up David, I would use the words: dedicated, determined and smart. He is an asset to anyone and I look forward to seeing what he does in the future.
David is a consummate social media pro. He has a comprehensive understanding of how companies can take advantage of social media, and he's a skilled at using the right tools to get results. During the Summer 2009 David successfully grew the Scribnia user base from the ground up. He's a fun guy and is a pleasure to work with. If I ever need help with social media in the future, David is the guy I'll turn to.
