I am providing value to a specific sector (freelancers) looking to build a community, what's the best initial move to ensure it isn't a ghost town?

Hi, I'm Rodger Stephens, and I'm a business performance expert, growing businesses for the last 25+ years. Here's a few suggestions to help your business to grow...the method is simple, but unchangeable... 1) Find out what $$ you can allocate to bringing in new members. Having $100k in revenues is great, but your income statement/cash flow statement probably tells you the cash available for marketing is actually less. 2) Using the $$ you've allocated, find out what marketing methods and means are available to you. This is a situation where the dollars drive what marketing options you have available, so be sure to determine your budget first. 3) Methods of marketing may be: A) Small $$ -A client referral program - flush out the details for how to ask your clients to bring in people they know. Offer them something to make it attractive for them. It doesn't need to be expensive. Perhaps a seat in a class/meeting or two. Other offerings of thanks may be attractive also. - Online advertising or pay-per-click (PPC) can have big results. Budgets are set by you, so you can control your costs. Google Adwords/PPC is king here. - Hold an open house and promote your business to new/interested people. When they arrive, be sure to collect contact information so you can market to them later. Attract attendees by using the client referral program, online ads or pay-per-click. B) Medium $$ - Join your local chamber of commerce. They often allow members free or reduced price advertising through their website and events. A few hundred dollars per year is usual for costs here. Other of their offerings will allow you to spend more $$ to put your company in the spotlight at events or as an annual sponsor. This can be anywhere from a few hundred dollars to many thousands. C) Big $$ - TV advertising could be successful for you because all people are potential meditation practicers. This can be an expensive proposition, but the exposure could be very large, especially if you are broadcasting in a major metropolitan area. Costs involve producing a commercial and paying for advertising airtime. There are companies that specialize in packaging commercials and acquiring airtime for you. Look for small to medium sized marketing firms that include these kinds of services. Your commercial could also be offered through online video means for no airtime costs. For online video, Google/Youtube is king. Other means and methods are available to you, however, I'm leaving many off the list as they may be ruled out for your particular use. Be sure to set goals by the number of members you need. When you hit your goal for new members, think about resetting your goal to get more if that's still an option given your capacity. Best of Luck to You, Rodger Stephens, CPA, CGMA

Not necessarily. What's key is to build relationships with the organizations that work most closely with the munis and local leaders. Often times the money comes from them (i.e NGOs, local companies, social ent orgs). In some cases software can be piloted at low or no cost with muni leaders and from there, government sees value and invests accordingly. Where will you be working? Of course every region and location is different but building relationships with organizations that work globally and know how to tap into the local groups is a great first step. Happy to chat further if I can be of help.

The best way to build an engaging audience is to lead with value. You want to provide others with more value by sharing relevant content and information. A great way to do this is through social media platforms such as Facebook. Going live is a great way to connect with your audience and give valuable content. I suggest going Live at least 3 times a week. Another tip is to make sure that you are providing good, valuable content when you do so. Don't just go live, just to go live. You want to keep them engaged and interested on your topic!

I imagine a lot of it happens in private FB groups already. I'm a member of Dynamite Circle, which is a private community of location independent entrepreneurs http://www.tropicalmba.com/innercircle/

This sounds like an exciting project! There are certainly a lot of points to consider when putting together anything involving memberships, especially something like you've described. However, I won't go into every possible course as I believe the most likely route that will bring you success will be leveraging WordPress' multisite capabilities. Essentially, I'd be recommending you setup a multisite where schools can sign up for their own subsite on your network. It is possible to pre-configure your new sites so that upon signup, each school gets a site with the theme, plugins, content, settings, etc. which you wish them to have. You can assign each new user with specific roles on their own site and your main site so that they will be able to participate in things like site specific or network wide forums. To facilitate this, I'd envision using several plugins including: http://premium.wpmudev.org/project/pro-sites/ http://premium.wpmudev.org/project/new-blog-template/ https://wordpress.org/plugins/buddypress/ https://wordpress.org/plugins/bbpress/ https://wordpress.org/plugins/join-my-multisite/ There are a number of reasons why I'd recommend this approach but I'll just mention a few important ones: - This approach would allow you to bill the organization rather than the individual user (if desired). - Allows for the simplest management of groups of users for active/inactive accounts. - Organizations can have their own environment, complete with private groups, forums, content, media, etc. Those are just a few reasons why I think this approach would be effective and appropriate. That said, I would say with certainty that a site like you've described could be built on single install of WP, simply taking full advantage of plugins like BuddyPress, bbPress, the many complimentary plugins for those and/or potentially some of the many other powerful membership plugins for WordPress. I hope this is helpful. Please indicate if you'd like more details on any specific point. I'm happy to help.