I’ve got a super shiny treat for you today! As you know, I love all things community - I think it’s all that love sharing… anyway, who better qualified to talk about community than THE Tara Hunt? I asked Tara to share some of her pearls of wisdom and here’s what she had to say:-

Tell us a bit about yourself…

My name is Tara Hunt, but most people know me by my superhero moniker, ‘missrogue’, which comes from superhero Rogue of the X-Men (’cause I’m geeky like that). I’m a Canadian living in San Francisco. I’m a longtime blogger and now an author (first book coming out later this year) and I write about online communities and marketing strategies in the new relationship economy. I also run a coworking space in San Francisco called Citizen Space and a company called Citizen Agency. I travel quite a bit to speak at various conferences on web stuff and marketing stuff and juggle all of this with being a mom of a 15 year old.

What is “whuffie”?

Whuffie is a term coined by Cory Doctorow of Boing Boing fame. He wrote an awesome sci fi novel called Down and Out in the Magic Kingdom where in the future, money has been replaced by a form of social capital called Whuffie. In basic terms, when we meet, I would ping your Whuffie to get a score. A high Whuffie score would mean that I could trust you to work with, share ideas with and generally trust your opinions. You can also use Whuffie to rent an apartment, buy a car or pay for your meals. One raises Whuffie through creating beautiful things that benefit a community (works of art, useful tools, etc.), gaining people’s trust over time and building a network.

In my book, The Whuffie Factor (pending release date later in 2008 or early 2009), I say that Whuffie is neither the future or science fiction, it is how we currently relate to one another in online communities and, although we cannot currently use it to buy cars, pay or rent or buy meals, it indirectly affects our cash flow, so in essence, we do pay for our lifestyles through attaining Whuffie.

What are the highs and lows of your career to date?

The highs have definitely come since I moved to San Francisco and started working with startups advising on online marketing and community outreach. The ultimate high was getting my book deal with Crown Publishing (Random House Business division). The lows were when I was in Toronto struggling to get work because my ideas were a little ahead of their time. I knew I was on the right path, but because I didn’t have the Whuffie to win people over and there weren’t so many clear case studies out there to point to, when I talked to people about the idea of online communities and relationship building with individual customers, they would dismiss me. Everyone wanted SEO (Search Engine Optimization) experts and traditionally focused marketing. It wasn’t until Riya.com, a startup in the Bay Area, took a chance on my ideas that I could actually prove myself and build a case study (and Whuffie) that things took off for me. And since then, it’s been an amazing ride.

What do you think of building communities to monetise them?

Well, I don’t think you can monetize a community. You can definitely turn social capital into currency by building something people love and are willing to pay for (directly or indirectly), but monetizing a community doesn’t work. It turns people off.

Is there a minimum timescale you think that it can take to build a solid community?

I’ve seen people build a strong community through authenticity and passion in 6 months, but I’ve also seen the same authenticity and passion take years. There are always other factors involved. Is the market ready for the idea? What else is capturing their attention? Is the technology advanced enough to make it a good user experience? Is it a mainstream or a niche idea? Twitter took over a year to explode on the scene, but now it’s the strongest community I know. YouTube took 6 months. LinkedIn, a network that has been around for years, is just starting to really pick up. Pandora needed to wait for the technology to emerge before it exploded 4 years later, then it grew like wildfire.

In your opinion, are online community activities required for all businesses in all fields?

I think so. Even if it is indirect. I think of my hair stylist, Gilbert. He has a website with salon information, but doesn’t really participate in online communities. Still, he understands the power of them. When I go in to get my hair done, I take photos and post them to Flickr of before and after and I tweet my experience. This has driven several new clients his way. So, he’s taken it upon himself to encourage his other clients to do the same and it is working well for him. I spent a bit of time talking to a woman who grows beautiful dahlias for a living and we discovered the flower growing communities online that could really help her connect with other businesses and exchange tips on growing and growing her business. There is always a way to engage with online communities that will help your business, even if it seems unrelated.

What shouldn’t you do when building a community?

Well, you shouldn’t lie. You shouldn’t go into it with the attitude that you are only building community to make a buck. There are so many benefits from being open, transparent and authentic - like better feedback, growth of Whuffie, better networks, happier customers, increased word of mouth, etc. - that by engaging on any other level is a waste of time for both you and your customers.

How do you measure success?

In a couple of ways.

1. By my ability to have friends everywhere I travel. This means that people have to trust me as well as read my tweets and blog. So when I say, “Hey, I’m coming to Boulder!” I have at least a few people who I can sit down and have a nice dinner discussion with.
2. By the number of people who spread my message. It’s not the reader numbers or the followers, it is the number of people who enjoy what I have to say enough that they will pass it along. I also love it when it becomes their own message, which leads me to #3.
3. By the number of people who I can pass the fire onto. This means that they see what I’m doing and what I’m saying and either challenge it or carry the torch to effect world change on their own terms. I don’t want a fan club, I want to inspire people who want to inspire more people…
4. And to be honest, I also measure my success by how long I can sustain this amazing lifestyle I have. I get to travel all over the world, meet amazing people, sleep in late many days, research and write and take the occasional consulting and speaking gig that keeps me on my toes and offers me the ability to pay my rent - as long as that keeps happening, I’m doing something right.

Many people believe that being a woman in the web industry can be a hurdle, do you believe that this is the case or that it gives you an opportunity to shine?

It’s both a hurdle and an advantage. A hurdle in that I have to go further to prove myself in geek circles (but much of that is because I’m in marketing, too), but an advantage in that there aren’t so many of us, so I get to stand out.

In years to come, if you could be remembered for one thing, what would it be?

Making a difference. And by that, I mean creating more opportunities for people to build their own Whuffie and succeed - creating more opportunities for more people to shine.

Thanks to Tara for taking time out to talk to me, I hope that you got as much out of it as me :). Good luck to Tara with the book launch.

to a staring competition. although it doesn’t make for an interesting video. infact, i wouldn’t bother if i were you….

what do you mean i just don’t want you to realise how bad i am? me? no!

well now that i’ve served my purpose, made myself look silly and you feel better about yourself, i’m off to drop water in my burning eyes. happy thursday

i sent out a request on twitter asking people @melkirk with their requests for this week’s random video… the responses were, um… interesting!

i should take this opportunity to say that if gromit gets more comments than me, i’m never showcasing him ever again! lol

happy thursday x

i should set the preface that i’m just a normal girl, working in an industry that i love, doing a job that i’m passionate about. i have as much as the next person to learn, but hey i’ve got fire in my belly, so just roll with me on this one…

i spent this afternoon doing my favorite sunday pasttime, reading blogs. yes i know, i really should get out more, but to be frank, it was just damn cold today. anyway, back to my original point, i came across this site where it taught you in 7 convenient steps how to build a community:

Step 1: Develop a networking plan
Step 2: Select a networking “platform”
Step 3: Market to your users
Step 4: Training and technical support
Step 5: Set up and manage a public online information forum
Step 6: Use networks for collaboration and problem solving
Step 7: Creat the spirit of the community

this is the part where i go into a bit of a ramble, so you might want to make yourself comfortable. whilst it’s all good and well to advise on building communities in 7 lovely steps and they make sense, there’s SO much more to it than that.

i’m often asked which sites i choose to build communities - the answer to which is whatever sites your “people” use (for me personally i’d use every site i could - every pocket of community is important no matter the size). I could go ahead and list sites like Facebook, YouTube, Twitter, Digg etc, but in honesty, I believe that social strategies should be fluid and always changing.

let me put that statement in context for you. when the likes of Tara Hunt, Kathy Sierra and Gary Vaynerchuk do their fantastic work to show people that communities are the way forward for organisations, i agree. i agree that 2 years, 1 year or heck ever 6 months from now, we’ll see a ton more community manager roles out there and i sincerely believe that’s a positive shift.

but, here’s the thing - i don’t believe that companies or individuals should try and build communities because that’s the cool thing of the moment. do it because you care, because you want that interaction and because you’re genuinely passionate about what you do, the service that you provide or the products that you sell.

i expect that the last thing that you want to hear is me telling you that you can’t just hire anyone to fill that role, but it’s true. you can’t just hope to pay someone enough for them to become passionate about your brand. they have to be your biggest advocate - to love what you do and embrace each and every community member - no matter the size of your community.

when i started work at Carsonified, i was taken on as event manager because of my experience in that field. at that point if i’m honest, i would have made a terrible community manager (even though i had a background of marketing). i didn’t know that much about the web or online communities, but the MOST important factor of all is that i didn’t have the fire in my belly (there’s that fire again ).

within 6 months of doing the role, i had fallen truly and deeply in love with the industry and everyone within it and that’s when things finally clicked for me. i believe now, that i can build communities in any industry and i say that because i “genuinely” love bringing people together, empowering them to communicate and to create their identities. i’d like to think in return that people know that anything i associate myself with is genuine - i really care about what i do and i REALLY care about people.

you need to realise that you have to be able to “listen” as well as speak, there needs to be open dialogue and you won’t always get an ego stroke. the first thing that you should be doing is setting a google alert for your name or brand (including misspellings) and tweetscans. the reason that i say this is because it gives you a chance to reach out to people and put things right as soon as you hear they’ve not had the greatest experience - and trust me, that direct contact, showing that you care, will have a deeper and more meaningful connection than any “customer relations” you could do.

if people are interested, i can of course write a more detailed post about exact steps that i think are worth taking, but i leave you with my final thoughts. love what you do. do it from your heart. be open and transparent. collaborate. remember that every member is important. reach out to as many people as you can. care. be true to yourself.

ok, rant over, i’m off to have a nap - all this community stuff is exhausting. i’d love to hear your thoughts.

m
p.s it would of course be just wrong not to take this opportunity to thank everyone for taking 5 minutes out of their day to read my silly blog. i love you all. really
p.p.s there’s a spot prize for the first person to guess the amount of times i used “communities” in this post!