I got to interview the fabulous Jen Polk of Beyond the Professoriate and Self-Employed PhD about how she’s building community in those two brands. What I found really interesting about what she’s doing is that she is using different platforms for each of those brands.
Want to Build a Community? Here are some key takeaways:
- You may want to check out Mighty Networks if you want something pretty, user friendly, and ready to go right out of the box. If you don’t need a lot of customization this option is even better.
- If you need customization, you may want to see what a plugin or customized development can do for you.
- In any case, engagement is key—play around with different formats and ideas to get people to engage with one another and with the content you post.
- Get feedback from members about structure and content.
Check out what Jen’s doing:
Beyond the Professoriate (along with her business partner, L. Maren Wood)
Watch the Whole Interview
As a follow up to this interview, I’ll be on Facebook Live again on Monday, June 18 at 4 pm to test out Mighty Networks in real time. To watch just head to the Learning in Bloom Facebook page at that time.
Some of the things I’ll be looking at are:
- How to post topics and threads
- Types of polls/interactive elements
- Courses (they just launched this feature)
- Searchability
- How quickly and easy it is to set up
- The live event feature—this is one of the things that I’m most excited about since the ability to interact with people live is something that is crucial in community building
- How to organize members
- Payment options (subscriptions, coupons, etc.)
- What kind of content can be added (can I embed forms from Jotform, or courses from Rise?)
- And a whole bunch of other questions that I am sure will come up…
Have suggestions for other Facebook Live events? Send me your ideas!
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