It's easy to think that the mission of your organization is too specific for a community to gather around it, but that's not really true. A couple of things are here. Number one, every successful group or movement started somewhere small, and the fact that there's been like a habitual smallness in your own community or the size of communities that are similar to yours doesn't mean as much as you think.

So often we run into people who have special circumstances when it comes to communication or communication styles, and with technology changing just every day, I think that there's going to be a lot of changes in how we interact with technology and each other. And it's important to remember that you aren't necessarily uncovering something that doesn't already exist. It's really just helping you find people who speak your language, and we're going to help you create the relationships that will transform your voice from a quiet one to a loud one.

And it's not about finding your first thousand fans online. It's really about finding the first ten people who you know are going to be ready to be in the real world with you. And my first piece of advice is to look for those places.

Look for the events, look for the groups, look for the social media forums, wherever you already hang out, and take a little time each day to show just genuine interest in what is going on there.

No More Waiting

Waiting for an ideal community to just walk through the door is like waiting for a bus in a town that doesn't have buses. It's not going to happen. You're never going to meet a perfect group of people, and the flaws that are in the people that you meet are just reflections of flaws in your own outreach.

They're a reflection of who you are. It's just part of the way that life works, but it's these unique qualities that make any group strong and able to grow. So really think about what's most important.

Start having conversations with people that share these values, and you'll also be able to talk to people about what you're seeing in these conversations with other people. And you'll find that it's not so much some innate value that you have, but your ability to have those three or four conversations and facilitate what's going on that will help you naturally stand out and add value.

Cold Outreach

Cold outreach might seem a little bit weird or ineffective when it comes to business, but for anything where you're trying to talk to real human beings, it's just a fact of what you're doing. Now you have sort of the benefit of number one, you're not really selling anything. And if you've done a good job of the prep work of starting your organization, you should have a lot of free stuff to give.

You should have assets like videos, you should have handouts, you should have a set of emails so that whenever someone asks what you've got going on, you already have something to hand them. So now that you've made those things, you really want to get into giving them what you've got. And it's not really about sending out a ton of messages and hoping for the best, because really you're following up with people who hopefully you've at least seen and made eye contact with in real life.

So you're going to send specific things you know about the person that you're contacting. And you might be a power player and do 10 of these a day, but maybe you just do five. Don't worry about having like a perfect website, landing page, this and that.

Just send the messages and make sure that there's something that's going in the inbox each day. Are you making people feel noticed and valued? And maybe just as important, is it operationalized?

Let's also talk about making the most of these local events.

You got to go out there because they are your test runs, they're your practice sessions. You can test your ideas, you can improve your approach.

Each of these individual elements that go into holding an event like your tabling and your handouts and your messaging, you're improving all of those in an iterative way. The more that you're speaking on behalf of your organization and maybe more than that, you're also improving when it comes to your, not just tabling at events, but just going out in real world and talking about what you're working on and what you're doing. And of course, if you can get in an environment where it's good for you to do that, then that's even better.

But you can't underestimate who you might meet. So keep track of those events. Maybe they're on meetup in your town.

Maybe they're on Instagram. I don't know what scene you're most comfortable with. But you're always going to have to find some balance because it's got to be large enough for there to be people and for you to make connections.

You don't want to be going to some place where the scene is worse off than you are, right? But you also want somewhere where you can stand out. This is really just a matter of, you've got to find a little time during the week.

Maybe that's a couple of meetings a week and that you're really following up with people there. And set a date. Show people what it is you're doing and what it is you're working on.

Now, you're thinking about social media in a new way.

Once you've actually done some of this groundwork stuff, if you've done the work of setting up your CRMs and your spreadsheets and your landing pages and your assets, now when you go and talk to people, social media shouldn't seem so overwhelming because you've done a lot of the prep work when it comes to explaining what it is you do in so many different formats that once you've done a lot of that work, that can be a little tedious. Everything else just becomes easier.

And it's like being at a party. You wouldn't only talk about yourself, but now you're able to talk about yourself in such a packaged and understandable way that you can spend more time listening and talking and connecting with others. So choose the platforms where your audience is most active, where you are, and just post there.

And really, I wouldn't tell anybody to post anything unless they have a landing page to send people to. If you don't have your own thing that people can sign up for, why bother? Don't send people to anybody else's stuff.

That's a waste of time.

What about influencers?

These are the storytellers at the group that you went to.

Don't worry about follower counts. That's not real. Most of social media is fake.

Companies spend money to get a farm of people to like a brand, and it doesn't have any correlation to what's actually interesting. The things that are interesting in social media are the same as the things in people that are interesting in real life. And really, make that what you look for, because the technology stuff is your job.

It's stuff that you can add. I'm here to tell you about the technology. It's not that it's hard.

It's not that it's so expensive. It's just having infrastructure and using it in the right way and having all the boxes checked. Really, reach out to the people who are telling the interesting stories, and they'll vet you.

It's really, you're going to find someone who shares your values if you reach out and talk about what you're doing. And you only need a one pager in these situations. One page of information that shares what you've got going on, and it'll be, there's not much else you need.

The last thing that you want to talk about is membership funnels.

This is what turns casual interest into strong support. It's a landing page.

It's your flyer. It's the benefits of working with you. It's some follow up emails.

That's what we've been talking about all week. And all of that guides people through the different stages of involvement with your cause. And you wouldn't rush a relationship.

The same goes for support for your organization. Don't try to ask people about this and that and that and this. Because I need help every week.

Instead, you take some initiative. Build out the systems, the messaging, the talking, the storytelling, all of that stuff. And then just ask people to be plugged into it.

And that makes everything much more simple. It's what draws people in. It's what keeps people interested.

It's what makes your impact grow over time. Yeah, that's it.