This month’s manager’s tip comes from Andrew Rose who manages multiple Grouspites. His advice: have a purpose and make it known. Here’s what Andrew shared:
“I’ve got several Groupsites, but the most vibrant is a peer support/educational Groupsite for marketing executives, primary located in the Baltimore/DC region ("mdsg.collectivex.com":http://mdsg.collectivex.com). Since I am a firm believer in making things obvious and apparent, our Groupsite’s opening paragraph is customized to plainly state who we are (and aren’t - we’re not a leads group, for example) and some basic ground rules (like a non-solicitation policy).
This is my first level of defense from sales people and vendors trying to get into a group of “their prospects.†I also set the Groupsite’s visibility to “Limited,†which means that prospective members can view the Summary page, but to go any deeper, they need to apply for entry.
Next, I use the Custom Profile Questionnaire feature. I ask prospective members only one question, “What is your role within their organization?†Their answers provide me a filter for about 80% of those who I don’t feel meet the criteria for membership within the group.
It is important to me to make sure the right people are in the right group for the right reason.
Many times, people ask to join this group when there is not a true fit. I happily suggest other groups that may be more appropriate. If I’m not aware of a Groupsite that fits their needs, I’ll often suggest they consider creating their own and I show them how easy it is.
Once someone is a member of my group and understands the purpose of the group, I try and help keep things on track.
I allow members to put items on the Calendar directly, as long as they are marketing oriented or have a philanthropic message that I think is meaningful to the group. I did have one member post a calendar item for another group that I didn’t feel reflected our ethics and values. I removed the item and told the member, in a nice way, why I had taken it down. On rare occasions there have been posts which I didn’t feel were appropriate and I removed them, as well.
One of my biggest challenges, initially, was getting the entire group on my listserve (~260) to join the new Groupsite. Some of them had legitimate concerns: they are high profile people in gargantuan firms/organizations and would just prefer to receive the emails rather than engage dynamically on the Groupsite. When I first put the Groupsite up, I encouraged people to join in my weekly emails. This was a minor success. My true numbers came when I invited my entire mailing list to join and clearly stated the purpose for the group. Since then I have reached a solid critical mass and have a few people joining every week.
The group has monthly presentations that address advanced marketing techniques and the speakers will often provide us with PowerPoint displays. I began putting them in the files area and it didn’t take long to max out the freebie space (25 megs) Groupsite.com provides us. I sent an email out to the group for a sponsorship that would pay for the extra space and immediately found someone that would take that over for us.â€
Anyone who has ever met Andrew knows that he is always going above and beyond to help others. He does this everyday, with a purpose. His use of Groupsites is just one of the ways he helps people make things happen.