Community Unfold: Episode 1

In conversation with Biswajeeta Rath, Community Head of Niche Marketers

Last week, we hosted our first Community Unfold session with Biswajeeta Rath, Community Head of Niche Marketers. Quite similar to the traditional format of AMA, we asked Biswajeeta questions that our community members had posted earlier. She has immense passion and experience in building communities and is currently managing a community of digital marketers. 

The session was devoted to various aspects of community management with a key focus on the purpose of a community, engagement strategies, and driving collaboration between members.

The discussion around these topics can be extremely useful for community managers like you. In this article, we’re going to compile those questions and dive deep into them based on Biswajeeta’s insights as well as our own experience of building great communities. Let’s get started.

Before we start, a little about Niche Marketers: NicheMarketers is a community of digital marketing experts. She is building this community as a go-to community to find marketing experts in a specific niche. The idea behind building this community was to bring like-minded people, who all have similar problems to solve, under one roof. You can look at it as a “problem-solving platform” for marketers across the globe.

What is the purpose of the community that you’re building?

Biswajeeta: The purpose of our community is to enable Niche Marketers to get better with their niche and also we as a community want to enable our members with the resources they need to do better at their profession. We also offer opportunities to network and collaborate, and constantly think about solving problems of Digital Marketers and Digital Marketing Agencies.

What is the essence of the community you are building?

Biswajeeta: The essence of our community is, 'For the community, by the community, and from the community. 

We have a magazine called Hashtag - it’s a monthly theme-based magazine where we collate the opinion and trends related to a specific theme from experts around the country. Moreover, we collaborate with all these experts in our Facebook group - by giving a chance to everyone who's passionate about digital marketing to interact with these experts and empower each other. 

What kind of engagements do members indulge in, in your community? 

Biswajeeta: The main goal before defining any engagement activity in my community is to create moments when some kind of value gets exchanged. For example, someone sends out a late-night FB message to the group addressing some problems. Thoughtful responses pour in within minutes from others who’ve been through it before. One member suggests a job at their company that would be a perfect fit and offers a referral. Sparking these engagements takes intentional work, which brings down to 3 key activities that I do in my community: 

• Hashtagmag live sessions: In this session, we have panel discussions with experts. 

• We have a magazine which is being published every month which covers information related to digital marketing. 

• Discussions, knowledge-sharing sessions, and collaborative discussions happen in the community to allow members to engage with each other easily.

Check out this article for community managers to create wow moments in their online communities.

Tell us about the initial struggles you faced/are facing with building & managing your community

Biswajeeta: Initially, we had a problem of spreading the word but our critical mass helped us in word of mouth, and in turn, from being just 50 we became 1000 in ten months. Our strong positioning, and reiterating our mission, also helped us solve the problem.

If you are just starting off with your community and facing some initial struggles, read this article to understand the gift of early members.

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Warm hugs to Biswajeeta for starting our CM session with a bang and giving us such insightful answers about community building. We wish her all the best in her journey ahead, and it’s our promise to you that we’ll keep on bringing more wonderful and inspiring stories from Community Managers across the globe, who strive on making a difference and bringing people together, for good.

Next week, we’ll be talking about the importance of community in coliving. Stay tuned for more AMAs in the future. If you have anything from your community-building experiences, do add your thoughts in the comment section. We’d love to hear from you. Till then, let’s love and support our community. ✨