NOTE: This will take you about 15 minutes to read and look at.

I spent Monday working with a local publishing house carrying out a mix of consultation-via-workshop, in which by teaching my frameworks and case studies, we workshop the content and create a strategy for the company. It’s very much the same as what we did with the Finland Tourist Board at the Like Minds Summit last month.

True to form, the day is full of my hype oneliners. One of the main ones that I drill is “don’t target everyone, target the right ones”, which of course is about correctly understanding your community, and who the influencers within that community are.

What really irritates me is when I ask this question and then have to start from scratch trying to understand my community. That’s why I create models and frameworks: for my own use and my own sanity! However yesterday I realised that I haven’t really shared how useful this model below (The 7 Levels of Participation) has been for me with understanding communities.

For me, Social Media is about social, which is about relationship, which is about participation. Relationship is participation with one another. The deeper the relationship, the more participation we have with each other. Therefore I like to understand a community based on their varying levels of participation. If a community has higher levels, my strategy will fundamentally be different than if my community had low levels of participation. Continue reading →