My Brazen Experience
December 24, 2008 – 1:07 pm | by Daryl TayJust about a month ago, I got an email from Ryan Paugh, community manager at Brazen Careerist to join their community. It was a great personalised message, telling me how painless it would be to sign up, and that it would be a great place to meet other Gen Y bloggers and that I could always go to him if I had any questions. A great welcoming email.
I wasn’t sure what to expect, but I saw fellow bloggers Meg Roberts and Corvida Raven and figured it should be pretty cool.
After creating my profile, I submitted a load of stuff and had problems with getting my info saved, so I decided to leave it. Within a couple of days I got an email from Dan Healy letting me know I should update my rss feed so that I could pipe my recent activity to Brazen. So I did. Soon after, I got a blog post featured on the site. Although I’ve been caught up in exams and traveling after that, Brazen has been high on my Google Reader priorities and I try to comment and participate as much as I can.
Why am I blogging about this? Firstly, to share a new connection to a community that I have discovered (or rather, discovered me), which I enjoy very much and more importantly, to tell you why this matters.
One of the links I shared a couple of weeks ago was how to establish a community’s culture, with points like communicating with members, recognising positive contribution as heavily weighted actions that work. If you read my experience with Brazen, you can be sure that these elements were definitely part of it.
If you’re a company hearing lots about this “community” buzzword, learn something from this case study. Community does not equate to sending people mails saying “hi my site is the coolest ever, come join it”. And leaving the site to rot after getting 20,000 people to join it doesn’t make it a success either. If you can’t come to terms with this and aren’t going to be bothered to spend the effort, Don’t bother.
Do you have similar case studies and/or experiences to share? Are you on Brazen Careerist too? Drop me a comment!
Tags: brazen careerist, communicating with members, community manager, corvida raven, dan healy, establish community culture, Gen Y, google reader, meg roberts, personalised invitations, recognizing positive contribution, rss, ryan paugh
One Response to “My Brazen Experience”
By Meg Roberts on Dec 25, 2008 | Reply
I have similar sentiments about the other blogging communities I have joined, but Brazen is definitely one of my favorites. The BC team knows that community is essential, so it doesn’t surprise me that you got such a warm welcome. I wish more online communities understood that importance – it makes a huge impact when you are another person, and not just more traffic on the site.
Have a great one!