Five Easy Steps To Draw In The Crowd

1. Focus on The Need. Chris Brogan does a lot of things right, but the community he is building around his and Julien Smith’s new book, “Trust Agents,” is the best thing I think he’s ever done. Chris found a common bond, something that goes beyond his network and touches everyone: trust. More specifically, how to earn and build on that trust. Listen to people. Anybody will do. When you listen to enough of them, you’ll start to hear the same needs. Identify the need and build a solution from there.

2. It’s Not You, It’s We. You have to allow room for your project to evolve beyond you. “Ask not what your country can do for you – ask what you can do for your country,” remember? Phrase everything in terms of being a team and working toward a common goal that benefits everyone, not just you.

3. Determine Your Touchpoints. A touchpoint is any point online where a member of the crowd can contact you. Your blog, Twitter (Twitter), and Facebook (Facebook) presence are all touchpoints. You should aim for at least two to show up in search results because that’s how most people find things. But be careful not to over extend yourself — it’s better to have no presence at all in social media than to have an inactive one. It also doesn’t hurt to link out to your active touchpoints from your blog as a way to let people know they can find you there.

4. Set Clear Goals. Mark Horvath of InvisiblePeople.tv has a clear goal: Give a voice to the voiceless. With Mark’s project, you know what you’re getting into by supporting it, and a cool thing happens: his audience forms a bond with each other. Now the members of the crowd have something to discuss and work towards together, allowing a community to form around the project. The motivation of each member of the crowd is different but your task is to allow the crowd to come in and easily identify the project’s goal.

5. Let Go. Once the crowd understands the goal, take a step back. Follow Wikipedia’s approach. The crowd comes in and makes edits, but there is still someone keeping an eye on things to make sure the goal is reached. When the project does evolve beyond you, let the crowd know how to police itself, and they will. You can see that in action on any Wikipedia Talk page. Your role is now to steer people coming to join the crowd in the right direction.