Interview: What Works with Tara McMullin
EP 215: Growing an Audience Together With Community Builder Eli Trier
The Nitty-Gritty:
Why Eli Trier embarked on her first community project—and the results she experienced from that first project
How facilitating community projects help her reach important business goals and build her audience
The exact process Eli uses to put together each project
How community projects differ from less effective marketing tactics like telesummits
When I first heard about this idea of a “community project,” I was dubious.
It sounded an awful lot like an telesummit—which I’m on the record for calling bad marketing.
My beef with the vast majority of telesummits or online summits is that they’ve evolved to serve the needs of the organizer—and nearly no one else. If you’re unfamiliar with the concept, it’s when someone organizes an online event, solicits a bunch of speakers with good-sized email lists, and then has those speakers promote the event so that the organizer’s list grows by leaps and bounds.
The pitch emails I still receive for telesummits—even after writing a 3000 word screed against these marketing events—are egregious. Full of jargon, double-speak, and quid pro quo.
So you can imagine that when I heard about someone organizing a bunch of people creating content around a theme and using it to grow an audience, I wasn’t impressed.
And then, I talked to Eli Trier.
Eli Trier organizes community projects for introverts and quiet revolutionaries. Her goal is to raise the level of discourse around a topic, bringing people together and growing audiences in the process.
I was so impressed with Eli’s approach and how it tied into our values and philosophy at What Works… that I hired her to help us with our first community project—coming out in August.
Eli and I talk about why it’s important to her to deep-dive on important questions and involve a diverse set of voices in the discussion. We also get into the nitty-gritty of how Eli’s community projects work, how she plans for them, and how they help her reach both her audience-building and sales goals.
Now, let’s find out what works for Eli Trier!
You can listen to the episode below, or find it wherever you get your podcasts:
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