Building a Campfire

This week I am completely nicking something. I’ll be honest, I’ve got form for this sort of thing, and if it’s good enough for the robots, it’s good enough for me. And aren’t we all climbing all over the shoulders of a previous giant?

The giant that I am pickpocketing this week is Joe Pulizzi, who in his most recent newsletter, discusses creating communities, making the point that:

In the next 12 to 18 months, small, trusted communities are going to matter more than ever.

And not just in response to the topic-du-jour of AI, as we figure out how our work will be engaged with, by bringing our humanness to stand out from the robots, but Joe takes the broader view of someone for whom the disruption of AI is not his first rodeo, and talks about how important our networks and communities are in times of uncertainty.

So, everyone wants to create a community, and as I finally get to my point of why I am copying someone else’s homework, I really liked the phrase he used to describe the mistake people are making jumping on this bandwagon:

They built the campfire before anyone had a reason to sit down in front of it.

And the image it conjured resonated with me, and I wanted to give it a little run-out here.

Joe talked about a community of practice in his newsletter and gave some great advice on how to get started, but I think we can apply this metaphor to whatever we are building, whether it’s a business, product, service, or community.

It’s the campfire we are building, the focus of our tribe (to coin Seth Godin), and we need to give people a reason to sit around it.

The first reason is utility; sitting there for warmth.

Can we clearly articulate the reason why this campfire exists?

Which might sound surprisingly basic, but hang around a few B2B software and services websites and you’ll learn that its flippers and flappers are leading, data-led, and AI-powered, but what’s it for?

It’s the same for communities, whatever the platform - a WhatsApp group, LinkedIn, Slack, or whatever - the ones where the only sound is tumbleweed and newbies introducing themselves before realizing they’ve entered an empty room are those that have no utility for the members.

While the group may have a well-meaning purpose for whoever set it up, it doesn't serve them.

The second reason is conversation; maybe they don’t need warmth, but they sit down to learn or be entertained.

Of course, for a community of practice, this is the utility, so there is no distinction. But for your business, product, or service, the purpose of the campfire is to engage the 95% of target buyers who are not in market yet; they are not here for the utility (yet).

The conversation is how we bring them to the campfire.

The stories we can tell of success, the tips we can give them, the people we can introduce them to, the tribe they can be part of, and what being around this campfire means for them.

There’s a name for that, of course - nothing new to see here; it’s content marketing, and as I shared recently here, it’s content that starts a conversation.

I just really like this framing of building a campfire.

And thanks for sitting around mine 🙂

BTW - Joe gave me permission to nick this - here is my receipt :-) - and here is his original post.