The Ultimate Guide to Referral Networking: Ch.5

 

Chapter 5 How to Create Groups and Forums

There are two kinds of groups, the professional discussion, and the professional service.

Professional Discussion Groups

One of the greatest tools a professional can have is active participation, or even better, moderation of a professional group. Online forums produce a lot of connectivity as well as professional education. Setting up a group or forum is easy, making it popular and active is hard.

Professional Service Groups

The second kind of group is a professional services group, where different professionals come together to multiply their referral network, increasing client bases together. This kind of group is sometimes mistaken for a cooperative; it is not. This group is a number of freelance professionals coming together to help each other increase their income through collaboration.

Discussion and Forum Groups

Some groups will start out with a single concept and grow into a fully administered multi-channel operation, while the majority will remain small and on many occasions silent. Let’s take a look at creating a group and how to make it active.

1.      Core members

These are the partners that will help you build the group Referral networking is not about yourself it is about the team working with a referrer. So too is a group, while one person must have the vision and integrity as well as the leadership to start a group. That same visionary leader must be able to hold down the ego and accept that success is teamwork. A successful group will have four core members, each member will take over one section of management, and each one will have to bring in more members to create professional and meaningful discussions.

2.      Creating subjects

The success of a group is in the subjects that it decides to discuss. Each core member should be proficient in a specific subject and should act as moderator of the group. It is perfectly safe to add academic and professional leaders, professors, and CEO’s, but the moderation should stay in the hands of the core group.

3.      Management and delegation

A successful group works with cohesion, and this is reached when one person is delegated to lead the operative side, another to lead the marketing, a third to lead coordination and the fourth to manage memberships. This delegation of roles creates a fully operational group management system, and when the ego is put aside, all four should work together under the founder’s leadership and vision.

4.      Branding and Marketing

After all the hard work creating a group and starting discussions, it is time to ramp up the heat and the only way to do this is by branding the group and marketing it online. We will not go into marketing and branding details here since they are covered in another page. However, for a group to expand, it will require both professional marketing to create a serious presence.

Now let’s look at Professional Service Groups

This group is totally different from the above; this is all about creating an active collaboration to connect working clients with one group member on to the next. This means that the group has to be cohesive, flexible and with enough professionalism not to disband due to competing for egos.

A professional group will be any size from three members and above. Each member should bring a specific specialty that is not matched by another member, and each member should be prepared to be active and actively increase the group's numbers.

Management of the group is identical to the discussion groups, in that there is a founding management team where each founding member will head a specialty and populate and manage the members they bring into the group under a specific departmental heading. Any network needs leadership and management, it also needs accountability and operational excellence, and this can only be reached within a structured framework. In essence, a group is identical to any business; it has an executive that directs the group. However, unlike the business, this groups executive is only in line to help with management, so that referral effectivity will be maximized. There is no “leader,” a group by definition is a number of people clumped together. In our case, it means working together to increase profitability for everyone.

Here are the steps to set up a cohesive and effective group:

1.      Find the core members

This means that at least three professionals should come together to an agreement to work together, synchronizing activity and referring clients to each other as well as designating areas or domains that they control. Unlike a discussion group, this is not about vision; it is about experience and efficiency.

2.      Increase the reach

Each member should add more members but do not strain the numbers beyond eight. Oversized groups end up becoming too heavy and too unruly to control. The purpose of the group is to create an effective referral management team that helps each other increase their workload.

3.      Group presence

Make sure that the group has a landing page on the internet, as well as a number of discussion groups that work to enhance the quality and professionalism of the core concepts. Marketing the group as well as providing separate pages for each member will multiply the group's exposure.

4.      Success stories

Make sure that all success stories are publicized, and increase your income through successful client re-referral.

Bottom line

The reason we clumped these two separate concepts together is the fact that both revolve around group management and group management is identical. Since group management is identical, it is best that both concepts evolve together, and that creating one group should go hand in hand with the creation of the other.