To build on its mission to create a professional and personal development community for international women in business, the non-profit German-American Business Association of California (GABA-CA) Women in Business Industry Group wanted to expand beyond offline quarterly events, with an email-based discussion group.

Our online community, the "GABA Women in Business Listserv," launched as a Yahoo! Group™ in November 2007 along with the inaugural GABA WIB event, inviting GABA women to discuss specific issues we experience as international working women in the Bay Area, to network with one another, and to share our stories, questions and ideas.

Over 40 women joined the email-based discussion group within the first three months, and membership doubled over the next six months. It was also the first GABA Industry Group community to launch online. Despite these successes, there have been only a few two-way conversations so far -- most posts do not have comments, and are authored by the same individuals. This does, however, follow the trend of both corporate and non-profit failure to get online conversations going.

Here are some of the strategies we use to engage the GABA WIB online community:

• Send post-event email marketing campaigns inviting attendees and non-attendees to join the discussion group;
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  


• Link to post-event write-ups authored by the GABA WIB Group founder; 


• Post a larger variety of international-women workforce discussion topics, such as equal pay for women and European acclimation to the American working environment, to encourage conversation;


• Post event photos in the online photo gallery with captions describing GABA WIB members participating in a variety of industry events;


• Highlight members who are creating related content online, such as a GABA Roundtable blog;


• Author and monitor discussion topics to ensure they are relevant and consistent with the group's mission, and that the content is straightforward with a recognizable GABA tone and style, including a signature with name, title and email address;


• Invite event attendees to join the online community so they can continue their discussions even after the offline events are over;


• Cross-post quarterly events throughout GABA's various social networks, such as on the GABA Facebook page.

Do you have any useful tips about how to manage a successful online community? Corporate or non-profit, we'd love to hear them! Please share any successes, challenges, ideas, etc. in the "Comments" section below.

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About the Author

Linda Cleary manages demand generation marketing programs at Lyris.

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