Maria Sipka - Barcelona, Spain
Online Community Builder and Consultant and Founder: Global Business Women
At the time I was born in communist Czechoslovakia, my father would sit on a stone wall beneath the main castle in Bratislava and ponder freedom not far away in neighboring Austria. Two years later he made the decision to escape with my mother and his two children. Having virtually no money and ironically being housed in a German castle for immigrants waiting to be placed in a free country we were offered the opportunity to relocate to Sydney, Australia. That's when my dream was born.
For 16 years my sister and I were provided with the typical 'immigrant' upbringing spending little time with our hard working parents and taught to value our education and financial freedom. It took my parents this time to achieve a reasonable level of financial freedom which would enable them to do what they wanted, when they wanted and with whom they wanted. This became my mantra.
What they achieved by the age of 45 I wanted to achieve by the age of 28. I set the goal to become financially independent.
Having very little skills or experience I started my first business – a communications consultancy, at the age of 18 and purchased my first property.
On my 28th birthday I achieved my goal and realized – life was not just about money. It was about something much greater and more rewarding. Setting out on a journey to discover what life was about I had to first discover what I was passionate about. Arriving at where many individuals before me had arrived – I found that I my purpose was about enriching the lives of others fueled by my passion to make a difference.
I also learned that to make a difference one needs a vehicle. Mine would become online communities. I've since learned the incredible power and leverage of online communities with my 2 years at XING as their Director of Community Building.
Online communities have the potential to connect every single human being on the planet having access to the internet, to other people, opportunities and knowledge. Imagine a virtual space where a group of farmers in Zimbabwe connect to a group of farmers in Australia? They share best practice, ask each other questions and create mentoring opportunities. The possibilities are endless.
Today there exists millions of these virtual groups, chat rooms, forums and communities in places like MySpace, Yahoo Groups, Facebook and XING. Every one of these places has a different dynamic and purpose. Unfortunately very little information and resources exists on how to build communities.
If you already have an online community or are in the process of building one following are some basic guiding questions for you to consider:
- What is your business purpose of building a community? (Retain staff, attract clients, etc)
- What will be the purpose of the community? (Share best practice, mentorship, inspire meaningful dialogue, etc.)
- What defines success within the community? (What does it look like? What needs to happen?)
- Will you build your own community or use an existing platform?
- Who will be members of your community and how are they segmented?
- How can you leverage your existing relationships with affiliates and partners?
- Who will provide content for your community? (Events, articles, experts, etc)
- What are the benefits to your member for participating and belonging to your community?
- What are the metrics of success and how will you monitor this?
- What will happen when your community grows? How will the dynamic change? (From 100 members to 10,000 members)
Maria is launching the Online Community Institute shortly - a non-profit, independent knowledge portal for anybody interested in online communities. You can connect to Maria at XING: https://www.xing.com/profile/Maria_Sipka or join Global Business Women at http://www.xing.com/premiumgroup-6049.dd827d
About the author:
Maria Sipka is a highly successful visionary and consultant in the offline and online community space. Maria is an expert in understanding and managing affinity groups, and she is frequently called upon to assist in developing strategies for maximizing the efficiencies of social software within rapidly growing organizations. Maria began her professional career as a speech writer for a Member of Parliament in Australia . She holds a B.A. in Mass Communications majoring in Journalism, Public Relations and Graphic Design from the University of Newcastle, Australia where she graduated in 1995. Over the years, Maria has been a frequent international speaker on social software including keynote presentations at IESE Business School (Barcelona), IBM (Hamburg), Business Chicks (Sydney & Melbourne), Brox Technologies (Wolfsburg) and the House of Lords (London). For the past four years Maria has actively participated in a variety of leadership capacities with the Entrepreneur Organization as Learning Chair, Sydney (2004), Membership Chair, Sydney (2005), Global Learning Committee Member (2006 – current) and Area Director Eastern Europe (2007). Maria is an active investor and advisor for The Hunger Project and dedicated to empowering people in the developing world.
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