Digital Community Leaders - Rose Radtke

This week's episode of the DCL podcast featured community manager and brand strategist Rose Radtke. Rose offers a fantastic perspective to the community world, driven by strategy and bringing people together with purpose.

Rose Radtke is a co-founder and lead strategist at Each to Their Own - an organisation that creates brands and builds communities for businesses with a social purpose.

Rose works to create and nurture long-lasting connections with the audiences of each business they work with at ETTO.

From brand strategy to meeting her co-founder through an online network event, Rose is a very passionate and knowledgeable member of the community industry.

Strategy First

When asked for her number one tip for growing community, Rose instantly recommended devising a strategy.

It's really important for people to understand the why: why does this community exist? Why would I fit into this community and its values?

From this understanding of the foundations, a strategy can be put in place to reach out to potential members.

Making your values clear and aligning them with your demographic, creates an inviting comfort for people to participate in. And as Rose explained, participation is the key to a thriving community.

“Growth can only happen when that strategy - at the heart of the community - is really well thought out.”

Referrals

An interesting talking point was people who are referred into communities. These entrants tend to be stickier, as its likely they will be the right demographic, and like-minded to existing community members.

Rose furthered the brilliance of this technique, explaining how those who make the referrals naturally take responsibility for introductions, thus integrating new members organically.

It's also important to have a welcome people and give them the confidence to participate.

Storytelling

When discussing methods for increasing engagement. Rose spoke about the art of drawing out authentic stories from community members, and how this can entice people into listening, and perhaps sharing their own.

Almost like an informal and chatty interview, having an emotive conversation can lead to findings which can be shared through a variety of engaging ways.

From blog posts to short films or campaigns, the opportunities are vast and can lead to a snowballing effect with engagement.

“People love stories. We're completely hard-wired to instinctively understand them. They're what we've evolved on!”

Overall, Rose Radtke was a greatly enthusiastic guest who shared some unique insights as an experienced community leader. You can watch or listen to this episode of the Digital Community Leaders podcast now - available on all platforms.