The Media Entrepreneur Meetup is a global community of Founders and CEOs of media, events and information businesses. The group, founded by Terry O’Dwyer of LSX Leaders, started by sharing ideas and tools through a mix of quarterly virtual meetups, a resource library and a discussion group on WhatsApp to connect its core audience of media founders and CEOs.
Collingwood Advisory, leading provider of scaleup, value creation and corporate finance advice to media entrepreneurs, has been hosting and supporting the community since 2019.
As the group’s membership grew, so did the volume of messages exchanged. The WhatsApp group became noisy and difficult to manage, and Collingwood Advisory looked for an alternative. They also wanted to improve the group's privacy and structure.
Collingwood Advisory chose Guild. A simple choice for a group used to communicating on WhatsApp. Guild's mobile-first, privacy first design and threaded conversations made it simple for members to sign up, navigate and participate. The professional member profiles, branding options, moderation features and analytics were a welcome bonus.
Simon Crompton-Reid is the Community Manager for the Media Entrepreneur Meetup. He told us more about the group's purpose and membership and why Guild is the right community platform for them.
How has moving your community to Guild helped your business and your members?
"Entrepreneurs are busy people anyway but working in the media sector adds to the pressure and distractions. If they’re going to commit to a community, it needs to be efficient and easy to use.
WhatsApp was a good starting point for us, but we needed more structure without losing the simplicity as the community developed. Guild turned out to be the answer.
Our members appreciate the structure and privacy that the Guild platform provides. Some of our members are really embedded in WhatsApp, so we’ve kept it as a channel for our events content – it’s not an either/or situation, and it works well for everyone. It also means that content from each group cross-pollinates the other - everyone is kept up to date while using their platform of choice."
What are the advantages of running a dedicated community for your audience rather than just a newsletter or membership website?
"We produce a regular newsletter as well, and the Guild community is incredibly helpful for curating that and helps us be much more efficient. We draw directly on our Guild discussions, and we link back to profiles and conversations on Guild.
That means that all our audience can stay involved, informed and up to date, whether they choose to be an active member or simply prefer to listen and learn."
What do you like about Guild as a community platform?
"The threaded conversations and professional profiles save time for our members and let them build their own connections.
We created the Media Entrepreneur network to share learnings, insights, and contacts between founders and CEOs, and these are busy, high-profile professionals who appreciate privacy and ease of use.
Hosting the community on Guild also means our members can join other groups and expand their own professional networks. The same is true for our team. When we contribute to other groups, it helps raise awareness of our community and our programmes in a way that wouldn’t be possible if we stayed within a completely discreet community on our website."
Find out more about the Media Entrepreneur Meetup and how you can apply to join.
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