A https://abs.twimg.com/emoji/v2/... draggable="false" alt="🧵" title="Thread" aria-label="Emoji: Thread"> on founding members:

When choosing founding members for your customer #community, you might gravitate towards existing customer advocates, advisory board members, and people who have given you high NPS scores. #CommunityTwitter 1/5

That’s generally a good start, but there are other things to consider you might not be thinking about. The first is ensuring you’re getting the right point(s) of contact within each customer account. Execs won’t log into a community as much as hands-on users of your product. 2/5

Look into product analytics with your product team to identify users w/ frequent sessions (power users). You might be surprised to find that these folks are NOT in your CRM or marketing database (https://abs.twimg.com/emoji/v2/... draggable="false" alt="😧" title="Schmerzgeplagtes Gesicht" aria-label="Emoji: Schmerzgeplagtes Gesicht">!), or not the people recommended by your account owners. 3/5

The second is to consider your constructive critics and difficult customers as well as your fans. You want people who are vocal with their feedback and ask lots of questions; they’ll likely be more useful when you ask for feedback throughout your community’s beta cycle. 4/5

Lastly, founding members ≠ VIP program. While you want some of those VIPs and shiny brands included as founders, the people who add the most value to your community in the early stages are not always the most obvious candidates. Remember, this is a dry run for the real deal! 5/5