If you can't build a community - FIND ONE

One of the grass-root problems I have found with Pinko is where the hell you find a community in the first place!

In many cases, nonline businesses (neither online or offline - the internet does, simply NOT apply to their business!) think that there is no way to embrace the internet for them, but this is simply too short-sighted an approach to take.

Pete Prodoehl's post on the google group questioned how Pinko (online Pinko anyway) could be applied to nonline businesses such as "a technical college, a garden center, skate/snowboard shop, manufacturer of industrial pipes or a distributor of bottling equipment?"

What common areas of interest are shared by these groups? To answer the above groups directly:

Technical College
A college will always have a website, but find the computer club forums, find out where the computer/sports clubs "play" online by becoming part of their online community.

Follow the interests of those online - chances are they'll be fairly representative of many other people in that community. Get involved with one of them and the rest will open up for you.

Garden centre
Google pulls up 15,200,000 results under the term "Gardening Forums". Become a member, sign-up for the biggest ones, make your avatar your business name and logo. See what areas people are talking about. There will be many people looking for seasons advice on planting, grass-mowing advice, specific bulbs for specific - talk knowledgably, keep your profile completely up to date - be the EXPERT that people are looking for to answer all their problems.

Skate/Snowboard Shop
A bit of a no-brainer. There are hundreds of thousand of communities online! Be part of them. Offer your advice on the best new gear for summer, trends, innovations. Kids (OK, me!) crave to be the first to have something. Give them the chance, you'll be remembered! Befiredn the most popular ones with PRIME information before the rest and watch your name grow!

Steel Pipe Manufacturer
Harder but by no means impossible. Within 60 seconds of searching for the term "industrial pipe manufacturer forums" I was at http://www.globalspec.com/ the industrial search engine...scroll down, we have "Topics & Discussions" a job directory a company directory, and even a globaspec browser toolbar.

Even applying this to concrete pipe (less of a bust sector it seems!) but there is a Production School Short Course tell me there ain't going to be any sort of future decision-makers or future buyers there? Involvement. Offer advice, offer to speak, offer to provide sponsorship, get in touch with the associations, offer graduate placements, graduate engineering job fair's.

Bottling equipment distribution
The Brewing Network has 802 registered users, but over 14,100 active topics (that's over 17 posts per user - pretty good I'd say). There is even a section for Beer Brewing Equipment - 148 topics, 1452 posts. B2B just became B2C.

Alternatively, consider bewers forums, wine forums.

On a more industrial scale, try looking into the glass manufacturing industry. Globalspec comes up trumps again here, alternatively, try www.glassonweb.com for everything glass. See where that leads you.

So...thanks for sticking with me!

I hope I have demonstrated that the Pinko adag of being part of the communities you serve is actually quite simple.

Think around the product and the service, play word-association until you find something that
is still relevant to your business, but which posesses a community (although there are communities for pretty much anything these days!).

I hope I have shown it is simply a matter of opening your mind to the possibilities of what there is online. There are communities everywhere, you just need to look in the right places.