Establish Your Fan Community – Insights into Bizwiz’s Excel-Based Fan Network Creation

In today’s highly competitive world, continuous upskilling is essential for personal and professional growth. As technology rapidly evolves and industries transform, staying up-to-date with new skills becomes imperative to remain relevant and competitive in the job market. Continuous learning helps individuals adapt to changing demands, seize new opportunities, and enhance their expertise, ensuring sustained success in a dynamic environment.

Amit Jain, a Microsoft Excel MVP and Founder of Bizwiz, established a community on Microsoft Teams to maintain connections with his followers, facilitate skill development for learners, and promote interactive engagement for his true fans who would like to stay connected.

In this article, you will get to see what to expect from a fan community and how to build one inspired by Bizwiz’s work on XL Dataverse by Amit.

What to expect from a fan community?

A closed fan community offers a unique and engaging space where members can connect, collaborate, and grow together. It provides a supportive environment where fans/peers can interact more closely with content/community creators and fellow enthusiasts. Fan communities foster a culture of peer learning, resource sharing, and idea exchange, enhancing the overall experience and ensuring continuous personal and professional development.

Owners can:

• Update members on upcoming activities and share previews of plans.
• Gauge content preferences and crowdsource new ideas.
• Facilitate virtual and in-person events, offering exclusive access.
• Provide mentorship, personalized coaching, and recognize loyal members.
• Monitor discussions and encourage member-generated content.
• Use analytics to track engagement and improve experience.

Members can:

• Ask questions, engage, and exchange ideas for continuous peer learning.
• Connect with fellow members and build professional networks.
• Access various resources like YT links, PDFs, and images.
• Provide feedback and contribute to the improvement of community content.
• Join dedicated channels within the community to delve into specific topics.
• Collaborate on projects and initiatives that benefit the community.
• Attend virtual meetups, and in-person events and participate in live discussions organized by the community.
• Receive mentorship and guidance from more experienced members.

How to build a fan community?

There are multiple steps to build a fan community:

• Plan your community basics: goal, what you want to achieve, and how you want members to access it.
• Set Up Your Community: Create your community for free on Microsoft Teams with a clear description, a warm welcome message, and dedicated channels for various interests to facilitate focused discussions.
• Promote and Encourage Joining: Leverage multiple social media platforms, talk about your community in events to consistently promote your community, and amplify reach.
• Provide Informative Content: Share valuable information and resources tailored to members’ interests, and actively seek feedback on the type of content they seek to enhance engagement.
• Plan a 10-day engagement: for members to know each other, collectively learn and foster a sense of belonging.
• Encourage Sharing: Motivate members to share the community with like-minded individuals to facilitate organic growth.
• Sustain Growth: With ongoing effort and meaningful interactions, cultivate a thriving community.
• Recognize and Reward: Acknowledge active members and their contributions through features like ‘Member of the Month’ or exclusive access to new content or events.
• Foster Inclusivity: Ensure that all voices are heard and valued by promoting an inclusive and respectful environment for discussions and collaborations.

How is Bizwiz engaging its community?

Bizwiz has been actively engaging with their community through the following initiatives:

• BizWiz fosters an engaging and collaborative environment within its community through consistent and informative posts. Posts encourage members to introduce themselves, share their queries, and participate in parallel discussion threads. Whether from Amit, or his team, continuous engagement with timely responses is helping the members exchange ideas, and solutions and connect.
• They enhance learning by launching puzzles, one-word answer engagement posts, and offline meetups exclusive to the community. These activities reinforce key Excel concepts and motivate members to continuously improve their skills.

• BizWiz launched a 30-day Excel challenge Microsoft Teams Communities for their members, posting questions every other day on basic to advanced Excel features encouraging current members to participate, and promoted across various social channels to attract newer audiences.
• Following the success of the previous challenge, they launched a more elaborate Big Bang Excel Championship which is running from October to December 2024. This involves solving Excel advanced tasks posted on the community and connect with members to learn new skills, think critically, and improve their Excel proficiency. In case you are interested to participate in more such challenges visit the community link.

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