Recruiting a content network and growing a community for Robinson’s Fruit Shoot (Britvic)

‘Build it and they will come’ is not a strategy when it comes to creating a platform. It is not enough to create utility for a target demographic and then hope that, via the power of media awareness, they will visit and join in. A more engaged, organic approach is required.

Ready for Ten represents a new departure in Britvic’s approach to marketing and communications. As an earned media platform, its success is based on the conversation, buzz and interest it generates, as well as the engagement it fosters with the parenting community.

From a standing start, Made by Many’s challenge was to recruit a content network that could form the foundation of the community and guarantee ongoing engagement.

Our approach

In the interests of credibility, content on Ready for Ten had to be by parents and for parents. It made sense to kick-start our community with some highly-engaged, networked parent bloggers. We carried out extensive desk research to identify bloggers with kids of the right age, and then got to know them online. In the early months, our blogger team created an extensive bank of content and promoted Ready for Ten via their existing blog and twitter networks.

Initially, Made by Many ran the editorial management in-house, taking charge in content planning and day-to-day editorial duties. Once the core editorial team was established, we looked to the mummy blogging community to recruit an editor with the right mix of editorial, parent blogging and journalistic experience. Ready for Ten’s editor has proven success in setting up communities from scratch and understands our target market, the ethos behind the platform and how to leverage social networks to build audience.

To support original content on Ready for Ten, and to deliver on the promise of bringing the best of the web to parents, Made by Many actively promotes useful links and resources from around the web via Twitter. We’ve also created Twitter lists for parents with specific interests such as craft, business and learning resources.

How it all went

The platform’s content proposition continues to evolve in response to our community’s needs and wishes. Ready for Ten’s content plan reflects the key events in a parent’s year (e.g. Back to School), responds to the national news agenda and takes in trending issues from the community.

We receive weekly notes of interest from writers wishing to contribute to Ready for Ten, and we continue to actively foster a relationship with many of the bloggers, including attendance at the first UK parent blogger conference, CyberMummy, in July 2010.

Made by Many’s engagement with the parenting community on Twitter has also delivered excellent results, with nearly 1,000 active followers just six months after launch.