Just last month, C2C Marketing Company, Bevy acquired CMX Media, Inc; the premier community to community professionals, to address a growing demand for the In Real Life (IRL) social networks. Last week, the two rolled out a new local event program called CMX Connect, powered by Bevy.
CMX is primarily an online community, so this new local event initiative is an exciting development as it’s further evidence in a cultural shift towards smaller, in-person communities.
According to David Spinks, co-founder of CMX, the CMX Connect program is already off to a fast start with CMX members in 15 countries and 45 different cities already applying to participate in just 24 hours. CMX Connect is both an educational resource for community builders, and a place for community professionals to connect with their local peers in person. Given that CMX already has an avid online user base it seems poised to grow substantially with this new program.
Active Chapters.
According to the CMX website, there are already active chapters in ten different locations, including San Francisco, Seattle, Boston, and New York. The first CMX Connect event was hosted at Reddit HQ this past Tuesday. Alexis Ohanian, the co-founder of Reddit, has been vocal about the cultural shift away from traditional online social networks. Speaking at a recent conference, he said “we’ve hit peak social” and predicted that users will move away from big social networks and toward new, more community-focused platforms.
Setting the trend of the customer to customer C2C marketing.
In light of recent headlines around social media fatigue and data privacy, there’s an increasing appetite for smaller community groups who want to meet in person in a trend called customer to customer C2C marketing. A Pew Research Center study revealed that only 3 percent of social media users in the US said they have a lot of trust in the information they find on these sites.
As a growing alternative, digital natives have been turning to in-person communities. Bevy is the leading enterprise software solution for Community Managers around the world. More and more brands are seeing tangible business results and improving the health of their online communities, by building strong in-person, In Real Life (IRL) communities.
Apple pioneered the original concept around User Groups.
Today, progressive brands like Atlassian, Duolingo, Slack and many more seem to be doubling down on their in-person communities. These world-leading companies are using Bevy to power their IRL communities; so it looks like a perfect fit for Bevy to accelerate the growth of the CMX community.
Derek Andersen, CEO and Co-founder of Bevy.
I caught up with Derek Andersen, CEO, and co-founder of Bevy to get his take on this trend. As the founder of Startup Grind, the world’s leading community for Entrepreneurs, he’s genuinely passionate about the power of human connection.
Andersen said, “regardless of the product, brand or vision, what it all boils down to, is word of mouth, where customers connect directly with other customers. The challenge most companies have is a lack of tools and expertise to build these in-person, customer-to-customer communities. Together Bevy and CMX provide industry leading community building technology and expertise.”
This combination of Bevy powering the CMX community is a pivotal moment in the human connection.
Community Management as a profession has been growing increasingly important. Now with CMX Connect, community professionals have the opportunity to scale their influence and expertise. The world will be watching this space in 2019 and beyond, to see how brands develop similar strategies to build stronger advocate communities.
Traditional social networks and digital channels are changing — and Bevy along with CMX are in the C2C Marketing community now, ready to work through this cultural shift in customer sentiment.
