Earlier this month, there was a story in the news about a couple in Washington, DC, who suffered a particularly galling insult on top of injury over the Thanksgiving holiday. First, someone stole the wheels off their Audi (it had been parked on the street), and then, while their car was still up on cinder blocks, the city towed it to the impound yard — doing (presumably) thousands of dollars of damage in the process.
Here’s the video from the story:
It’s pretty cringe-inducing, as you can see the tow-truck operator literally drags the car up onto the flatbed, without the benefit of skates or dollies or anything. (The cinder block gets caught underneath the car, too.)
This, although a pretty good “weird news” story, isn’t what I’m writing about — this is just the setup.
I’d submitted this link to the popular social linksharing/social bookmarking site Fark, and it made the main page. In the resulting discussion thread, besides the predictable outrage from car enthusiasts of all sorts, there were also a couple of indignant comments from towing professionals, who were equally annoyed at being made to look bad because of the actions of an indifferent or incompetent operator.
They pointed out some examples of how to tow wheel-less cars without wrecking them, off of a community forum for people involved in the towing business.
A tow truck operator community. I hadn’t imagined that there would be such a thing (there are several to choose from), but the more I thought about it, the more I realized that I shouldn’t have been surprised.
After all, pretty much every business, activity, interest, hobby — anything that has a specialized knowledge, language, or skill set — has the potential to bring together people around it, into a community.
In other words, people who do stuff like talking about the stuff they do. Things that they’ve done. Things they’re going to do. Things that they’d like to do better.
Before the internet, this was the realm of trade magazines, associations, and annual conventions — now, people can get together and share knowledge, experience, and fellowship online, continuously.
And then, once the community has formed around an interest… well, you can’t talk shop all the time. Once they get to know each other (talking about the subject matter), they tend to keep talking and socialize (in watercooler, off-topic, cafe, shoot-the-breeze type areas).
So what’s this all mean for your business? A couple of possibilites:
* See what communities are out there supporting your particular business specialty. It doesn’t matter if it’s doctor, bartender, tow truck driver, marketer, security professional, sound technician, dry cleaner, software engineer… whatever. Chances are there’s a professional forum out there that’s relevant to you, that you can participate in to keep up with industry news, learn new skills, make contacts, and more.
* This is a tougher one, and maybe not doable for everyone: Think about the kinds of communities your customers are participating in, and see what’s out there. Note that the goal definitely isn’t so you can jump in and start to try to talk up your business and sell to them. Do not do this.
It’s more like becoming a participating member of the community and seeing what people, some of whom may be similar to your customers, are talking about, to see if there’s anything that can help your business.
Anyway, that’s what a tow truck drivers forum got me thinking about. If you have any ideas or experiences dealing with niche community forums, please leave a comment below.
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