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This morning during day two of Great Ideas, staff from the International City/County Management Association and Alliance for Innovation shared how they partnered to create the Local Government Knowledge Network in their session "Open Door Partnership to Drive Content." The Knowledge Network allows members of ICMA and the Alliance to utilize the same content and resources and interact with each other, plus nonmembers, who sign up online. One of the aspects of the Network allows users to create profiles and tag interests, communicate with each other via a wall (similar to Facebook), and create user-generated groups and topics.

Since its launch in May 2010, the Knowledge Network has more than 4,200 new profiles, questions and wall posts added daily, and high traffic in topic areas such as leadership and smart growth and sustainability. Members are excited about the project, and ICMA and the Alliance view it as an iterative process, with hundreds of features and fixes still in the works and plans for a mobile version to come.

So how did ICMA and the Alliance create buzz for their members to engage within the Knowledge Network? Presenters Brian Durr, CIO, ICMA, Tracy Miller, Florida regional director/learning coordinator, Toni Shope, CAE, East regional director, and Karen Thoreson, president, the Alliance for Innovation, offered up their marketing strategies:

Joint marketing plan. ICMA and the Alliance want a consistent message.

Educate staff. Staff was taught how to use it and its functions so they could help users as the Knowledge Network launched.

Beta tests. The organizations used feedback to make fixes.

Staggered launch. The rollout took place over a weeklong period.

Virtual training sessions for users. The training sessions show users how to access and update various parts of the site. In the beginning, the virtual training sessions were weekly and now they occur each month. The registrant numbers for these training sessions have increased over time.

Regular communication with users. Certain features are spotlighted and e-blasts include questions that users can respond to in discussion forums with, follow-up responses in the following month's e-blast.

Ask active members to engage. The greatest challenge in this request is that ICMA and the Alliance's members are busy, but will take the time to post on the group wall. Less clicks to get to where action must take place is key, so sending members a direct link to a particular dialog is a strategy they are using to encourage participation while driving traffic to deeper areas of the site.

The presenters pointed out that creating a partnership such as this one is a commitment. There's no turning back when you decide to partner to share content, but so far both organizations have successfully kept their branding while boosting their content for members.