Marketers tasked with building online communities learn quickly that size matters. Which would you rather aim for: building one community of 50 members, or 50 communities each with one member?

Odds are good you’ll go for the one larger community. It’s a matter of survival, isn’t it? Your professional reputation, job security, and next quarter’s budget may hang in the balance.

Yet, when you design an influencer program, your focus shifts to the other end of the scale. Your goal becomes building 50 communities of one.

Influencers have their own networking patterns. An influencer program taps into those existing patterns as a way to join the conversation and meet the influencers.

If there’s no opportunity for influencers to converge naturally, an influencer program can step in and create a group. This might take the form of a council, an advisory board, or an exclusive networking dinner held in conjunction with an industry event.

Either way, the group is not the end goal. It’s the individuals within the group that matter.

The goal is building 1-to-1 relationships with influencers in the group, so that they get to know your company and want to talk about it.

In the world of influencers, 50 communities of one will outperform one community of 50 every time.