mPower Consulting

Who They Are

Charlotte Business Professionals (CBP) initially began as a way for founder Jason McKinstry to find new business opportunities while at his employer, Sogeti, as the Director of Sales. The group was founded on the social networking site for professionals, LinkedIn, as a listed group. It has since blossomed into the largest networking group in the Charlotte, NC area as well as in the top 1% of all non-alumni groups on LinkedIn.

Our Challenge

• The only asset presented at the time was the name of the group.
• The focus was to provide value to the members but there was no developed plan as to how.
• The web tool for the group, with over 3,000 members at the time, needed to be scalable and easy to manage with minimal support.

What We Did

This challenging project presented many opportunities to provide value and was delivered as follows:

• We developed a strategic outline as to what capabilities should be available to provide the most value to the members with the smallest requirement of administrative support.
• We constructed a web portal built on a powerful content management system that allowed the management of all members and content.
• The selected functionality we built into the system included:
  • Member registration and management
  • Member submitted informational articles complete with the ability to post comments
  • Event listings and registration including online payment processing via PayPal
  • Discussion forum allowing members to ask questions, discuss topics, and connect
  • Photo gallery to share pictures of events
  • Job listing board where members could post available positions
  • Business directory providing listings of member businesses
  • And an ad management system to post ads from member businesses

The Results

CBP has become recognized as a powerful force in the Charlotte business community and the events attract fantastic speakers and hundreds of attendees. The web portal now boasts over 1,000 active participants on the site and growing (with now over 5,000 members in the group) posting articles, job positions, photos, business listings, and conversing in the discussion forum; all of this being managed by two individuals using a simple administrative tool.