We’ve tried a few different things over the years.
We’ve pooled resources to participate in a tradeshow at our local Small Business Forum, and to attend a Sharing Economy Event.
It’s hard to measure the impact of our presence, but for a few hundred dollars we talked to a thousand potential new members in just one day.
Most had never heard of cow-working…
Plus it was nice to have a team of people to help staff the booth 
I happen to think our website is actually the most effective tool.
We built it ourselves and volunteer to maintain it, so the cost is pretty minimal.
Now when you search for Coworking in Toronto, you find ALL of the coworking options via the collective website, rather than just a few of them that may not suit you.
We all notice a lot of traffic being referred to the individual spaces from that site.
We also use social media to advertise and promote coworking in general (twitter etc).
When an article gets published, there are 15 of us sharing it and talking about it, rather than just one space.
We have done a few print runs of our collective postcards and these are also extremely cost effective and helpful.
Every space in Toronto has them available on site.
When someone arrives for a tour of our space, I always give them a collective postcard so they know who we are and that there are many coworking options in Toronto.
That way if the member is not right for your space or the space is not right for this member, they won’t leave feeling that coworking isn’t right for them.
They will know there are many options to choose from, and that there is a community out there for them.
With the postcard, they get referred back to the collective website once again - our central point for collective communications.
Although we’ve considered larger campaigns, to date we do most things with volunteers or on a pretty minimal budget.
For example: collaboratively writing press releases, organizing a local Coworking Week.
It’s not necessarily the amount of money that makes an impact, it’s the collaborative effort.
Leverage your minds, your staff and your volunteers as well as your wallets
Ashley
···
On 8 October 2014 00:27, Ashley Proctor [email protected] wrote:
When we launched our first spaces, there were few others in the market.
We spent the majority of our time explaining the concept, a lot of effort on education and outreach.
As more and more spaces launched in our city, we definitely all began to benefit from the mainstream recognition, as well as the new opportunity to collaborate with each other.
You have a choice to ‘compete’ or to ‘collaborate’.
I feel our unique coworking communities in Toronto have a lot in common, and a lot to offer each other in terms of support, advice and experience.
I believe our Coworking Toronto and Coworking Ontario collectives are similar to this google group - we genuinely like each other and want each other to succeed.
We are all fiercely independent, but I think we all gravitated towards participating in a regional collective because were all facing similar challenges, and were looking for other like-mided friends, mentors and colleagues to connect with in Toronto. The same way our members want to connect.
We can also benefit from collective advertising (the concept rather than the space) and our members benefit when we leverage collective bargaining power to create programs like COHIP.
We might have different missions and mandates and markets, but we can agree that we all want our members to be happy and healthy and productive.
Since coworking spaces in Toronto and Ontario began collaborating, we’ve seen a steady increase in coworking awareness, and community participation in our events.
Since launching a collective website, we’ve seen more traffic, more tours, more media attention and more members.
Our spaces are all better spaces and our communities are all stronger communities because we share best practices.
And yes, the market is growing along with the number of active spaces.
It’s a beautiful cycle of supply and demand.
If coworking is truly the future of work as we claim, I can’t see a saturation point here anytime soon…
Choose to be a champion and a collaborator rather than a competitor when you arrive, and introduce yourself as such.
Then start to imagine what’s possible if you work together.
Ashley
Ashley Proctor
Creative Blueprint & Foundery
www.creativeblueprint.ca
www.foundery.is
The Foundery Buildings
376 Bathurst Street
Toronto, Ontario, Canada
On 2014-10-07, at 6:50 PM, Aaron Cruikshank wrote:
One perspective to consider is what is the total addressable market? Vancouver has many coworking spaces and I get asked often by the media if I think the coworking market in Vancouver is saturated.
By my math, if you consider every micro entrepreneur as a potential user, Vancouver is addressing around 1.5% of the total addressable market. Far from saturated, surely.
Yet some of these spaces are struggling to fill desks. The problem isn’t the size of the market - it’s lack of knowledge in the potential market about coworking.
More spaces = more potential awareness. There must be some critical mass in a city or region that pushes coworking from obscurity to mainstream recognition.
Thoughts?
Aaron Cruikshank
Principal, CRUIKSHANK
Phone: 778.908.4560
email: [email protected]
web: cruikshank.me
twitter: @cruikshank
book a meeting: doodle.com/cruikshank
linkedin: linkedin.com/in/cruikshank
On Oct 7, 2014 3:25 PM, “Jonathan Markwell” [email protected] wrote:
This has been a common question over the years in my relatively small city (Brighton, England population 273,400). I’ve just written about it and created a checklist for future community founders to consider here:
http://jonathanmarkwell.com/2014/10/06/multiple-coworking-spaces/
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Jonathan Markwell
Follow my adventures in space, time and code: http://jot.is/sustainablyindy
The Skiff: Brighton Coworking Community http://jot.is/sharing-space
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On 3 March 2013 18:20, Cameron Goldsmith [email protected] wrote:
Curious how everyone feels about cities that have multiple coworking spots… Do you think this is generally a good idea? I know competition is supposed to be good for the market, but what if the city is small??
Im asking because I’m looking to relocate soon. The city Im interested in, St. Louis, already has a coworking spot. Ive been looking and researching to open one for awhile now, but am now hesitant after finding out StL has a fairly large spot already.
Do you think this is something that is sustainable, or do you feel like I would be stepping on the toes of a community catalyst by opening a new business doing a very similar thing?
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Jonathan Markwell
Follow my adventures in space, time and code: http://jot.is/sustainablyindy
The Skiff: Brighton Coworking Community http://jot.is/sharing-space
Coder Founders: Digital Product Consultancy http://jot.is/investing-time
CoGrid: Meeting Room Booking Software http://jot.is/writing-code
+44 (0)7766 021 485
skype: jlmarkwell | twitter: http://twitter.com/jot