The Community Maturity Model™’s Strategy competency tracks how business and community goals align to achieve results for both the community program and the organization as a whole.
Community strategy balances the business’ need to drive revenue or cost savings with the needs of community members. This ensures that your community program is contributing meaningfully to your organization while providing significant value for members. If you don’t have a community strategy, use our community strategy worksheet to get started.
Our State of Community Management 2022 research shows that community programs with an approved strategy continue to grow. 71% of this year’s total have an approved strategy compared to just 58% pre-pandemic (2020) and 66% last year.
Despite this positive trend, there were still respondents who reported “no approved strategy.” While this has dropped (43% total in 2020 to 29% in 2022), it’s still troubling. A community program with no approved strategy can’t correlate positive outcomes back to business goals. Everything from ROI to long-term member engagement stems from having an approved community strategy.
An approved community strategy is a critical step to develop a fully integrated community program.
Note: Approved and operational community strategies were relatively flat when compared with the prior year (54% in 2022 vs. 56% in 2021), but well ahead of pre-pandemic response (44% in 2020).
If you don’t have a community strategy in place, now is the time to start.
As an organization, we tend to err towards a simple strategy that can adapt and be responsive as the community matures. It can be daunting to get pen to paper and start drafting your strategy but we have two easy ways to get started.
First, complete our (free) Community Score assessment. This will take about 20 minutes. When you complete the Community Score you’ll receive your results via email, detailing where your community strengths and opportunities lie.
Next use the Community Strategy worksheet, found on page 15 of the 2022 State of Community Management report, to start your strategy outline. The worksheet helps you identify organizational and member goals for your community program. Then a short exercise helps you define the types of behavior change that are necessary for your community to meet those goals.
