Building a Community Strategy
Are you just getting started and looking to build your community strategy? We recommend using the Community Maturity Model (CMM) to help in building a community strategy. Below are some of the primary tasks related to each competency of the CMM:
Strategy
- Define the business objective
- Articulate the community purpose, from the members' perspective
- Assemble research to help build your business case
- Complete competitive audit - what competes for members' attention?
- Build a business case
- Calculate and secure investment required
Leadership
- Find or develop executive sponsors
- Determine what executive and stakeholder education is necessary
- Calculate and secure investment required
Culture
- Articulate cultural limitations and opportunities
- Assess willingness and aptitude for change
- Determine if specific training or change management initiatives are needed
- Calculate and secure investment required
Content and Programming
- Define content and programming needed to reach the business objective
- Determine gaps in available and required content and programming
- Calculate and secure investment required
Community Management
- Understand the community management approach needed, based on business objective and member characteristics
- Define roles and responsibilities
- Calculate and secure investment required
- Assign roles and responsibilities
Policies and Governance
- Assess current policies
- Amend or develop policies as needed
- Audit current governance - or lack thereof - of social media and collaboration environments
- Develop a governance model
- Calculate and secure investment required
Tools
- Determine required tools - software, applications, templates, and guides
- Audit current toolset
- Calculate and secure investment required
Metrics and Measurement
- Articulate primary value that will enable business goal
- Articulate secondary value
- Determine metrics for executives, operational management and tactical management
- Assess ability to capture metrics
- Build capacity to capture metrics, as needed
- Calculate and secure investment required
Additional perspectives on the value of community
- The Basics of Strategic Planning and Strategic Management, Balanced Scorecard Institute
- Online Community Strategy Framework, Lauren DeLong
- Online Community: Heart of Social Strategy, Lithium
- The Ultimate Framework for Planning an Online Community Strategy, Socious
- Online Community Manager Training
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More Community Management Resources
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Need community management resources? Check out our online training courses, our community benchmarks and TheCR Network - a private community for community pros.
