What is community strategy?
A successful community strategy integrates social tools and methods with business goals and processes. A good community strategy also aligns an organization’s goals with member needs setting you up to succeed in both keep engagement high and provide ROI.
We recommend using the Community Maturity Model to help in building a community strategy. Below are some of the primary tasks for building a community 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
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
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
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
Further Reading on Community Strategy:
Community Strategy Needs Resources |
Community strategy is YOUR job |
Building a Community Strategy |
