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3 Quick Community Wins for February

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Check these three easy community management to-dos off your list and set yourself up for community success.

We are delighted that in recent years February has become a time to practice love in all its forms. If you’re into all that Cupid stuff? Awesome! But the rise of Galentine’s Day, along with increased calls for self-care is what really warms our hearts. Our quick wins for February focus on online community love.

1- Put your oxygen mask on first.

If you aren’t taking care of yourself, can you really do your best job taking care of other people in your online community? No. So, February is a great time to reflect on the parts of your online community management role that help you thrive. Thinking about your role and your future isn’t selfish; knowing yourself and where you excel and where you want to grow is only good for your community.

If you aren’t familiar with our Community Skills Framework, it’s a great way to assess your strengths and identify areas for growth and areas for outsourcing. You aren’t going to be great at every single community thing and that’s ok (more than okay – normal!) Identifying the places you should ask for help, hone your skills, and better use resources will make you happier at work and more productive. This short video walks you through all 50 skills in community management and helps you prioritize your time.

2- Show Your Superusers Some Love

Every online community – internal (employee community) and external (custom community) – has a handful of dedicated members who contribute more than the rest. Whether you have a formal superuser, advocacy, or membership leadership program, or informally track and interact with these members, now is a great time to show them some love.

5 Ways to Show Super Users Love in Your Online Community:

1- Swag. Everyone loves free stuff, and it doesn’t have to be an expensive investment. A hand-written note and some stickers go a long way with your superusers.

2- Shout-Outs. Highlight these members in the online community with a quick mention. Feeling seen and appreciated by online community managers makes super users feel valued.

3- Online Badges. If your online community uses badges, create a special badge to identify your superusers. This will also highlight your superusers as a resource to new members who may not understand how to engage when they join your online community.

4- Personally thank active contributors. It seems simple, but it helps increase member satisfaction.

5- Give them a sneak peek at an upcoming program, feature, or initiative. You’ll get valuable feedback and your superusers will love feeling like they got a behind-the-scenes look at something before everyone else does.

How to Start a Super User Program

If you don’t already have a superuser program in place you might consider putting that on your 2022 to-do list. Our State of Community Management research shows that when a member of an Average External Community shifts from a passive recipient of information to an active participant, their activity increases by more than 10x. Their ROI – the return they get for the time they invest – increases by over 200%. This makes investing in advocacy and member leadership programs a no-brainer.

This case study from Mimecast highlights how their community team nurtures their superusers, resulting in the growth of customer participation over 3x in two years.

3- Encourage Your Community to Say Thanks

Everyone is tired. Everyone is burnt out. Everyone is over being on Zoom. Ok, maybe not everyone, but definitely a lot of people. This last quick win is as much for your sanity as for the good of your community. Find a way this month to bring out the good people are feeling.

Maybe it’s a shout-out thread where members can recognize people or ideas that have inspired them recently. Maybe you start a gif-off channel in slack where people can share thank yous accompanied by delightful memes. Maybe you start an appreciation discussion where you tag three people who have made your work life easier/better/more fun/less crazy and ask them to tag three people, and so on.

A wise man (ok, it was Ferris Bueller) once said “Life moves pretty fast. If you don’t stop and look around once in a while, you could miss it.” Use February as an excuse to slow down and show some love.

If you have other ways you like to show appreciation in your community we would LOVE to hear them! Please share in the comments below, in our free Facebook Group with over 1500 members, or tag us on twitter @thecr.

PS – We love you. After 14+ years in the community business, we know that we are only as successful as our community. You’re killing it out there, and we’re proud of you. Stay strong!

The Evolution of Customer Communities

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In 2021, online communities are table stakes for brands that want to connect and engage with their audience.

Community professionals are now handed the task of not just connecting with a brand’s audience, but deciding what kind of engagement is needed, and how to build a long-term strategy to foster and maintain that activity.

Today, customer communities typically fall into one or more of three core categories: support communities, brand marketing communities, and innovation communities.

We partnered with Khoros to explore these three community types, and to look at how community professionals can make their customer communities more valuable to their brands.

This ebook takes new, unpublished data from the State of Community Management 2021 and looks at how online customer communities contribute to both audience engagement and satisfaction (like higher CSAT scores) and how they make a meaningful impact on the organizations broader goals.

The Evolutions of Customer Communities
The Evolutions of Customer Communities
The Evolutions of Customer Communities

In addition to this new, externally-focused data, we profile three innovative online communities, that are using their customer interactions to drive advocacy, empowerment, and innovation.

Download your copy of this State of Community Management eBook for free.

Building Effective Content Programs for Your Online Community

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Content and programs are the lifeblood of a successful online community program. They are often seen as one collective entity, but they serve two different roles for communities. Content gives people a reason to visit (and return to) an online community, while programs create opportunities for members to connect with one another.

In previous editions of our State of Community Management research, we’ve noted that aligning your content and programs with your online community strategy is critical to becoming a best-in-class online community. Content and programs need to reflect the shared value of community, and a program plan tied more closely to your online community strategy can generate the most valuable member engagement behaviors.

Here are three ways you can use content and programs to improve your online community:

Integrate content and programs into your strategic online community plan

Despite the importance of consistent content and programs in a community strategy, a staggering 60% of respondents report at best they have “an informal schedule” for content and programs in their community. In the four years since we last asked this question the needle has barely moved in this area when 59% of respondents reported the same level of content and program planning. While responsiveness to short-term member needs is important, we recommend being intentional about your content and program plan and connecting it to your community strategy and annual roadmap.

Don’t go it alone – deputize your members, advocates, and peers!

One of the most consistent responses in the State of Community Management 2021 is that community managers need more resources. While we don’t doubt that this is the case in general, we’re enthused by their response to the challenge. They’re enlisting others, both in and outside the organization, to help with their community programs. While we’d love to see this happening more broadly, leaning on members, advocates, and peers in your organization to assist in producing or facilitating community programs is a best practice that needs to become more widespread. The fact that nearly 25% of respondents report no activity in this area suggests we still have a long way to go before this is a standard approach for community practitioners.

The beginning is a very good place to start


For the last few years, we’ve talked about the importance of new member onboarding programs and it sounds like you’ve listened. Respondents report that this is their top community program, with nearly 60% including them in the mix. Newsletters, virtual discussions, and virtual workshops and training (not surprising based on the pandemic) are also relatively common in this year’s sample. It’s interesting to look back to the last time we asked this question (2017) and compare the results.

We see no real increase in the prevalence of these programs in the collected responses, which shouldn’t be surprising given content and program planning clearly isn’t a priority for the majority of respondents (see above). But it is surprising given community programs are the single best way to introduce members to one another, develop trust, and participate in high-value engagement behaviors. We recommend you review this list of common community programs and consider adding them to your plan if they’re aligned with your overall strategy.

Need more ideas on how to improve your online community using content and programs? Check out this webinar with community leader Kelly Schott.

Want more strategies for global community building? Download the State of Community Management 2021.

Ashleigh Brookshaw and Meghan Bates on Change Management

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Conversations with Community Managers - Ashleigh Brookshaw and Meghan Bates

Join the community experts at The Community Roundtable as they chat about online community management best practices with a wide range of global community professionals. Topics include increasing online audience engagement, finding and leveraging executive stakeholders, defining and calculating online community ROI and more. 

Episode #68 features Ashleigh Brookshaw, ASSP and Meghan Bates, Personify.

In this episode of the podcast, Ashleigh and Megan share their perspective on the intersection of change management and community management, how to thrive as a mighty team of one, and how community champion programs can increase engagement and member satisfaction.

Listen Now:

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

Subscribe: Spotify | RSS

Find more episodes of Conversations with Community Managers.

About Conversations with Community Managers*
To better reflect the diverse conversations our podcast covers we’ve changed the name of our long-running series to Community Conversations.
Community Conversations highlights short conversations with some of the smartest minds in the online community and social business space, exploring what they’re working on, why they do what they do, and what advice they have for you.
These episodes are a great way to begin to understand the nuances of community strategy and management.
Each episode is short (usually less than 30 minutes) and focuses on one community management professional.

Nurturing Super Users to Cultivate Success

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Many community managers don’t want to overburden their most active members with extra duties that could make them feel used or make them less active in the community. They don’t have the budget or authorization to provide needed training and resources for advocates (or superusers, power users, top contributors, champions, etc.) to be effective in leadership roles. Or they feel like they don’t have the bandwidth themselves to give structure to an advocacy program on top of the rest of their own duties.

But engaging your advocates to take on more leadership responsibilities can be a mutually beneficial relationship for you and your community members.

Community Management Case Study- Nurturing Super Users

Empowering your advocates by giving them real opportunities not only helps you, but it also helps them grow and ultimately provides greater benefits to your organization. It’s an untapped investment that can reap real rewards for both your organization and your key members.

The Mimecaster Central “Legends” Program rewards the most active community champions who continue to offer Legendary assistance to their peers in their support community.

Learn how the Mimecast community team nurtures these super users to cultivate customer success and increase member satisfaction in this case study. Download the Mimecast case study.

Harnessing the Super Power of Community Advocates

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If you don’t already have a superuser program in place you might consider putting that on your 2022 to-do list. Our State of Community Management research shows that when a member of an Average External Community shifts from a passive recipient of information to an active participant, their activity increases by more than 10x. Their ROI – the return they get for the time they invest – increases by over 200%. This makes investing in advocacy and member leadership programs a no-brainer.

With a global ecosystem of more than 4,000 customers globally, including 33 of the Fortune 100, Carbon Black knew they needed a way to recognize and reward their most dedicated advocates in a way that would both show the value of their contribution and also benefit the wider security community.

Learn how Carbon Black harnessed the power of their community advocates in this community case study.

Download the Case Study

Community Manager case study - community advocates

Who knows more – your community manager or your members?

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By Ted McEnroe, Director of Research and Training

I was recently reading a post from Joe Cothrel on the Lithium blog as they celebrated their 8th anniversary of their community (about 800 in human years, I think.) In it, he noted eight community lessons they had learned  – all of which were great but one of which, “Your Superusers Are In It for the Long Haul,” really resonated with me as I headed out to join a workshop to build a community management training curriculum.

We often focus on the role of the community manager as the wise soul at the heart of the community. But in an environment where community managers frequently change jobs and move up the ladder, the community manager is often one of the newest members of the community they manage.

First I wanted to get some data – we ask about community age in the State of Community Management survey, and we ask about the time community managers have spent in their role in our Community Careers and Compensation survey, but we don’t ask both at the same time. (I might change that for 2017.) However, we can say this:

The average age of a community in the 2016 SOCM survey is about 5 years, and 54 percent of communities have less than 3 years of existence.

The average time in role for a community manager in the 2015 CCC is 2.1 years, and 81 percent of community managers have held their role for 3 years or less.

That gap suggests a few things for communities – and often these are things that community professionals take into account. They know they are often coming into an existing culture, which means figuring out what’s going on, and how to best apply management skills to improve engagement.

But it’s easy for a young community manager to assume after a few months that they understand the culture, and work on an assumption that the community in 2016 is “the way it’s always been.” The thing is, a lot of your community members know better, and a lot of your superusers will still be carrying the torch for your community long after you have moved on to new roles and organizations.

With that in mind, here are some tips:

  • Connect with key members of your community as soon as you can on starting a new role, and listen to them. Earn their trust. Understand their perspectives. Take a lot of notes.
  • About 6 months after you start in a role, take out those notes from the initial interviews, and reflect on your initial conversations again. How does your read of the notes differ from what it was when you started?
  • If you are in a long-running community without an advocacy program, start one. Tap into the expertise of members – for ideas, programming and a better understanding of the community as a part of the organization (when that applies). You’re scaling yourself, engaging members and much more.

This doesn’t mean a new community manager shouldn’t come in with new ideas and a determination to improve community. That’s why you were hired. But it’s equally important to know the context into which you are coming.

Santayana famously said that “Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.”  For new community managers, learning about the history of your community may play a key role in moving it ahead.

 

Give real responsibilities, and real rewards, to your community advocates – SOCM2016 Fact #6

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By Ted McEnroe, Director of Research and Training

They like you. They really really like you. Your community advocates. They are the ones you love to see – they answer questions and cheer you on and by being engaged they give you a sense that your time and efforts aren’t going unnoticed.

But are you giving them what they want – or getting enough in return?

Our research suggests the answer is “probably not,” in both cases.

In the State of Community Management 2015, we found that while most communities recognized key contributors in some way – with badges and swag most often – they often failed to provide real, business-driven rewards for community advocates, such as opportunities to test products, feedback opportunities and access to executives.

In 2o16, that still holds true – but we built upon the question by asking what communities are asking their advocates to do, as well. While a large majority of communities said their advocates answered questions, half or fewer said they took part in product testing or feedback, moderation, programming or member recruitment.
SOCM2016_Fact_#6_Advocates

There are many understandable reasons for this. Many community managers don’t want to overburden their most active members with extra duties that could make them feel used or make them less active in the community. They don’t have the budget or authorization to provide needed training and resources for advocates to be effective in leadership roles. Or they feel like they don’t have the bandwidth themselves to give structure to an advocacy program on top of the rest of their own duties.

But here’s why you should engage your advocates to take on more leadership responsibilities.

  1. Advocates help you scale yourself as a manager.Getting advocates to take on a greater leadership burden frees you up to focus on more strategic opportunities, which will in turn enhance their own experience as community members. If you can moderate fewer threads and instead develop more robust programming – it’s a win-win.
  2. Today’s advocates are tomorrow’s community leadersThis may not be true in every use case, but in many communities, the next generation of community managers can be found in the ranks of the current members. Dedicated advocates can provide future leadership – and giving them responsibilities now prepares them for it.
  3. Expanding roles can strengthen advocates’ dedicationYou know the many versions of the quote, “If you want to understand someone, walk a mile in her shoes.” That’s the premise here. Giving advocates a greater first-hand understanding of the operations and duties of community management gives them insight into how decisions get made – and in difficult times, those allies are critical to have.
  4. It helps justify (and can expand) investment in advocacy, too.We’ve highlighted the need to improve rewards for advocates already. Giving your advocates rewards they deserve is a balance. Making the case for greater rewards for advocates is easier when they have legitimate responsibilities as well. But when asking for investment from the organization, you need to demonstrate the value of the program to the organization.

The bottom line is this: Empowering your advocates by giving them real opportunities not only helps you, it helps them grow and ultimately provides greater benefits to your organization. It’s an untapped investment that can reap real rewards for both your organization and your key members.

We can’t wait to hear what you think – tag your thoughts with #SOCM2016 to join the conversation!

Are you a member of TheCR Network? Download the research inside the Network here.

Scale yourself as a community manager to take community to new heights

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By Ted McEnroe, Director of Research and Training, The Community Roundtable

A female climber on a steep rock face viewed from above with the belayer in the background. The climber is smiling at the camera. Shallow depth of field is used to isolated the climber.

Have you ever met a successful community manager who says they wish they had more to do?

Me neither. Community managers wear multiple hats, work with myriad stakeholders and are expected to understand everything from business models to technical support – often working alone or (maybe) with part-time or volunteer help. 95 percent of communities in The State of Community Management 2016 had some sort of dedicated community management staff, and 75 percent had a full-time staff member. But only 31 percent of communities say they had a team of community managers, and even in communities with tens of thousands of members, community teams are the exception, not the rule.

How do you survive? Our research highlights some real opportunities to scale yourself, ease your workload and empower your members.

Start a Champions Program

SOCM FactEvery community manager knows how important key members are to keep the community vibrant and engaging. But not everyone is giving your advocates the training and responsibility to tackle real tasks in the community. TheCR Network has a champions program that taps into the interests and expertise of members and gives them real opportunities to develop their skills and share knowledge. Their skills expand the knowledge base in the community, and help take the content burden off the community manager.

Give Your Advocates Real Responsibilities, and Real Rewards

Advocacy programs are usually good about recognizing community stalwarts, but sometimes fall short of giving them other benefits and responsibilities. Nearly 90% give their advocates visual recognition in the community and 74% give them access to the community team – but many stop there. Best-in-class communities build beyond mere recognition with special opportunities to give feedback and gain access to executives, and they are also more likely to expect advocates to answer questions, test new products and organize programs.

Empower Your Members

Your advocates are key, but they’re by definition just a subset of your members. Don’t forget about “the 99%” in your community, either!

Ask their opinions: The research demonstrates that communities with formal processes for member feedback have substantially higher engagement – and finding out what’s not working for members can help you focus on the things that members really value.

Put them in charge: Best-in-class communities excel at getting members and internal experts to lead programming, not just community managers. And communities with member-led programming get higher engagement, too.

The bottom line is this: Good community managers manage their communities. Great community managers enable their communities. It’s an investment in the short-term, but worthwhile for your long-term community – and personal – health.

And we’ve got the research to prove it.

Check out the stats and gain valuable insights in The State of Community Management 2016 – available for free download now! And be sure to see how our other research can help!

Building a Conflict Resistant Community

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Brand AdvocatesBy Amy Turner, The Community Roundtable

Building a Conflict Resistant Community, Or Turning Brand Haters into Brand Advocates

Every conflict today has the potential to go viral, which is why crisis management plans are imperative for brands and organizations – especially those with active and engaged communities. Members of TheCR Network spoke with Jason Dykstra, a Conflict Resolution Specialist, Mediator and Facilitator with Absolution Mediation who specializes in helping brands deal with irate customers in a way that takes them from a place of passionate dislike to actively engaging in a positive way. He shared some fascinating insights that were particularly helpful when thinking about crisis management in a community setting.

Understand that Individuals Bring Their Personal Background to a Conflict

When a person has an experience with a company they are bringing their individual background, heritage, education, prior experiences and even what happened that day to the situation. For the person attempting to resolve the conflict, it is wise to understand this best practice as a way to more readily diffuse the situation. 

 Recognize that Every Conflict in Today’s World Happens in Real Time

Organizations are dealing with passion in the moment which is creating a very different atmosphere and role for conducting business. In a passionate online exchange, that person may not have had the opportunity to cool down yet and could vent that frustration via social media. These individuals are waiting to be heard and responded to, which really changes the dynamic for how a situation needs to be handled. no trolls allowed

Distinguish Between a Troll and a Negative Comment

Trolls have the intention to hurt with no value-add in their comments. However, in a negative comment there is a nugget of truth that can offer valuable information if one is willing to learn from it. Make sure you take the time to distinguish between the two.

Think Like a Hostage Negotiator

Jason shard highlights from an article written by the The Harvard Business Review, describing hostage negotiators within the context of social media:

Shift from Judgment to Curiosity: The more that we are able to be curious about the situation, the less judgmental we will be towards an individual’s comments. This allows us to better engage with the person, diffuse the anger and get to the bottom of the real reason behind the conflict.

Understand the Difference between Monitoring and Listening: Jason views monitoring as a passive activity. Listening, however, is a very active task. Truly understanding the problem requires active listening vs. automatically assuming that we know what the problem is based on the background that we bring to the situation.

the-iceberg-effectThe Iceberg Effect: We only truly see the “tip of the iceberg” in any given interaction and the real size is what cannot be seen under the water’s surface. In other words, there is a great deal that we do not see when we are dealing with a conflict.

Understand Positions and Interests: People often come to a conflict situation shooting for the stars in terms of what they hope to gain and then settling for the moon. That means that the conflict negotiator should be asking the right questions through proper listening. The idea is to understand the other person’s needs and wants and talk about what is behind these positions so a common ground can be reached.

Build Relationships: The idea is to build trust and rapport with the person stirring up conflict. The more trust has been established and the greater the rapport, the more willing the person will be hearing the words “no” if it comes down to that being the only solution.

Remember, it is how an individual reacts to the conflict that determines either a positive or a negative outcome. The more that we deal with conflict, the better we will become at dealing with it. Do you have tried and true best practices for building a conflict resistant community? We’d love to hear your ideas!

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