The Community Roundtable

Empowering global community leaders with research-backed resources, training, and tools.

Best Practices from TheCR Network: Hosting an Ask Me Anything (AMA)

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By Shannon Abram, Relationship Manager at The Community Roundtable.

Recently we’ve caught the AMA (Ask Me Anything) bug. Maybe you’ve seen our AMA webinars with community managers? Our members are realizing the value of the AMA format for real-time community engagement, and have been sharing best practices for AMAs within their communities. I wanted to share a few of the best practices that TheCR Network members swear by when planning and executing a successful AMA.

Think big but start small.

The gold standard for AMAs are those found on Reddit (the site that popularized the format) which can attract thousands of engaged participants. Don’t be discouraged if your first few AMAs only attract a small fraction of that audience – every new programming event can take some time to get up and running smoothly.

AMA Ask Me Anything

The always delightful Bill Murray takes part in a Reddit AMA.

Set expectations. 

You’re on board with the “think big, start small” idea so now make sure you set that expectation with stakeholders and guests. You may have to host regular AMAs for a while before you will really see engagement pick-up (a month or more). It takes people awhile to get comfortable with something new like an AMA where they are expected to actively participate. Setting expectations is important for your guest, too. If you’re bringing in someone from outside your network, or even working with a community member, make sure they are comfortable, too. But don’t give up!

Be prepared to guide the conversation. 

Sometimes a new format can force people back into their shells.  Don’t be afraid to seed people to ask questions — a great tactic here is to see if your expert has colleagues within the community who might be able to direct questions toward him or her. Because of that existing relationship, those questions will feel very natural and comfortable and (hopefully) create a model for others.

Do you host AMAs or other alternative community programs to get people engaged in your community? You can find more Reddit specific tips here.  We’d love to hear your tips for hosting a successful AMA series.

Community Manager Spotlight Recap: AMA with Becky Scott, iTalent

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By Shannon Abram, Relationship Manager at The Community Roundtable.

Last week we hosted our third community manager AMA to great success! In case you missed it we’ve archived the entire Community Manager Spotlight AMA webinar here – and it’s definitely a don’t miss listen for community professionals. Becky Scott, Senior Community Engagement Manager at iTalent.

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About Becky:

Becky could be called a social media addict since she lives and breathes social media and community.In reality she’s quite passionate about bringing brands and their customers together —whether it’s on sites like Facebook and Twitter or company-owned properties like blogs or forums. Becky has a varied background that includes technical project management, marketing, editing, and writing. She also fancies herself a photographer at times, busily filling her hard drive with photos. She doesn’t really like piña coladas or getting caught in the rain, but does sing a mean karaoke song.

Becky has managed online communities for 15 years and social properties since Live Journal was a “thing” and Facebook required university emails. She honed her writing and editing skills on sites like AOL’s Aisle Dash, Ask Patty, Tree.com, and ucsd.edu. Two of her previous brand communities have won awards from Forrester, ComBlu, and Lithium Technologies.

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CM Spotlight AMA Archive: Patrick Hellen, CloudLock, Inc.

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By Shannon Abram, Relationship Manager for The Community Roundtable.

When we invited Patrick Hellen, the community manager for CloudLock, Inc  to be our October Community Manager Spotlight we knew we were in for a treat. When HE requested the webinar format be an AMA we knew it was ON. In this 30 minute event Patrick shares his unique perspective on community management while also sharing best practices for job hunting in the community management world.

We ran out of time at the actual AMA and Patrick didn’t get to answer all the questions we received. He was nice enough to send along his answers to even more community questions!

At this new role you’re building community from scratch. Tell us about that experience.

Overall, it was pretty straightforward, but it was intense. I started off by fully building an RFP, while I also built my inner support system. Before I had a single electron of community built, I had talked to, interviewed, and recruited people to help with set up, configuration, reporting, content creation, etc. This was actually the most important step – to fully ensure that I had a support system, and a pre bought in, internal group to help with the community once it was up and running.

From there, it really was just configuration and building. That ended up being a breeze once I had that system in place.

What are your community management resource must-haves?

Pocket – to save articles that I think are interesting and that I can reference later, Tweet deck – to keep in touch with peers and contemporaries, and a few communities – Salesforce’s success one, the CR, Community Geek, and Reddit.

What is the one thing you wish you knew when you were just starting out in community management?

That there’s a hell of a lot more data management involved than I expected, and that if someone doesnt have community built into their goals or job description, you can pretty much guarantee that when the push comes to shove, you get dropped off the TO-DO list pretty easily.

Thus, my initial support push at my current gig.

What do you do when your community goes “quiet?”

Panic.

Generally my initial push for quiet communities is to ask members for something. A subtle reminder that membership is not a receive info only type system, but does require their input and communication to survive.

So, Polls, questions, feedback requests, etc.

Check out the full archive for more:

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Patrick Hellen is the community manager for CloudLock, Inc – a cloud security company just outside of Boston, Massachusetts. He currently runs CloudLock Connect, a customer only collaboration community. Most recently he worked for Rapid7, where he managed their SecurityStreet Community.

He’s an unabashed Twitter addict, plays far too many video games, reads nearly constantly, and considers the internet to be mankind’s greatest invention. Follow him at @patrickch, and say hi.

Our Community Manager Spotlight Series is a behind the scenes look at the diverse world of community managers. View the complete archive here.

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Looking to connect with community peers like Patrick? Join TheCR Network and pull a chair up to the table of the smartest community professionals.

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Community Manager Spotlight: Ask Me Anything with Hillary Boucher

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By Shannon DiGregorio Abram, Relationship Manager at The Community Roundtable.

Last week we hosted our first AMA (ask me anything) webinar with Hillary Boucher – like your typical AMA we asked Hillary questions that our audience sent in (either ahead of time, or in the stream), but unlike a typical AMA this was not just a chat – we held a live webinar so Hillary could provide a little more color on some of the questions that were meatier. As usual we’ve archived the event here in case you missed it (or loved it so much you’d like to relive it again!)

In addition to the questions Hillary tackles in this webinar (including “What fun or creative ideas have you used to drive member engagement?” and “What do you do when your community goes “quiet?”) we had a handful of questions that we ran out of time and didn’t get to answer. I chatted with Hillary after the event and have her answers to these extra questions included below the archive:

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And now the bonus questions!

Q: What’s one lesson/aha you’ve learned from a member in the past year?

A: Be prepared for anything on a live virtual event with your community. I was facilitating a call and we lost our presenter. Poof! She was gone. I did my best try to stir up some conversation while we waited, but it was rough. One of the participants is an expert facilitator and she jumped in and requested that we go around the call and answer a question having to do with the topic at hand. Obvious to me in hindsight, but harder to implement without having thought it through head of time. I have now added “what will I do if I lose my presenter” to my list of preparations for calls!

Q: Who is one famous non-cmgr person (celebrity/historical figure/fictional character) you’d love to have as a member of the network or as a roundtable facilitator? 

A: Rosa Parks. I’ve always known her story, but was recently re-engaged with it while reading The Power of Habit for a book club inside the network. The author is talking about how to initiate large scale behavior change and points to her as an example because she wasn’t the first person to refuse to move seats in that place and time, but she was a well-networked person providing the optimal connections needed to trigger large wide scale behavior change. I’d love to have her in to discuss how she built and managed relationships with such a large network with so many diverse stakeholders because as community managers that’s exactly what we need to be doing.

Q: How do you see the future of community management?

A: The role is becoming more operationalized. We don’t need to play guessing games any more but can build off each others’ work and the research we are doing at TheCR. As we have a more experienced pool of community professionals moving into leadership roles we will see a more community minded approach coming from the C-suite which will allow community programs to be better funded, more successful, with bigger, built out teams. As a result I think the role will become more specialized based on the needs of the team.

Q: What features are current social media tools missing that could be useful for community managers?

A: I don’t manage social media tools professionally so I’m not the best person to ask that question though I imagine if we asked this one on Twitter we might get an earful. As far as community platforms: I would personally love to see a tool that was user friendly enough for a non-techie community manager to be able to customize with a built-in crm for member management and built-in customizable email notification system.

Q: What vendor/platform do you use for weekly “newsletter” – is it automated or is this manual via email?

A: Right now we use Constant Contact and it is a manual email I spend 2-3 hours on weekly. It’s also the main trigger we use to reach out members on a weekly basis.

A big thanks to Hillary for being our first AMA guinea pig! Stayed tuned for more AMAs in the future.

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Did you know that TheCR Network members work with all kinds of communities? In fact, about 25% work in either internal or external communities and 50% work with both! No matter what kind of community you work with membership in TheCR Network will save you time and improve the quality of your work by connecting you with peers, experts and curated information. Learn how joining TheCR Network can improve the work you do.

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Friday Roundup: Mid-summer Stretch

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By Shannon DiGregorio Abram, Relationship Manager at The Community Roundtable.thermometer

What a week! With temperatures soaring in the Boston area we set up camp in the AC and had some fun. In addition to hosting our very first community manager AMA (watch the blog next week for a recap and archive – plus bonus questions!) we talked about what aspiring community managers can do as they job hunt.

Next week we’ll be back with our monthly look at what’s going on behind the scenes in TheCR Network – and more! Have a great weekend!

How do I get started in community management? – This week we’re discussing what it takes to get started as a community manager. Whether you’ve just graduated and are looking to dive right in, or making a mid-career move into the world of community management you might be unsure of what the best plan of attack is.

Industry Interview: Vicki Tambellini, Enterprise Hive – As part of our ongoing series of expert interviews we’re excited to bring you excerpts from a chat wehad recently with Vicki Tambellini – President and CEO (and Founder!) of Enterprise Hive. Vicki shares some background on what’s happening at Enterprise Hive, shares some passionate words about her role and some inspiring advice.

From Employee to Advocate: How Whole Foods Mobilizes their Team to Share Brand Content – Your employees can help you reach an audience on social media that is 10x larger than what your brand is currently reaching. Many of your employees are willing, if not already sharing, your brand content.

Announcing FeverBee’s Sprint – This is shaping up to be a great community manager in San Francisco this Fall. Our very own Rachel Happe is on the line-up of speakers, along with community folks from Wikipedia, FitBit, AirBnb and more!

Content Marketing Best Practices for B2B Brands – Defining great content is no easy matter.To some CMOs or execs the definition may be similar to the Potter Stewart’s quote about obscenity: “I know it when I see it.”I wish I could tell you it is this easy. It’s not; but, here are critical benchmarks you should be aware of to create meaningful content.

It’s About the Customer: Using Customer Journey Maps Effectively – Customer Journey Mapping continues to grow in popularity among marketers and those responsible for improving the client experience for their companies. But moving from the customer journey map to the execution of a customer experience program can be challenging to execute, particularly in the B2B world where sales and service people execute the touch points that form a full customer experience.

How To Make the Business Case for Social Customer Care – A lot of great info in this deck by Blake Landau at Intel.

How working out loud circles could transform your organization There’s a growing chasm between what executives say they want for their organizations and the experience of their employees.

Lessons from the man who managed reddit’s community of millions – Reddit is considered one of the world’s leading news and social sites, with over 5.5 billion pages served to over 100 million unique visitors spanning 186 countries.

 New social media and community jobs:

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Community Managers – Declare Your Value!

Have you taken the Community Manager Salary Survey 2014 yet? Your insights into your role are invaluable as we document and define community manager best practices across industries. The survey is short (15 minutes) and we’d love to hear from you. Take the survey now.