The Community Roundtable

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

How I’m Using AI as a Community Manager

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By Alex Blanton, Principal Community Program Manager, Microsoft and member of The Network

This post is an excerpt from Alex’s article featured in the State of Community Management 2024 report. To read the full article download the free report here.

It’s now been almost two years since ChatGPT launched in November 2022, capturing people’s imaginations — and injecting enormous energy into the community I manage: Microsoft’s internal Artificial Intelligence & Machine Learning Community, which has nearly tripled in size in those two years.

This two-year mark is a good time to reflect on how I use AI in my work as a community manager. Even though I manage a highly technical community, I have a background in learning and development and am not a data scientist or a software engineer. I rarely find myself experimenting with technology for fun in my free time, I am interested in technology that can help me do my job better and more efficiently, ideally with a minimum investment of time and trouble.

Using AI as a Community Manager

Here is how I use AI in the flow of my job, cautions I have for those who choose to adopt it, and potential use cases I see in the future, but aren’t yet ready for our community. A caveat – I work at Microsoft, so my examples mostly involve using Microsoft technology, but most of the examples could be accomplished with other technologies.

AI Today

Synthesizing. In early 2023, one of the most eye-opening uses of generative AI came when we needed to craft a policy for our internal conference on whether and how conference submitters could use AI in writing their proposals. To draft the policy, I hosted a discussion in Microsoft Teams with our conference program committee. We recorded the session and afterwards I asked Teams Copilot to produce a policy based on the discussion. The result was really good! I made some small edits, ran it by the group again, and we published it.

Teams Copilot is also fantastic at producing meeting notes and assigning action items to participants. The first time I saw this in action (before it was widely released), I asked the person who distributed the action items if she had added that section to the meeting notes, and I was amazed when she told me that in fact Copilot had accurately identified not just the action items, but who to assign them to.

Teams Copilot is commonly used in our regular community calls. Often, after a call, a community member will instruct Teams Copilot to pull a list of all hyperlinks shared in a session out of the chat into a single list. This isn’t impossible for a human to do, but the AI can do it much faster. When we publish the recordings and slides for our sessions, we can include easily created AI-generated recaps.

Summarizing. We distribute surveys for our individual events and a yearly survey for our community. Now, with AI, we can summarize the survey verbatims, categorize them, and produce suggested actions. I still review the verbatims myself to make sure that the AI is not missing anything important, but using AI saves a lot of time in pulling everything together. Another way to use AI to summarize is to feed it longer articles you’ve written, and prompt it to produce Instagram-ready posts.

Drafting. When our community pivoted to focusing on generative AI in early 2023 our community members needed to learn a lot of new terms, such as hallucination, grounding, retrieval augmented generation, and chain-of- thought. We produced a terminology list, which I created by prompting Copilot to provide short, easy-to-understand definitions of these terms. Where I could validate the resulting definition myself, I did; and when I couldn’t validate, I found an expert who could.

The community program that our community reports into has integrated suggested prompts into templates they provide, such as the yearly strategy plan. In the Retrospective section, this prompt is included for us to use to draft the section:

Copilot prompt: Create a retrospective for our community that highlights our key achievements, challenges we’ve overcome, lessons learned, and areas for improvement based on our activities in the past year. The community is focused on [TOPIC]. Ask me questions until you have enough information to create a retrospective. Only ask one question at a time, wait for my answer, then ask your next question.

Using this prompt, then iterating with Copilot, we can write this section quickly while ensuring that it’s specific to our community.

Visuals. One of my community co-leads began experimenting with image-based AI models in 2023 and developed a visual identity for our community to use in collateral such as event announcements. Our “mascot” is a friendly- looking octopus who we have dubbed “Amelie.” A fun thing with Amelie is that because we are using generative AI to create images of her, we can iterate endlessly so that every announcement has a unique visual, but they all carry the same color scheme and overall look and feel.

Coding. At Microsoft’s annual Hackathon, our community sponsored a topic challenge: “AI Using Azure OpenAI.” One of my co-leads organizes this challenge, which attracts hundreds of entrants. He used Github Copilot to improve the Python code he runs that assigns entries to judges and creates the individualized Excel judging sheets that more than 200 judges will use. He knows how to code, but he’s also really busy, and using AI for this work saved him a lot of time.

For more AI insights from Alex download the full article in the State of Community Management 2024 report.

Nurturing a Thriving Community: Insights from UiPath

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Andreea Tomescu is the Senior Community Manager at UiPath. She shares insights into the dynamic UiPath Community, a thriving ecosystem that embodies the transformative power of automation and artificial intelligence. With over three million members worldwide, this community serves as a space for exploration, learning, collaboration, and success.

Goals of the UiPath Community

At UiPath, the importance of fostering an environment that prioritizes continuous learning and innovation is top of mind for the Community Team.

To this end, their online community is built on several key goals:

Nurturing a Thriving Community
  • Education and Skill Development: Through the UiPath Academy, forums, events, newsletters, blogs, and YouTube channels, ample resources are provided for individuals looking to enhance their skills in automation and AI.
  • Community Building and Engagement: The team actively engages members through community events, forums, and Champion programs, ensuring that everyone feels included and valued.
  • Product Development and Improvement: Feedback from the community is vital. Forums and Champion programs help gather insights that guide product enhancements and improvements.
  • Thought Leadership and Industry Influence: Through events, including the annual State of the Automation Professional report and various Champion programs, UiPath establishes its position as a leader in the automation space.

Celebrating the Outcomes

Over the past seven years, the growth of the UiPath Academy has been astounding, with user numbers skyrocketing from 260,000 to an impressive 1.7 million. The forum has also seen significant engagement, expected to reach 170,000 users in 2024—a tenfold increase!

In 2024 alone, UiPath engaged 376 Community Champions and organized 552 community events across 67 cities, generating over 178,000 RSVPs. The forum recorded 25,000 discussions, and 45 crowdsourced blog articles were published by community members. Additionally, the newsletter boasts nearly 30,000 subscribers, with an average open rate of 23% and a click rate of 16%.

Nurturing a Thriving Community

Advice for Building a Community

Creating a successful community program can be likened to nurturing a garden. It requires time, patience, and consistent care. Here are some key strategies to foster a thriving community:

  • Cultivate a Welcoming Atmosphere: Ensuring that every member feels valued and included is essential for community growth.
  • Encourage Active Participation: Motivating members to share their experiences, ask questions, and engage in discussions is crucial. A vibrant community flourishes when everyone is empowered to contribute.
  • Facilitate Knowledge Sharing: Creating opportunities for members to learn from one another and share best practices can be accomplished through workshops, meetups, or virtual gatherings.
  • Recognize and Reward Contributions: Showing appreciation for active contributors through public acknowledgment, awards, or exclusive benefits fosters loyalty and encourages ongoing engagement.
  • Maintain Consistency: Organizing regular events and ensuring consistent communication keeps members connected and engaged.

As UiPath continues to grow and evolve, its commitment to fostering an inclusive, engaging, and supportive community remains unwavering. By focusing on collective goals of education, engagement, and collaboration, the community empowers its members to thrive in the world of automation and AI.

Explore more community management insights and get new ideas from the State of Community Management report.

Nurturing a Thriving Community

Navigating Community Management Challenges

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Community teams are facing a notable decrease in staffing levels compared to years past. Organizations across various sectors are implementing budget cuts, even among those with best-in-class community programs. This situation suggests that while community teams are valued, they are not immune to economic slowdowns and the resulting necessity for spending reductions. Companies are prioritizing cost-saving measures, leading to staffing cuts in departments that have previously demonstrated their worth. Despite positive perceptions from executives about the importance of community initiatives, it appears that the decline in community team sizes reflects a broader, systemic response to the current economic climate.

Role Definition and Strategic Development

Last year, we encouraged community leaders to clearly define roles within their teams and seek HR approval for those definitions. It seems many took this advice to heart, as evidenced by the first-time drop in reports of “no definition/responsibilities informally filled” to single digits in our recent State of Community Management research. Furthermore, the percentage of respondents indicating that “most community roles are defined and approved by HR” increased to an impressive 84% among the best-in-class cohort, up from 80% in 2023. This progress is commendable; with well-defined roles comes the ability to defend community strategies, roadmaps, and resource allocation more effectively. Community teams continue to share their challenges, and while some remain consistent from year to year, the data reveals both intriguing trends and surprises.

Navigating Community Management Challenges

A Shift in Challenges

“Not enough resources” continues to be the predominant challenge for community teams in 2024, a trend that mirrors previous years. However, the overall concerns surrounding resource scarcity are on a downward trajectory. This trend might seem surprising given the noted decrease in staffing levels, yet community teams have historically excelled at “doing more with less.” This year’s respondents indicate a significant improvement in strategic maturity, as evidenced by a decrease in those reporting “unclear strategy or direction” as a challenge, dropping to 6% from 11% in 2023. In fact, among best-in-class programs, no respondents reported challenges in this area compared to the 3% who did last year.

Another encouraging sign is the trend of respondents reporting “no challenges.” This response is on an upward swing, with 5% of the overall cohort and 8% of the best-in-class segment indicating this outcome. This is a notable increase from 3% and 13% reported in 2023, respectively. As we look forward to 2025, the goal is to see both overall and best-in-class responses in the double digits. Achieving this ambitious target will require communities to lean into best-in-class guidance and continue their journey of strategic growth.

While community teams face challenges stemming from reduced staffing levels and budget cuts, there are also significant strides being made in role definition, strategic clarity, and overall resilience. By focusing on best practices and leveraging existing strengths, community teams can navigate these turbulent times and emerge stronger. As the community management landscape evolves, staying adaptable and resourceful will be key to thriving in the years ahead.

The Community Roundtable Recognizes Excellence in Community Management with Community Leadership Awards 2022

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The Community Leadership Awards 2022 recognize Zapier, Progress, Analog Devices, Inc., Microsoft, and Bain and Company, and other global organizations as leaders of innovation in community management.

Community Leadership Awards 2022

BOSTON, MA – October 31, 2022

The winners of the seventh annual Community Leadership Awards were announced Tuesday, October 25th, and included community leaders from organizations like Udacity, Microsoft, Zapier, and more. The Community Roundtable, the leading global resource for the community management industry, presented the awards at their first in-person Connect event since the COVID-19 pandemic began. As the recognized leader in community management research, training, and thought leadership, The Community Roundtable is uniquely qualified to evaluate and reward individual and organizational contributions to the industry.

Community Leadership Awards recognize excellence in online community management across five categories: Outstanding Community Program, Outstanding Community Dashboard, Outstanding Community ROI, Outstanding Community Design Element, and Best Recognition & Reward Program. Members of TheCR Network – the world’s premier resource for community professionals – were recognized in six individual categories. An additional award, Community MVP, was awarded based on peer nominations. In total, 11 organizations and individuals were recognized for outstanding efforts in community management.

“2022 proved to be the first year of a ‘new normal’ in the community management space,” said Jim Storer, Co-Founder and COO at The Community Roundtable. “The esteemed community leaders recognized provided invaluable vision and guidance for their organizations during a year full of change.”

The winners of 2022 Community Leadership Awards

Outstanding Community Dashboard 2022: Progress

The “Outstanding Community Dashboard” award recognizes a community dashboard that exhibits the most impressive and engaging design, sharing metrics and measurement in an impactful way that contributes to the overall narrative of a community program.

Outstanding Community ROI 2022: Udacity

“Outstanding Community ROI” award recognizes a community that has best demonstrated significant ROI for their business/organization through innovative community management practices.

Outstanding Community Program 2022: Microsoft

The “Outstanding Community Program” recognizes an exceptional community program that supports new member onboarding, including communications, training, mentoring, and more.

Outstanding Community Design Element 2022: Zapier

The “Outstanding Community Program” award recognizes a design element in an online community program that demonstrates meaningful engagement through thoughtful design.

Best Recognition + Reward Program 2022: Analog Devices, Inc.

The “Best Recognition + Reward Program” award recognizes outstanding community recognition, reward, and gamification programs that increase engagement

Community MVP 2022: Kayla Koch, Sr. Marketing Manager, Customer Community Programs, Egencia

The “Community MVP” award recognizes excellence in community management – including outstanding efforts, willingness to share with peers, achievements, and excellent community results.

Community Detective 2022: Claire Richardson, Enterprise Community Manager, Thomson Reuters

“Community Detective” awards the member who helps source group knowledge and expertise by regularly asking thoughtful and meaningful questions in TheCR Network.

Community Explorer 2022: Dan Simon, Director, Bain

“Community Explorer” awards the member who charts new territory in the community management industry. They take best practices, research, and community models to experiment and advance the industry.

Community Pack Leader 2022: Melissa Hockenberry, Community Program Manager, Datto

“Community Pack Leader” awards the member who consistently leads the most discussions, online, in-person, and on virtual calls, and shows leadership around a topic or initiative in TheCR Network.

Community Journaler 2022: Sam Pirok, Community Moderator, Extreme Networks

“Community Journaler” awards the member who works out loud the most regularly and with the most depth.

Community Power User 2022: Rachael Silvano, Community Operations Manager, Zapier

“Community Power User” awards the most active member in TheCR Network who contributes on a regular basis in a wide variety of ways, from sharing their expertise to supporting and encouraging other members.

Community Rookie of the Year 2022: Vee VoPham, Community Programs Coordinator, Pantheon

“Rookie of the Year” awards a Network member who has fewer than three years of industry experience, is new to TheCR Network, and is a power user – regularly collaborating and contributing inside the Network.

About The Community Roundtable: The Community Roundtable is the leading, global resource for the community management industry. The Community Roundtable helps organizations from Fortune 500s to start-ups and associations recognize, define and leverage the power of their communities. Through the industry’s only comprehensive community management research, The Community Roundtable provides training, events, and consulting to help companies recognize real ROI from their community programs. TheCR Network – the world’s premier resource for community professionals, connects hundreds of community practitioners worldwide for networking, professional development and support.

5 Ways to Put Your Community Members First

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Online customer communities solve many tangible business problems. They can increase case deflection, lower support costs, enable distance collaboration, and connect global audiences. Customer communities also empower their members by making them feel seen and heard.

Empowerment might not be on your radar as a community use case, but connecting with your audience can pay big dividends. When your members know you care the online relationship shifts from a transaction to an interaction.  A whopping 62% of customer communities report that their members feel seen and heard through online community initiatives. How can you make sure the communication in your communities is a two-way street?

Here are five ways we’ve found to put your members first – making them feel valued and contributing to long-term engagement and member satisfaction.

1 – Integrate members into your strategy

For a lot of you this is going to be a big, “yeah, obviously” but online community members often take a back seat to corporate initiatives when it comes to strategy. Create formal member input channels for member feedback, like ideation programs, suggestion boxes, and event old-fashioned contact us forms. Also critical?

Make them easy to use. You want the barrier to contributing to be very low. You can set up a regular cadence of surveys for members, either tied to your editorial calendar (ie. surveys happen in June and December every year) or tied to member milestones like anniversaries or engagement markers.

The most important step here isn’t collecting the data, it’s truly integrating member input into your strategic conversations. Regularly review ideas and bring member feedback to relevant conversations. Don’t forget to acknowledge member contributions to help members understand where and how you are using their feedback.

2 – Give members visibility

The first rule of member feedback is: give credit! Always mention the member who originated an idea/attach their name to the feature, both internally and externally. This both provides positive reinforcement for the behaviors you want to see in your community and encourages others to share their feedback and ideas. You can also give shoutouts in the community and internally at your organization for those that might not have ideas or feedback that is used but are taking their time to contribute.

You can also create a formal recognition program (often called superusers, advocates, etc.) to tie member contributions back into the strategy of the community. This can be gamification, badges, branded swag, or awards, and doesn’t need to be physical gifts. Banners/labels on a profile or special mentions during calls or events are great rewards that don’t tax your budget. You can learn more ideas for superuser programs here.

3 – Recognize your members

Regularly spotlighting members and their work is a low-lift way to increase individual visibility in your community. Member recognition and spotlight programs do double duty as an engagement tactic, as they recognize the work of members and provide a way for members to get to know each other.

Sharing member contributions publicly may not always be an option for you, depending on your community type and organization’s standards. However, if you have a community Twitter, Facebook group, or LinkedIn you can cross-post content there. Sharing about community members publicly gives some visibility to what they’re doing behind the scenes.

4- Listen!

Make sure you’re proactively connecting with members with regularly scheduled check-ins. Don’t wait for them to come to you! Pay attention to what members are talking about, asking for, and challenged by. You can then create content and design programming that applies to these situations, even if they didn’t ask for it explicitly.

You can say you’re listening, but unless members see the result of that, are you really? Be sure to act on what you see, hear, and are asked about. Be flexible and willing to act (often easier said than done!) but your willingness to implement ideas and enact changes turns your listening into tangible action.

5 – Be transparent

Regularly share your strategy and roadmap and then listen to your customer community’s input. If online community members do have a say in your strategy/roadmap, make sure you touch base with them regularly to keep them involved. Don’t make them feel like an afterthought. If they have taken the time to influence your work, understanding how their contributions are being implemented is gratifying. If members aren’t directly involved in your strategy/roadmap, you can still update them on progress and plans to help them feel more connected to the community program.

When possible, share the reason why decisions were made. This leads to telling them why you make the decisions you do which can help them understand why your community operates as it does. Be straightforward and explain whether and why something works or fails. This transparency leads to trust, and if members trust you, you have truly built a community.

(Roundtable) Unhappy Campers: Thought Gear for Handling Dissatisfied Customers

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Dealing with others’ dissatisfaction lists high among the least appealing of life’s to-dos. It’s often tricky, and uncomfortable, and no degree of effort can 100% guarantee a happy outcome. Plus, you can go right ahead and sprinkle an extra helping of stress on those shenanigans if it’s part of your job.

In this call, Jesse Cloutier will share handy mechanisms he’s assembled over a decade of administering to customer communities’ health. Whether you’re managing a team of support representatives or are down in the so-called trenches, these are approaches you can take to make handling upset customers less painful, that build trust, and are the lifeblood of your brand’s community.

(Roundtable) Remote Work isn’t Going Away – Finding Your Business Advantage

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Remote work saved many businesses during the last two years, and employees got used to flexible work schedules. So much so they don’t want to go back to the office. Yet many bosses are trying to order people “back to work”. How do you successfully navigate this new workplace landscape and make it work for your people AND your business? Join Mari Anne Snow to find out.

 

At her Remote Nation Institute, Mari Anne Snow is rewriting the rules of leadership in this new age of remote, distributed, virtual, flexible work. Her experience operationalizing and optimizing flexible work programs is practical, real-world, and results driven. Mari Anne’s latest book, The Remote Work Handbook outlines her practical, pragmatic approach to building and leading successful, resilient teams in today’s new, flexible workplace.

Ashleigh Brookshaw on DEIB in Community

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Ashleigh Brookshaw on DEIB in Community

Lessons from The NEW Community Manager Handbook is a limited-run podcast series, featuring the 21 community leaders showcased in the Handbook in conversation with Anne Mbugua.

Episode 11 features Ashleigh Brookshaw, Senior Manager – Customer Experience & Community at NICE CXone.

Ashleigh Brookshaw has spent her career building community in the insurance, association, and now software spaces, so she knows her way around the foundations of community management. Still, some things surprise her.

Ashleigh Brookshaw on DEIB in Community

Listen in as Ashleigh, and host, Anne Mbugua discuss how to build an authentic focus on diversity, equity, inclusion, and belonging in online community programs.

Listen to Ashleigh Brookshaw on DEIB in Community

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About Ashleigh Brookshaw

Ashleigh Brookshaw, M.A. is a detail-oriented and digital change enthusiast with expertise in online community engagement, cultural & transformative change management through DEI, and strategic digital marketing communications to drive business results.

She has worked with both internal and external audiences with a variety of organizations including nonprofits like Chicago Gateway Green, Fortune 500 companies like Allstate Insurance, professional associations like the American Society of Safety Professionals, and the SAAS industry like NICE CX One.

Ashleigh holds a B.A. in Advertising/Public Relations and minors in Marketing & Spanish from Loyola University Chicago. She also holds an M.A. in Multicultural/Organizational Communication with a concentration in Training & Development and a project management certificate from Depaul University.

About NICE CXone

At NICE we are passionate about removing the friction between companies and consumers, creating extraordinary experiences that build brand loyalty and create unbreakable bonds.

We enable organizations to address today’s consumer and employee expectations, by delivering effortless, consistent, and personalized digital-first experiences with CXone, the world’s leading cloud CX platform.

We are known for our innovation and comprehensive end-to-end CX approach, combining digital entry points, journey orchestration, smart self-service, prepared agents and complete performance suite, all embedded with our purpose-built CX Analytics, AI, and domain expertise.

About The NEW Community Manager Handbook

The NEW Community Manager Handbook features 21 profiles of community leaders sharing advice and ideas on everything from accessibility, hiring, strategy, gamification, defining the digital workplace, technology, and more. Each profile is paired with research from the State of Community Management reports and includes tactical advice for implementing what you’ve learned.

Learn from community management experts at Easterseals, Glencore, Microsoft, UKG, the World Bank Group, Analog Devices, Inc., AAMC, Zapier, Doctors Without Borders, and more.

5 Ways to Build Engagement

(Roundtable) How To Scale Your ERGs

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How do you scale an Employee Resource Group (ERGs)? “ERGs are employee-led groups whose main goal is to support employees who share similar characteristics or backgrounds.” Sometimes ERGs seem to fall short on the impact it has on internal communities. ERGs provide opportunities for employees to learn, share, and be heard…they increase awareness and establish safe spaces for meaningful conversations and much more.

Who is this call for:

  • You’ve started an ERG or have multiple ERGs
  • You’re wondering what’s next for your ERGs
  • You’re thinking of starting an ERG
  • You’re curious what ERGs are about

Claudia Teixeira on Centers of Excellence

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Claudia Teixeira on Centers of Excellence

Lessons from The NEW Community Manager Handbook is a limited-run podcast series, featuring the 21 community leaders showcased in the Handbook in conversation with Anne Mbugua.

Episode 9 features Claudia Teixeira, Senior Knowledge and Learning Consultant at the World Bank Group.

Claudia and Anne discuss what a center of excellence entails, the path to centers of excellence at the World Bank Group, and advice for implementing a center of excellence at your organization.

Listen to Claudia Teixeira on Centers of Excellence

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About Claudia Teixeira

Claudia Teixeira activates the development of strategic Communities of Practice (CoPs) and Collaboration Networks connecting key stakeholders to learn together and coordinate action to generate systems change. She co-developed the Communities Reinvented program at the World Bank (WB), an enterprise community program to support a vast ecosystem of more than 350 CoPs at the WB.

Over the years this team developed the WB signature framework for building CoPs and provided training, coaching, and advising services that helped the development of impactful communities in the WB as well as in other international organizations such as the IMF, diverse UN agencies, and global NGOs such as Doctors Without Borders and Save the Children. Communities Reinvented developed a network of more than 1,500 CoP practitioners at the WB, certified more than 300 Community Managers, and provided tailored support to more than 150 CoP teams.

This work generated multiple recognitions including Outstanding Center of Excellence for Communities of Practice, Outstanding Community Playbook, and Best CoP Recognition & Reward program. The CoP building methodology developed by Communities Reinvented is publicly available through the WBG Building Community a Primer and the WBG Community of Practice Toolkit. Claudia is currently guiding the development of the Social Entrepreneurship Community of Practice in Turkey, a national network connecting key stakeholders from the government, multilateral organizations, academia, and civil society to strengthen the social enterprise sector in the country.

About The World Bank Group

The World Bank Group works in every major area of development. They provide a wide array of financial products and technical assistance, and they help countries share and apply innovative knowledge and solutions to the challenges they face. Since 1947, the World Bank has funded over 12,000 development projects, via traditional loans, interest-free credits, and grants.

They offer support to developing countries through policy advice, research and analysis, and technical assistance. Their analytical work often underpins World Bank financing and helps inform developing countries’ own investments.

About The NEW Community Manager Handbook

The NEW Community Manager Handbook features 21 profiles of community leaders sharing advice and ideas on everything from accessibility, hiring, strategy, gamification, defining the digital workplace, technology, and more. Each profile is paired with research from the State of Community Management reports and includes tactical advice for implementing what you’ve learned.

Learn from community management experts at Easterseals, Glencore, Microsoft, UKG, the World Bank Group, Analog Devices, Inc., AAMC, Zapier, Doctors Without Borders, and more.

5 Ways to Build Engagement