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The Role of Communities in Innovation

February 21, 2020 By Rachel Happe

Communities play a critical role in innovation. Whether in the middle ages or now cities, in particular, are critical to innovation. Cities are a type of community that produces a high cadence of collisions between a diverse set of individuals. This collision of people and ideas allows people to converge on what is meaningful and interesting and then to find ways to scalably address the opportunities that arise from that meaning. The obvious current example is the innovation generated in Silicon Valley.

However, in the conversation around online communities and innovation, the connection to innovation is not as clearly understood. A lot of the discussion is focused on ideation and input. As someone with a background in innovation and product management, this represents only a tiny portion of innovation – and a tiny portion of the opportunity.

Emergence in the White Space

To better understand the connection, let’s consider how innovation happens. The front end of innovation starts with a feeling; a frustration about what is or excitement about what could be. It’s vague and unformed. These feelings are best expressed through art because they are still unarticulated. To me, this provocation to develop new sensibilities or understanding is the crucial difference between art and graphics or crafts. It’s the emergence of something new in the white space around what currently exists.

An example of this that I love, is how Billy Porter uses clothing to make an artistic statement. To me, this is an expression of frustration at current gender norms and expectations. It challenges us to think more broadly about what it means to be a man, a woman, or neither. It opens up space for something different.

Developing Shared Meaning

Once we have something expressed through art we can show it to others, discuss it, and together find the words to express its meaning. We can translate it into something more defined. We find words. We argue about them. We refine them.

I use art in workshops to help develop a shared perspective on things like culture and leadership, which many people find hard to articulate. Selecting images that represent those things and then having a conversation about if, how and why those images resonate helps people put more specific language to what feels vague and squishy. It also helps uncover divergent perspectives, which can reveal underlying issues or mindsets that are making progress hard.

As more and more people engage in developing shared meaning, it is absorbed into the culture and people’s mental models. It becomes normalized. This process requires dialog, trust, and relationships. The more frequent and deeper the discussions, the faster art transforms into meaning and then into concrete opportunities.

Norming and Optimizing

Addressing concrete opportunities allows something to become normalized, predictable and even routine. People have a shared understanding and expectations about how we interact with the new concept and the value it has. It becomes a pattern that can be applied again and again – a template.

Once a pattern is established, you can apply technology to the pattern so it can be optimized and repeated with a lot less effort. Critically, this also allows innovation to be measured, further optimizing it.

This is how innovation has always worked but it has been hard to see because translating something from emotion to language to patterns to metrics has often taken decades – especially if the innovation was complex and expensive and the value hard to understand.

As communications, collisions, and engagement have increased in speed thanks to the Internet and the global online community it created, the speed of innovation and adoption has fundamentally changed. Innovation gets initiated, understood, and translated into concrete and meaningful products and services within months.

This increase in adoption has largely been the unintentional benefit of people clustering naturally in online spaces to engage. However, in the past few years organizations are finally starting to see and optimize these networks – these communities – to explicitly pursue learning, change, and innovation. One great example of that is the community ecosystem at ESRI, a geographic data company that works with a huge range of industries and applications, all of whom are developing unique ways to realize value from its data. By intentionally structuring and managing the community, its partners can access, learn, and develop solutions more quickly, accelerating shared value for the entire ecosystem.

Capturing the Value of Innovation

Communities are, at their core, the way people have always come together to learn. They provide the space, relationships, collisions, and trust necessary to create shared meaning, to iterate on emergent ideas, and to norm new patterns and behaviors. Offline that complex system is hard to understand but now that many communities are online, we can see, measure, and optimize them.

We can also measure and project the value and speed of innovation, through engagement in communities. In the 2019 State of Community Management research, we found that the growth in engagement and value of communities closely matches the innovation S curve. The implication is that the better an organization can foster, develop and sustain communities, the better they will be at rapidly turning market frustrations and insights into opportunities and then into solutions.

How can I use gamification to increase community engagement?

February 6, 2018 By Shannon Abram

gamification to increase community engagement

Gamification is the skill of understanding what game-based motivators may drive community members and how to use those motivators to help members get value out of the community that they may not initially recognize. Often times gamification efforts appear in the form of points, badges, or ‘games’ that encourage gentle competition around engagement.

Gamification is one of those things that really resonates with community stakeholders. Badges! Achievements! Unlock this, uplevel that! The reality of using gamification to increase community engagement can be a little tougher. Our State of Community Management 2017 research showed that gamification integrations are becoming more common on community platforms, although their impact on engagement is still less clear. Your community platform may already have gamification elements built in. You should definitely check your platform capabilities before you start defining your program.

If you’re interested in incorporating gamification into your community program you don’t have to reinvent the wheel.

Electronic Arts Inc., a leading global interactive entertainment software company, delivers games, content and online services for Internet-connected consoles, personal computers, mobile phones and tablets to hundreds of millions of players worldwide. With an online gaming network that is home to dedicated global players, EA sought to drive down support costs while also providing enhanced interactive rewards. They built a robust recognition program that has turned their millions of members’ participation into a game – with real rewards.

gamification to increase community engagement

As members rise through the ranks and gain more prestige, they unlock top levels including a multi-tiered super user program. By defining very specific goals for their program they have been able to show how they successfully used gamification to increase community engagement.

Read more about EA’s success using gamification in their community in this case study: Driving Community Participation and Engagement With Gamification. You’ll learn how EA built a gamification-based support hub and a two-tiered super-user program that increased traffic, converted lurkers and deflected contacts from Live Support channels.

Download the case study now. 

 

Community Management Fundamentals

October 23, 2017 By Shannon Abram

Need to bring someone up to speed on the basics of community management? We just revamped our community management fundamentals presentation and it’s a great way to explain the ins and outs of community to someone that doesn’t quite get it yet.

Check out the presentation:

Community Management Fundamentals 2017 from The Community Roundtable

Pretty great, right?

Other community resources you can use:

TheCR Academy

Community training for every level of your organization

Community Case Studies

Learn from real life community success stories!

 Community Management 101

Answers to common community questions!

 

Ensuring Consistent Brand Voice through Community Governance

September 13, 2017 By Shannon Abram

When we talk about the eight competencies of the Community Maturity Model people tend to get really excited about the work they do for culture, or content and programming. There are even those among us (Jillian, I’m looking at you!) that get super fired up about metrics and measurement. Policies and governance tends to get overlooked, which is crazy since our research shows that paying attention to the policies in place in your community has a big impact.

This case study from Aetna illustrates how having a comprehensive governance strategy for your community can ensure a consistent brand voice. You’ll learn how Aetna uses a community playbook, comprehensive social media training, and regular social media audits to achieve their community governance goals.

Download the free case study now. 

Introducing: Community Case Studies from TheCR Network

March 20, 2017 By Shannon Abram

The number one request we get from community practitioners is to hear the stories of other people, facing the same challenges they are. And it’s not just anecdotal – our research has shown that while every community is different, data proves that communities with different use cases face similar challenges and use the same community management strategies, operations and tactics to achieve success.

Luckily, working with our members in TheCR Network gives us a front row seat to some amazing community stories – and now we’re going to share them with you!

I’m excited to announce our new series: Community Case Studies from TheCR Network. Nothing makes us happier than seeing our members succeed – and we want to share those successes with you. Added bonus – as our members tell their community stories they are also sharing how they achieved specific successes – and passing along best practices, research-backed tactics, and techniques you can implement in your community today. Each member success story will share their challenge, their goal and the outcome – a true insider look at how some of the world’s top organizations are implementing community programs.

We kick off the series with Getting the New Member Experience Right, a case study shared by member Camilo Lemos, Community Manager at Autodesk. Camilo outlines how the Autodesk community team took on redesigning its entire Customer Support Community, a peer-to-peer platform built over 30 years ago to support their software technology/web applications customers. Definitely, a must-read for anyone facing the redesign of an existing community or looking to improve a support community that is already up and running.

Download your copy of Getting the New Member Experience Right here.

Friday Roundup – Improving Community Sentiment

April 29, 2016 By Shannon Abram

By Shannon Abram, The Community Roundtable

Case Study: Improving Community SentimentIf you’ve even managed a community you know – things can go from happy to hostile quickly. The world is dark and full of trolls! This week my colleague Jillian shared an amazing case study profiling a client that tackled this exact issue – with incredible results.

You can download the free community management case study “Improving Community Sentiment Improving Community Sentiment: Taking a Community from Hostile to Happy” here. You’ll not only get access to a great community success story, but also the tactical approaches that Jillian and the client team used to drastically improve the community environment.

What We Are Reading This Week:

Screen Shot 2016-04-29 at 11.45.09 AM

Tweet of the week!

Improving Community Sentiment: Taking a Community from Hostile to Happy – Great case study on changing a negative community environment.

Channeling Change: Making Collective Impact Work – An interesting look at how different size/shape orgs are implementing a collective impact approach to solve large-scale social problems.

TheCR Network Sneak Peek: April 2016 – Community pro Hillary Boucher shares an inside look at the highlights of April programming in TheCR Network.

How Optimizely Launched a Re-Designed Community Site that Tripled New Member Registrations – Great use case profile here!

How to Get Employees to Fill In Their Directory Profile – Sounds easy, but any community manager knows it is NOT!

Email Is a Colossal Time Suck, More Research Confirms – Um. Yup.

New Community Manager and Social Media Jobs:

  • Enterprise Community and Knowledge Manager – CommVault Systems – Tinton Falls, NJ
  • Internal Communications Manager – Athenahealth – Watertown, MA
  • Community Manager – Higher LOGIC – Arlington, VA
  • Community Manager  Connecture – Brookfield, WI
  • Social Media/Community Manager – Japan Crate – San Francisco, CA
  • Social Media / Community Manager – Ascent – San Francisco, CA
  • SOCIAL MEDIA COORDINATOR (CONSULTANT) – Frank PR – Entertainment and Media Industry – New York City, NY
  • Senior Manager, Social Media – Kaplan Test Prep – New York City, NY
  • Social Media / Community Manager – Ascent Services Group – San Francisco, CA
  • Social Media Leader – Nintendo – Redwood City, CA
  • Social Media & Community Manager – Cybereason – Boston, MA
  • Community Manager – Boardontrack – Concord, MA
  • Social Media & Community Manager – Zoosk – San Francisco, CA

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Improving Community Sentiment: Taking a Community from Hostile to Happy

April 26, 2016 By Shannon Abram

By Shannon Abram, The Community Roundtable

Case Study: Improving Community Sentiment

When community sentiment is good, it often gets taken for granted. When it’s bad, it’s clear that it is one of the biggest barriers to success and value.

What’s not always clear is this: you CAN create the community environment you want.

The Community Roundtable collaborated with a well-known brand to create a welcoming and supportive community that they are proud of – and that delivers real value for both the members and the business.

In this case study, Jillian Bejtlich, Community Architect here at TheCR, covers how they did this, focusing on the following community management practices:

  1. Developing policies and guidelines
  2. Creating moderation and escalation processes
  3. Modeling behavior and coaching advocates

What this case study shows is that by investing time in defining a long-term vision of the culture you want, you can shape the overall sentiment of your community. To do so, you must connect strategic goals to day-to-day tactics.

Improving Community SentimentTake moderation for example – thinking tactically you might decide, “Let’s get rid of all negative posts” – and certainly that’s not a bad goal, but it’s not a strategic one. Put on your long-term vision goggles and rethink the goal and you might say, “Let’s make sure our community a safe place to ask questions.” By looking at the same activity strategically a fairly simple moderation task becomes a strategic one – the result of which may mean leaving some negative comments that are opinions while moderating out the offensive ones. That is more likely to achieve your strategic goal of making the community a safe place to ask legitimate questions – making it easier to achieve larger business goals and improve overall sentiment.

The success of this project was far from obvious at the start and it was no easy task – but by thinking about the project strategically, and reframing the challenge into a long-term goal Jillian not only helped turn the overall community sentiment around – but helped our client create a thriving and valuable community that exceeded everyone’s expectations.

Find out how she did it: Download our new case study “Improving Community Sentiment: Taking a Community from Hostile to Happy”.

Let us know if you would like to find out how we can help turn your thorny community challenges into strategies for success.

Are you a member of TheCR Network? Download the case study directly here. 

Download the Case Study 

Becky Carroll on Using Educational Content and Idea Exchanges

May 5, 2011 By Jim Storer

The Community Roundtable has partnered with Voce Communications to produce a podcast series, “Conversations with Community Managers.” In this series, TheCR’s Jim Storer joins forces with Voce’s Doug Haslam to speak with people from a variety of industries about their efforts with community and social media management. Our series continues with episode #26, featuring Becky Carroll, Community Program Manager at Verizon. Podcast highlights include:
  • Using educational content rather than product-focused content, to cater to customer lifestyle rather than a  hard sell in the “Room to Learn” community.
  • Using an idea exchange; workflows, processes and partnership with product team
  • Advice for getting started in community management

Download this episode

Subscribe to this podcast series

MUSIC CREDIT: “Bleuacide” by graphiqsgroove

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.

https://media.blubrry.com/608862/communityroundtable.com/podcasts/CwCM_beckycarroll.mp3

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

Subscribe: RSS

Jay Batson on Open-Source Communities

April 28, 2011 By Jim Storer

The Community Roundtable has partnered with Voce Communications to produce a podcast series, “Conversations with Community Managers.” In this series, TheCR’s Jim Storer joins forces with Voce’s Doug Haslam to speak with people from a variety of industries about their efforts with community and social media management. Our series continues with episode #24, featuring Jay Batson, VP and Founder at Acquia, a provider of commercial services around the Drupal open-source web platform.

Podcast highlights include:

  • Considering long-term health of an open-source community hen launching a commercial enterprise from within it
  • The kinds of companies adopting open-source community platforms
  • Can developer communities provide examples for other types of communities

Download this episode

Subscribe to this podcast series

MUSIC CREDIT: “Bleuacide” by graphiqsgroove

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.

https://media.blubrry.com/608862/communityroundtable.com/podcasts/CwCM_jaybatson.mp3

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

Subscribe: RSS

Shannon Paul on Protected Health Information and Privacy in Communities

April 15, 2011 By Jim Storer

The Community Roundtable has partnered with Voce Communications to produce a podcast series, “Conversations with Community Managers.” In this series, TheCR’s Jim Storer joins forces with Voce’s Doug Haslam to speak with people from a variety of industries about their efforts with community and social media management.
Our series continues with episode #23, featuring Shannon Paul, Social Media Manager at Blue Cross Blue Shield of Michigan.

Podcast highlights include:

  • Dealing with “Protected Health information” (PHI) due to regulations such as HIPAA, including the names of members, and how to balance the need for community and the privacy of members.
  • Creating resources such as www.ahealthiermichigan.org to present wellness resources.
  • Coordination and sharing among associated but separated organizations, as with the Blue Cross/Blue Shield plans in different states.
  • When “I can’t answer you” is an answer.

Download this episode

Subscribe to this podcast series

MUSIC CREDIT: “Bleuacide” by graphiqsgroove

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.

https://media.blubrry.com/608862/communityroundtable.com/podcasts/CwCM_shannonpaul.mp3

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

Subscribe: RSS

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