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5 Tips for Launching an Advocacy Program

November 30, 2022 By Jim Storer

There’s no better feeling than knowing someone has your back. Your community can get those same warm fuzzies with an advocacy or leadership program. No formal leadership or community advocacy program in place? It’s time to consider starting one.

What’s an advocacy program?

The easiest way to picture a community advocacy program is as a bridge. One side is the active and engaged community, like a block party. The other side of the bridge is dark and quiet, this is where your target audience — the less active members — lives. No block party here, more like everyone’s home. Advocacy program members are the bridge between the social butterflies and the lurkers/learners. They’re engaged and sing the community’s praises while welcoming others to the party (without scaring them away).

Beyond bridging, community advocacy and/or leadership programs can also be a good indicator of your overall community health. Communities with advocacy programs are often more mature, have more dedicated staff, can show value, have executive buy-in, engaged product team and subject matter experts, greater amounts of user-generated content, higher levels of conversation vs. content sharing, and more robust community tools. Whew!

TL/DR: Community advocacy programs are a sign of a healthy community.

Sounds good? Onward!

Starting your program

  1. When building a community advocacy or leadership program, KISS your policies. (Keep It Seriously Simple.) If you try to make the rules and guidelines around the advocacy program too complex at first, you’ll scare away potential community advocates. Instead, add policies, guidelines, and expectations as your program grows.
  2. Set expectations from the beginning. This is critical to protect your program participants from feeling used and abused. As Brené Brown says, “clear is kind,” and setting expectations from the get-go is about as clear (and therefore kind) as it can get.
  3. Ask questions and listen. You know who your super users are already, these same members will be great candidates for your first participants! Ask them for feedback on your plan, and then LISTEN to their responses. Looking for a smash-hit program, this is how you accomplish that! When your super users like the program (and can refine it) your built-in advocates will be excited about it, and share with those who could benefit.
  4. Recognize advocates’ contributions. Go back to the lessons you learned in kindergarten and remember to thank your advocates and community leaders for their help. No need for complicated or in-depth, just ensure it’s heartfelt.
  5. Have a member entrance and exit plan. Burnout’s real; even your most enthusiastic members will need a break. That’s where clearly defined onboarding and offboarding processes helps. When you have these plans documented, you can help smooth the transition between new and “retiring” advocates.

We want to know: Do you have a formal community advocacy or leadership program in place? What tips would you add for someone starting a new program from scratch? Let us know!

3 Quick Community Wins for February

February 2, 2022 By Jim Storer

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!

Real rewards for community advocates

August 3, 2015 By Ted McEnroe

By Ted McEnroe, The Community Roundtable

Where’s your college diploma?

If you’re like most people, it’s hanging on an office wall, sitting in a drawer, or stuck in the back of a closet. It’s nice to have, but the recognition that you graduated from the University of Western Maine or Generic Ivy U. in itself doesn’t do that much for you.

What works for you are the things you learned, the connections you made, the way it taught you to think – the things with real value. It’s great to be recognized as a graduate, but it’s your college experience, not your diploma, that you remember – and that makes you more likely to give back to your alma mater.

The same is true in your community.

Your top community advocates and contributors might welcome recognition and rewards, but the State of Community Management 2015 research finds that best-in-class communities do a better job of giving their advocates rewards with real business value – such as early access to products and access to the community team or executives.

That’s not to say recognition and badges don’t matter – they are a valuable way to say thank you, and let others in the community see the people you count on to contribute, giving others someone to emulate and see as the leaders you want them to be. Being an advocate takes time and effort, however, and to make advocates a valued part of the community, make sure you are giving them real value in return.

SOCM2015_FunFact7_MoreThanRecognition

Community advocacy programs are a major focus of the State of Community Management 2015, and a regular topic in TheCR Network. Thought about joining? Learn more at communityroundtable.com/TheCRNetwork.

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Want to contribute to our next round of research? Get involved!

Community Management Case Study: The Evolution of a Community Advocacy Program

February 3, 2015 By Jim Storer

One of the perks of being a member of TheCR Network is access to fresh community management programming every week. Our community manager, Hillary Boucher, does an amazing job of tracking down interesting and engaging case studies from every stage of the community journey.

This past year Hillary and members of TheCR Network sat down with Erica Kuhl and Matt Brown from Salesforce to discuss a case study of Salesforce’s MVP program. While I can’t share the whole Roundtable call with you here, there are three key best practices I wanted to share for building out a community advocacy or leadership program.

Note: Matt is also one of the case study participants in the Community Manager Handbook, which was released February 4.

If you don’t current have any formal community advocacy or leadership programs, they are something to consider for your to-do list: community advocacy and leadership programs correlate to overall community maturity, the number of full-time community managers, the ability to measure value, higher levels of executive participation, higher levels of product team and subject matter participation, more user-generated content, higher levels of conversation vs. content sharing and more robust community tools

1. When building a community advocacy or leadership program, avoid over-governing the program with too many policies at the beginning. In this case, Salesforce wanted to grow the program with their MVPs. As they started to grow and enlist new MVPs, they added policies, guidelines and expectations in tandem with the growth.

2. Understand from the onset of the program the plan to leverage your advocates. This is critical in order to guard against the advocates feeling used or abused. It also contributes to a successful transition from an informal to a formalized program.

3. Ensure the organization elicits the feedback of the top advocates in the creation of the program. If this group likes the program and has an opportunity to refine it, it will be accepted by the greater population of advocates.

Do you have a formal community advocacy or leadership program in your community? What tips would you add for someone starting on the ground floor with a new program?

We recently had a great discussion over at #ESNchat about how to make the most of community champion programs. You can check out the Storify from the chat here, or review the mini-deck for highlights from the five questions we discussed, which included:

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Looking for more case studies like this? Members of TheCR Network have access to weekly community management programming and our complete archive of over 200 expert-led sessions. Learn more about being a member in TheCR Network.

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