The Community Roundtable

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

(Roundtable) When Growing Your Career Means Leaving Your Community

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In light of recent layoffs in our industry, it’s hard to ignore how it impacts our communities and business outcomes.  How do you say goodbye to the community you’re leaving behind? How do you advance in your career? How do you navigate the job market? These are some questions we’d like to have a meaningful conversation about and learn from each other because they affect our meaningful work.

So come join us in a discussion panel-style roundtable call with Amanda Petersen, Shannon Emery, and Meghan Bates.

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)Learning a New Organization

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How do you make a move to a new organization? What are some things to consider when making the move? Making the move from one organization to another can be tricky – especially if you’ve spent a significant amount of time at your old employer or if the business models are completely different.

 

In this roundtable call, we’ll explore:

    • Navigating new waters, new co-workers, and new leadership expectations
    • Setting yourself up for success – things you must do in order to ensure you have what you need to do your job well
    • Getting buy-in and support for your community strategy when you’re the new kid on the block

(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.

Community Teams are Growing

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The Community Management competency of the Community Maturity Model™ involves everything that ensures communities are productive. While community managers come from all walks of life and approach their role differently, they have the same goal: Build healthy, engaged communities where members learn from one another and collaborate on ideas, issues, or challenges.

After seeing a dip in the size of community management teams in 2021, they’re growing dramatically in 2022! This can likely be attributed to organizations in 2021 dealing with the uncertainty of COVID-19 and increased mobility. 2022’s increase is an effort to rebalance. There will likely be a modest rise in the coming year as community teams continue to grow with their programs.

With this growth, defining community roles is critical.

Linking community programs to operations should top every community team’s to-do list. While defining community roles and responsibilities — and getting them approved by human resources — is critical when developing community programs, 65% of respondents indicated they don’t have defined and HR-approved community roles. This is a huge gap to be addressed as an industry and individually by community teams.

In 2014, we documented the skills necessary for community building, which resulted in the Community Skills Framework™. Built around five skill “families” — each with ten unique skills — and providing a comprehensive look at the role, the Community Skills Framework™ is perfect for anyone who works in the community space and wants to understand the depth and breadth of skills needed on their team.

Recommendation: Definitions are your friend.

Develop defined roles and responsibilities for your community team and review with HR for alignment. Use the Community, Careers, and Compensation research to jump-start this effort.

Get more community ideas and advice in our 2022 State of Community Management report:

Defining the Digital Workplace with Neil Morgan

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Defining the Digital Workplace

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 Three features Neil Morgan, Head of Digital Workplace at Glencore, on defining the digital workplace. He and Anne discuss how to effectively define the digital workplace at your organization, barriers to non-desk employee engagement, the importance of mobile capabilities, and more.

If you haven’t downloaded your free copy of The NEW Community Manager Handbook you can get it here.

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About Neil Morgan

Neil Morgan is a strategic thinker with excellent interpersonal skills and the ability to engage with stakeholders throughout all levels of an organization to better understand the needs of the business. Neil has over 15 years of experience solving business challenges with digital solutions and working with several different platforms while working closely with Communications, Marketing and IT teams around the world.

About Glencore

Glencore is one of the world’s largest globally diversified natural resource companies. Through the scale and diversity of their industrial and marketing businesses, they responsibly supply the commodities that are fundamental to the building blocks of life. Glencore is committed to responsibly sourcing the commodities that advance everyday life

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

Download the New Community Manager Handbook

You can find more resources for defining the digital workplace and effective employee communities here.

CM-Handbook-transcript-NeilMorganDownload

Help! Three Questions Community Managers Need to Ask When They’re Struggling

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Asking for community help

Community managers are burnt out. And they’ve been that way since before the COVID-19 pandemic began — in the 2019 State of Community Management (SOCM) about 50% of respondents reported they were highly burnt out, in need of community help, or frustrated overall.

Some of the reasons cited as contributing factors may sound familiar:

  • Lack of resources
  • Community platform difficulties
  • Not enough time in the day to think both strategically and operationally (no balance)

The good news: Executive perception is shifting. Respondents in the not-yet-released 2022 SOCM reported more executives are seeing the benefit in all the hard work community managers do (and how it can positively impact the organization’s bottom line). Great! So what? 

So now’s the perfect opportunity to ask for community help.

How to define your community needs

While we wish it were as simple as marching up to your executive’s office with a list of demands, that’s not quite what’s needed in this instance. Instead, in order to properly make your case for community resources — whatever they may be — you’ll first want to consider three things:

  1. The what
  2. The who
  3. The obstacle

The questions themselves are fairly straightforward, but we’ll look at them in more detail just so we’re on the same page.

What’s the ‘What’ in Community Help

When it comes to narrowing down the “what,” it can be hard to determine where to start. So, the best place to start is right here, right now: What is it — at this moment — you need the most? Also, what would help you solve it?

Determining your “what” can be a vulnerable situation to put yourself in, which can be intimidating, but an honest assessment is the only way to approach this. After all, the only way things can get better is by determining the true issue. So really get in there, and look at your community (and your management of it) from a granular level. 

Who are you looking for?

Hello, is it me you’re looking for? Sorry, really bad joke. Anyway, after you’ve named the problem(s), it’s time to start looking for a solution.

The best way is by examining your sources — subject matter experts, superusers, leaders, etc. — and determining who will best be able to help you. Having a name (and some knowledge of who the person is and how they can help) will make it easier to actually ask for help. 

Unsure of who that might be? Then who do you turn to for help currently? They can either help you determine who might be the right person for you to talk to, or they might have a solution themselves. Either way, seeking help from outside sources isn’t a sign of weakness. As Amanda Palmer explained in her TED Talk, “The Art of Asking,” people are keen to help out, but they’ll never know you need it if you don’t say something first. 

Don’t let your ego be the reason your community’s issues don’t get solved – ask for community help.

‘Move [obstacle], get out the way’

Speaking of getting in your own way and other obstacles — the last question you need to ask yourself dovetails with the previous two nicely: What’s keeping you from what you need? It may be policy, budget, or any other number of things, but the important thing here is to name it.

By addressing these three questions you’ll be able to effectively layout your ask for community help in a logical way that makes it hard to turn down (especially if you remember to tie it back to the organization’s business goals). Stakeholders and C-suite executives will want to know the quickest path to getting ROI, so knowing who to ask for what — and when — will be key to a successful ask.

Community Management Self Care

Need more community helpYou can find more tips for taking care of yourself in our CMGR self-care guide. Download your copy here.

5 Tips for Launching an Online Community

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The idea of not planning for a grand launch day for your online community is hard to consider. You’ve spent months project managing and planning for the launch, so of course, you want to celebrate!

But, having a huge to-do to launch a new community can set up unrealistic expectations that tend to follow the hype of a grand online community launch. The hype and tunnel vision surrounding a grand launch can skew your metrics for a long time. This can cause the community’s maturity model to be locked in too early as it has not had the opportunity to evolve to see what kind of online community maturity model truly fits).

You don’t want to encourage short-term, campaign-style thinking vs. a long-term community engagement outlook.

You want to start as you plan to continue. And we recommend starting small, leaving room for incremental and sustainable gains.

1 – Know your timeline Despite the advice above to NOT have an online community launch day, you should…consider a launch day (if you need help, we have an entire resource bundle on how to launch an online community). Not a real “grand launch day”, but a launch process that has a concrete end date. Spend time defining a pre-launch checklist then you can focus energy on determining what tasks you need to get done and by when. Make sure you prioritize tasks and save enough time for each plus wiggle room. Surprises will come up!

Beta programs are your friend. You can roll out membership to a small group of members to seed the community with content and engaged comments. You can use your beta users to test the community, then invite the rest of the group for a more formal launch.

2 – Don’t be afraid to pre-seed content One path to easy pre-seeded content is to curate content from other areas of your business. This might include library documents/entries, resource threads, thought leadership questions, and existing user programs. Consider populating your community with “low hanging fruit” questions – this allows members to participate in a low-risk way and will help them become comfortable engaging with more dense conversations.

Mobilize your super users and key stakeholders to be the “life of your party”. Find the people who will get others excited about the space and support them in their participation. Offer them opportunities to collaborate with you and take a larger role in the community if they want it. This is a great way to lay the groundwork for an advocacy program down the line.

Whenever you are talking about your community or thinking about how to make your community critical to your organization, ask yourself, “How can I offer something here, that cannot be found elsewhere?” This is the motivation that drives people inside the community and keeps them coming back. Instead of sending an email or searching on for information, you want your members to come to the community first. Add content and create programs that give them a reason to do that.

3 – Create new member welcome programs Our research has shown that robust new online community member welcome programs have an outsized impact on long-term engagement. It makes sense – having someone welcome you, give you some ground rules on behaviors, give you a tour of the community, etc., makes new members more comfortable, and you’re more likely to dip a toe in a new community if you have ideas for how to do it.

One of the hardest things to remember is that while the new member process can seem boring and rote to the person conducting it, to the new member it’s all brand new. Luckily, automation has come a long way in the last few years, allowing even the smallest community team (we see you, lone wolves) to have a big impact on the way new members start their community journey with you. You can review five best practices for new member onboarding programs here.

4 – Designated a launch team – Make sure you know who will be helping you launch the community and make sure that team has the necessary skills. Do you need IT involved? What about customer success? At this point you’ve pre-seeded your community with a group of super users, so you’ll also want to include these advocates as a part of your launch team. Get their thoughts and feedback on how the community functions and engage them as things roll out. Make sure everyone involved is clear on timelines, their responsibilities, and what is expected of them.

5 – Communicate, Communicate, Communicate You cannot over-communicate your community launch. Create a communications plan so that you’re sure to spread out the activity over time. You’ll want to vary the mediums and tactics you use to reach your entire audience. It’s important to ensure you’re reaching all users consistently.

You can’t do this all yourself, so use your team, advocates, and stakeholders to help spread the word. Be flexible and open to the fact that this might take time. Everyone’s membership base is different and some things will work, others won’t. Remember that things won’t always work right away.

Be prepared to evangelize! You’ll be selling your community and the value of your community. Perfect your elevator pitch and what your community brings to the table and know how to present it to different kinds of people. Not everyone will “get” it right away and that’s okay, keep trying and sharing the message.

5 ways to plan effective content and programming for your online community

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Our State of Community Management research has shown that 69% of community programs count content and programming in their community metrics, but only 6% of their budgets go to online community content and programming. Content and programs are the lifeblood of a successful community program. Content gives people a reason to visit (and return to) a community, while programs create opportunities for members to connect with one another. Content and programs need to reflect the shared value of community, and a program plan tied more closely to strategy can generate the most valuable engagement behaviors.

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. 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.

Here are five ways to plan effective content and programming for your online community:

1 – It’s All About The Planning Our #1 advice? Create (and use!) editorial calendars. They don’t need to be complex, but even a simple editorial calendar helps to create a routine. Choose different options like content mediums, cadence, times, structures. This keeps things fresh but also helps you understand what works best for your community

Leave room for freeform content and programming. Sometimes people make spur-of-the-moment suggestions or an event is put together last minute. It’s important to leave room in your calendar for these so you’re not feeling overwhelmed and the community isn’t feeling crowded. It’s okay to have some empty days or weeks! In fact, we recommend it.

2 – Try, Adapt, And Try Again Be flexible with your ideas (easier said than done, we know!) You may love something but your members might not – and that’s ok. Don’t take a lack of interest personally, and be ready and willing to try something, edit your plan, try it again, and so on. Something not working at first doesn’t mean it’s a total loss – it’s just not the right fit at the time. Don’t give up, it often takes more than one try to get something to work, so keep trying

The hardest part of putting about a program you love but doesn’t get traction? Accepting defeat Not every programming idea will work, be okay with every community. Your ”failures” aren’t failures at all, but learning experiences to help you figure out what does and doesn’t work with your members.

3 – Meet Your Members Where They Are – This seems obvious, but we have to say it, “Talk to you members. And when they talk, LISTEN!” You (probably) are not psychic, so there is nothing wrong with asking them what they want. Make time for regular opportunities or touchpoints for members to request content or programs or make suggestions

When listening, keep accessibility in mind. No one knows who your members are and where they’re coming from (literally and figuratively) better than you. Are you working with a global community? Make sure you vary programming time zones understand holidays in different countries. Every community should consider accessibility for differently-abled members. Make sure you consider design for screen readers, sub-titles on videos, and transcripts as part of your content and programming planning.

4 – Show Me The Data – Almost every community platform has metrics for even the newest data consumer. Use this community data to guide tactical decisions. You may think didn’t work anecdotally, but make sure data backs that up It may surprise you and show you something that you didn’t know. An example would be a live program that low attendance, but high downloads or asynchronous views.

You should also use overall metrics to inform your content and programming ideas. What topics are your members focusing on? Use community metrics to glean insight into what would resonate with your members right now. If people are searching for “new member programs”, then creating content/programming around new member programs would be smart.

5 – Reduce, Reuse, Recycle – The four points above are a lot. When getting started small steps are ok. Maybe you don’t need to have a full editorial calendar, so start with a quarterly outline. It’s important to make sure what you’re doing is scalable, so find others who can help!

Another easy win is finding ways to repurpose your own and SME’s content. Did someone lead a webinar? Post the recording in full and then edit it into clips that you can feature as standalone videos, blog post content, and in newsletters or on social. When you’re creating new content try to make sure at least some of your content is evergreen This means it won’t get stale or outdated and can be updated easily if needed. You want to have content you’ll be able to reuse at key moments/events or use repeatedly.

Our research shows community programs cultivate new behaviors that streamline workflows, connect members around the world, improve sentiment, and change the culture. They support broad communication and behaviors that apply to every individual and function across myriad use cases. Finding the right content and programming mix for your community may seem overwhelming, but you can use the five ideas above to plan effective content and programs that align with your strategic community goals.

Community Management 101 for Associations is Now CAE Approved

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Exciting news for our friends in the association space – The Community Roundtable is now a CAE-approved training provider!

For over a decade we’re provided global community professionals with the training they need to excel in their roles. For the first time we’re offering a course specifically for community professionals working at associations.

Community Management 101 for Associations outlines the scope of the community manager role in association communities and provides prescriptive approaches for successful community management.

Learning objectives for this self-directed online course include:

  • Recognize and implement strategies and tactics for advocacy (including leadership development)
  • Identify how online community programs help associations promote change and innovation
  • Understand the role of an online community as a knowledge resource center
  • Develop ways to maximize an online community program as a productive communications channel for members, volunteers, stakeholders, and employees.

Learn more or register!

The Community Roundtable is now a CAE-Approved Provider. The program(s) outlined above meets the requirements for fulfilling the professional development requirements to earn or maintain the Certified Association Executive credential. Every program that we offer which qualifies for CAE credit will clearly identify the number of CAE credits granted for full participation, and we will maintain records of your participation in accord with CAE policies. For more information about the CAE credential or Approved Provider program, please visit www.asaecenter.org/cae.

As a CAE-Approved Provider educational program related to the CAE exam content outline, this program may be applied for 6 credits toward your CAE application or renewal professional development requirements.