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5 reasons to recognize the superheroes in your online community

May 5, 2015 By Ted McEnroe

By Ted McEnroe, The Community Roundtable

This month, our new and brilliant Community Management Fellow, Georgina Cannie, kicked off a wonderful and equally new feature of TheCR Network. Starting this month, we are recognizing members of the network as TheCR Network Superheroes, complete with badges on their network profiles. As you may have noticed, the superhero theme appears to the be the theme of 2015 for us here – we highlighted 2o Community Manager Superheroes in the recently-published Community Manager Handbook – but whatever you call the best members of your online community, recognizing their work should be a critical piece of your community management efforts.

May HeroesHere are five reasons why.

Your superheroes model the best behaviors.

In communities as elsewhere, the old saying “The squeaky wheel gets the grease” often rings too true. You’re putting out fires, settling disputes, moderating touchy situations and fighting tooth and nail for resources – and your superheroes are providing value with their actions and words. Your superheroes help you tackle the headaches you have to deal with at the very least by not adding to them, and they are doing what you wish everyone would do. One of our May superheroes, Jerry Canaday of MasterCard, is a frequent answerer of questions and a provider of resources, and has led member workshops and a recent #ESNChat on ‘The Future of the Intranet.’ Who doesn’t want a member like that?

Your superheroes aren’t just your most experienced members – and that’s awesome.

Another superhero from this month, Ivonne Grantham Smith of Skillsoft, is a super example of how newer members of the community provide value. As a new community manager when she joined, Ivonne was well-suited to take advantage of the roundtables, calls and resources TheCR Network provides. She jumped in with both feet, working out loud, asking questions and providing the interaction that is the lifeblood of any community. Now, she’s giving back, sharing the resources she is developing for her own community. The student becomes the master – in a friendly, community sort of way.

Recognition highlights unseen actions.

Just as we talk about the iceberg effect of community management  – where 90 percent of the real work of running a community goes unseen beneath the surface – there are members who play critical roles behind the scenes who deserve recognition for their work. Emily Wade of Market Street Solutions has been an active member and has helped organized member Roundtable calls – just the kind of work that no one would notice normally, even though they should.

Your superheroes are worthy of public praise.

We’re fortunate to have a community with a lot of Jerrys, Ivonnes and Emilys, but that doesn’t mean we shouldn’t take every chance we can to recognize them. The public praise isn’t just a stroke of the ego – it’s an important element of raising up the expertise of the members, to get them using each other as resources and to have the opportunity to matter. That scales the community, it scales you as a community manager, and, no the good feeling it gives those who get recognized doesn’t hurt.

Recognition builds advocates.

Lastly on this list – recognition programs set the stage for building even bigger and better advocacy programs. As we have already hinted at in past posts about the State of Community Management 2015 report, strong multi-tiered advocacy programs have a remarkable effect on the vibrancy and effectiveness of communities to achieve business outcomes. Recognition is a great reward, but even more powerful when it is one level of an advocacy program that gives members a chance to generate more value from the community than they put in. This generative model is the base on which the most remarkable communities build their advocacy programs – and it is the model on which they can build their organizations.

So what are you waiting for? There are heroes out there…

Our Community Superheroes Share Their Superheroes, Part 3

April 9, 2015 By Ted McEnroe

By Ted McEnroe, The Community Roundtable

Today we wrap up a three-part series on the community professionals whom we dubbed as Community Superheroes in the recently-published Community Manager Handbook: 20 Lessons from Community Superheroes – and the people in their work they consider superheroes.

1280px-Barack_Obama_with_Spider-ManOur first two installments (#1 and #2) included thoughts from 12 of our superheroes – Alex Blanton,  Matt Brown, Charissa (Carnall) Cowart, Eileen Foran, Jerry Green, Patrick Hellen, Ted Hopton, Bill Johnston, Kirsten Laaspere, James LaCorte, J.J. Lovett and Lesley Lykins. Today we finish up, with the people our superheroes highlighted and the reasons why. If you go back through the three posts, you’ll have a great list of about 40 thoughtful leaders in the community space to follow as you wrestle with your own community challenges.

Here’s the final batch!

Superhero: Tracy Maurer, UBM

Her Superheroes: Claire Flanagan (Jive) and Ted Hopton (McGraw-Hill Education; formerly Tracy’s colleague at UBM)

Superhero: Maria Ogneva, Sidecar

Her Superheroes: “Other than Rachel (Happe)? I really look up to Doug Atkin (Airbnb). He’s done an amazing job of mobilizing and storytelling the story of his community, which is so huge and diverse. He’s a leader and the community team covers a vast space – to pull all that together is a nontrivial task in a hotly contested space.”

Superhero: Mike Pascucci, Autodesk

His Superhero: “The Unknown CM” – “Basically, anyone who manages a third party they doesn’t work for. They have to understand the culture of any place they moderate for – which isn’t easy, and they stay behind the scenes and don’t like people to know who they are – but they deserve recognition.”

Superhero: Jeff Ross, Humana

His superhero: Richard Millington (Feverbee): “I quote him all the time and point people to his resources. Most of what he talks about is not internal, but it still applies very well.”

Superhero: Christian Rubio, SERMO

His superhero: Rebecca Newton (Mind Candy): “She’s done an immense amount building a social internet experience that is safe for children.”

Superhero: Hillary Boucher, TheCR Network

Her Superhero: Maria Ogneva (Sidecar): “I admire how collaborative and generous she is with sharing her expertise with her peers. She does an excellent job of staying grounded in practical community management practices while working strategically and advocating for community internally.”

Our Community Superheroes Share Their Superheroes, Part 2

April 1, 2015 By Ted McEnroe

By Ted McEnroe, The Community Roundtable

Last week, we shared with you a little added information from The Community Manager Handbook: 20 Lessons from Community Superheroes. In the back of the handbook, we list the people that the 20 community professionals we interviewed for the handbook would cite as their superheroes. It’s a diverse group, but what we left out of the Handbook were the reasons why our heroes named theirs!

Image from imgur.com via Reddit user resgestae

Image from imgur.com via Reddit user resgestae

Last week – Superheroes Alex Blanton,  Matt Brown, Charissa (Carnall) Cowart, Eileen Foran, Jerry Green and Patrick Hellen named Allison Michels, Erica Kuhl, Gary Vaynerchuk, Rachel Happe/Caty Kobe, Lauren Vargas and Hillary Boucher/William Gibson as their superheroes.

This week, we look at 6 more of our heroes’ heroes.

Superhero: Ted Hopton, McGraw-Hill Education

His Superhero: Claire Flanagan (Jive): “I have more of a pantheon of heroes, but one who comes to mind is Claire Flanagan – she has a quality for seeing how amazing other people are – and I think she is so organized. I only wish I could be as organized as she is.”

Superhero: Bill Johnston, Structure3C

His Superhero: Randy Farmer (communities.com): “Many people – but for me, the person who has meant the most and been a mentor is Randy Farmer.” (Bill also referred to Randy as “one of the smartest, most pragmatic, and most helpful voices in the online community industry” on his blog.)

Superhero: James LaCorte, Blue Cross/Blue Shield of North Carolina

His Superhero: Doug Patton (formerly koz.com, now Family Health Network): “He was a big advocate of communities before we called them communities – he had a passion for connecting with people online and for transparency.”

Superhero: Kirsten Laaspere, Fidelity

Her Superhero: The 2020 version of Kirsten Laaspere: “On a day-to-day basis, I always keep things in the context of ‘Where do I want to be in five years,’ and how the work I am doing now is reflecting that and how that’s going to get me (to where I want to be).”

Superhero: J.J. Lovett, CA Technologies

His Superhero: Sam Creek (CA Technologies): “He’s been the wind beneath my wings. He’s been the one who has been able to (boost the community understanding of) some of our executives. He has a different way of explaining things, and has a great ability to get executives to think differently.”

Superhero: Lesley Lykins, Customer Experience Professionals Association (CXPA)

Her Superheroes: “Kurt Vanderah (socialmedia.org) has an open personality and a great way of building relationships and making people feel valued. And Peter Shankman – the things he talks about and how he engages people are powerful models for community managers.”

All 20 of our Community Superheroes (and many of theirs) are current and former members of TheCR Network, our community for community professionals. Learn more about the network and how it can advance your community skills by clicking here.

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