The Community Roundtable

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

Kelly Munro on Content and Programs

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Community Conversations is a long-running podcast highlighting community success stories from a wide variety of online community management professionals.

Episode #87 of Community Conversations features Kelly Munro, Community Team Lead, Xero.

On this special State of Community Management 2022 episode, Kelly Munro and host Anne Mbugua discuss the trends in community content and programs. Kelly shares tips for designing effective content and programming for your online community and discusses topics including:

  • How thinking about content and programs affects her community work.
  • The importance of onboarding for communities.
  • Advice for community professionals starting to dig into content and programs for their organization

Listen to Kelly Munro on Community Content and Programs

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About Kelly Munro

Kelly Munro is the Community lead within the Customer Success team at Xero, managing their product development & discussion forums. She has an interest in using technology to solve user and business friction with a human-centric & adaptive lens.

About Xero

Xero is a New Zealand-based technology company that provides cloud-based accounting software for small and medium-sized businesses. Their online accounting software connects small business owners with their numbers, their bank, and advisors anytime. Founded in 2006, Xero now has 3.5 million subscribers and is a leader in cloud accounting across New Zealand, Australia, and the United Kingdom. Their team of over 4,500+ talented thinkers, creators, and educators helps make life better for small businesses globally.

About The State of Community Management

Now in its 13th year, our annual State of Community Management report provides strategic ideas and tactical benchmarks for global community management professionals.

The State of Community Management 2022 explores the state of the community management industry through the lens of the eight competencies in the Community Maturity Model™.

Each section includes data, ideas, and expert practitioner perspectives to give you new insight into the community management industry. 

Kelly Munro on Content and Programs
Download your free copy of the State of Community Management 2022.

Leverage external sources for low-lift community programs

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The Content & Programs competency of the Community Maturity Model™  examines the resources and interactions a community offers its members, and is 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, creating tighter bonds. Content & programs must reflect the shared value of the community and its members, while a program plan tied to the larger community strategy can lead to valuable engagement behaviors.

Savvy community teams leverage external sources to create content and facilitate programs for their members — whether SMEs, executives, or strategic partners.

Leverage external sources for low-lift community programs

Using external sources is a “work smarter, not harder” way to scale your community team. Two notable examples of external community contributors that jumped in 2022:

  • Peers from other areas of the organization (50% vs. 43% in 2021)
  • Vendors/partners (20% vs. 15% in 2021)

Member participation in content & programs dropped year over year, likely due to fatigue and burnout associated with COVID-19. While this would normally be seen as a negative, it’s actually a balanced approach to content & program development, and member participation remains at a healthy level.

Reminder: You won’t successfully attract (and retain) outside voices to your content & programs without a formal plan. This is the year to formalize a content & program plan.

The community budget for content & programs has more than doubled in the last three years (3% in 2020 vs. 7% in 2022). This is a win for a critical piece of the community-building puzzle. As your content & programs budget grows, ensure you’re moving toward a formal plan aligned with your community strategy – which might include paid programs for external contributors. This will allow you to show your content & program efforts are growing engagement and meeting (or exceeding!) your community’s goals.

Content Pro Tip from Kelly Munro, Lead Community Advisor, Xero, and member of TheCR Network

If you’re at an organization with an existing marketing team you might have a goldmine of content at your disposal.

"Don’t forget about all of the content support that you’ve got within your business. If you have a great content team already, they may already have a good structured understanding of user behavior. Make sure you aren’t creating conflicting content or programs, so just make sure that everything works harmoniously."

“Don’t forget about all of the content support that you’ve got within your business. If you have a great content team already, they may already have a good structured understanding of user behavior. Make sure you aren’t creating conflicting content or programs, so just make sure that everything works harmoniously.”

Get more community ideas and advice in 13th annual 2022 State of Community Management report:

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.

Building effective content and programs for online communities

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If your technology is the venue, and your members are the party goers, then content and programming are definitely the snacks, music, and games that keep your online community party rolling.

In this webinar Kelly Schott shares five lessons we’ve learned from TheCR Network members about planning and managing effective content and programming in your online community.

Kelly’s five lessons include:

  • It’s All About The Planning​
  • Try, Adapt, And Try Again​
  • Meet Your Members Where They Are​
  • Show Me The Data​
  • Reduce, Reuse, Recycle

Watch the archive here:

Find more community management webinars.

Best Practices for Content Programming

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Best Practices for Content Programming

Intrigued by TheCR Network, but want to learn more about what membership entails before joining?

Watch Hillary Boucher share a special look inside TheCR Network.  In June Hillary shared a look at the research, programming and professional development available exclusively to Network members and highlighted best practices for optimizing content programming in your community to maximize engagement. It’s a must-see for any community professionals that are tasked with planning, executing and managing content programs inside their internal or external community

Access the Best Practices for Content Programming webinar recording now!

Five Things the Boston Marathon Can Teach You about Community Programs

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By Ted McEnroe, The Community Roundtable

Monday is the 119th running of a remarkable tradition – the Boston Marathon. For decades, the Marathon has been a Greater Boston institution, a must do for people to either run, attend or watch on TV. People from across the region whose closest thing to a marathon over the past 12 months was running to the store drop whatever they are doing, brave the traffic and cheer on famous Kenyans and unknown Americans.

Photo by Peter Farlow / Creative Commons CC BY-SA 3.0

Photo by Peter Farlow / Creative Commons CC BY-SA 3.0

Over the course of the years, the Boston Marathon has used an annual running event to create a program that goes far beyond an athletic event. And it’s not the only one – The Kentucky Derby, The Indianapolis 500 and other iconic events raise up sports beyond their normal fan bases and engage people who wouldn’t otherwise watch runners, horses or Indy cars.

Wouldn’t it be great to capture some small essence of that in your community? Creating great community programs is one way to do it. And in some ways, it’s its own marathon.

So what lessons can you take from the Boston Marathon about creating community programs?

Regular scheduling matters: The difference between content and programming is simple. Content attracts members, while programs create opportunities for member engagement. Good programs become a part of a community calendar. Imagine if instead of on Patriots Day, the Marathon was run at a different time when the best runners in the world could make it. It would be great content, but it wouldn’t engage the community in the same way.

Tip: Doing community programs? Find times you can commit to, so your members know when to expect something to happen.

Create an opportunity to participate: A great piece of the Marathon is what happens long after the winners cross the finish line and collect their wreaths and prize money. Behind them, thousands of others – many of whom have never run a marathon before, stream up and down the same hills. They all have reasons to run, lessons to share and stories to tell. The marathon affords them the opportunity in a public space – although no one really wants to talk to you at Mile 21. It also gives them a new skill set – marathoner.

Tip: Some of the most powerful community programs are driven by members themselves – either as experts or idea generators. Give them that opportunity to learn, grow and develop new skills.

Capitalize on shared experience: A powerful piece of community programs and live events in a community goes beyond the content to the shared opportunity to experience that content. Whether that’s on the phone or web in a webinar, in person at a conference, the ability to engage in real time has an impact that is difficult to replicate asynchronously.

Tip: We like to make sure in our community programs that there is some real-time element – smaller programs are live calls where members can ask questions and stay connected. Larger programs and presentations have a backchannel chat that allows members to talk and connect during presentations, share resources and links.

Capture the value: Part of what makes the Marathon live on year to year is the stories that grow from it – positive and sometimes negative. It’s a thoroughly chronicled event (mostly by participants) and the past records can inspire new generations.

Tip: No matter how well you schedule, not everyone will be able to make your programs. Capturing notes or recording audio, and making them available after the fact both makes them part of the community’s research database and allows new members and those who couldn’t make the call a chance to gain from the experience (and see what they missed).

Have the patience to develop: Nothing about a marathon is easy. That one’s sort of obvious. But growing the Boston Marathon wasn’t that easy, either. The first Marathon had 18 runners and 15 finishers. It grew to 100 by 1906, but had fewer than 200 participants as late as 1960. By 1968, though, it hit 1,000, topped 2,000 in 1975, and nearly 8,000 in 1978. Today, the field is capped at over 30,000 and thousands of runners are turned away. Programs can feel slow to develop – they don’t really “go viral” like content. But for those with patience and determination, they can provide powerful engine for community.

Tip: Set realistic goals, and recognize that when starting programs, just as when starting communities, it can actually be beneficial to have smaller events that allow you to set expectations and provide better value for those who attend.

For any community, finding the right balance of content and programs is key to success. Content gets members to the community, but the programs you offer should be a key element of your strategy to keep them there.

The content and programs of TheCR Network provide members from more than 100 organizations with valuable insights and connections to start, build and grow their communities. Become a member today!

2014: A Year of Community Advancement

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By Shannon Abram, Relationship Manager at The Community Roundtable.

It’s hard to believe we’re coming up on 2015 – the past year flew by, and we wanted to take a minute to pause and reflect on the past 12 months before we dive into planning the next 12! We kicked 2014 off by launching several new initiatives aimed at connecting community managers with each other, and showcasing just how different the average profile of community practitioners can be. Our Faces of Community Management profile series shared a glimpse into the background of a wide array of community managers, and our monthly Community Manager Spotlight webinar series provided an in-depth look at what leading community professional are working on and best practices for furthering your career in community. SOCM_JW14_Landing

We shared our annual State of Community Management 2014 research in April and released an accompanying infographic”Drive Success with Basic Executive Coaching” and eBook “Building a Community Roadmap” later in the year. You can check out all the related report materials including exclusive insights, expert advice and informative blog posts here.

Community Manager Salary SurveyIn October we released a brand new research platform – The Community Manager Salary Survey which aims to bring more awareness to the emerging career path in community management; detailing what community professionals can expect from different roles and what hiring managers should know to grow effective community programs.  In addition to the full report, which you can download here, we also released an informative infographic  “Careers in Community Management” that profiled three main community roles and provided exclusive job role, responsibility and salary information for each.

ChampionsThe Fall also saw us assume the stewardship of Jeff Ross’s extremely popular “#ESNchat” a weekly twitter chat where enterprise social network focused community professionals gather weekly to discuss hot ESN topics and share advice and best practices for creating thriving ESNs. The upcoming topic schedule, as well as archives of past chat can be found here.

Finally, we shared some news from inside the TheCR Network – the introduction of our first formal Champion program.This program serves to deepen conversations among special interest groups who share a common use case or characteristic, enhance our content and programming by having community leaders, who have deep expertise in their domain, lead conversations and connect our members more closely with similar peers and industry experts.

We are proud to have shared so much new research and content with you over the past twelve months. 2014 was a year of growth and expansion at TheCR – both in terms of new programming and research initiatives, but also in terms of our team, TheCR Network, and our connections with community professionals around the world. We hope you also enjoyed a fruitful and fulfilling 2014, we can’t wait to connect with you in 2015 and help advance the community work you do.

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Looking to take your career in community management to the next level in 2015? 92% of members agree that TheCR Network supports and advances their personal and professional goals. Learn how our research, access to peers and experts, targeted content and exclusive concierge service can help you achieve your goals in the new year and beyond.

 

Sneak Peek Inside TheCR Network: February 2014 Wrap-Up

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Hello. My name is Hillary Boucher and I am the community manager of TheCR Network – our private peer network of the smartest social business and community professionals. And I kid you not — every day I am honored to work with the intelligent, savvy and experienced community professionals in our network.

I know there are many people who want to know what membership is like, and so every month I’m going to be giving a sneak peek into what we’ve been up to inside the network. Ready? Here we go!

Nerdy Valentine's Day card by Stephanie Evergreen

Nerdy Valentine’s Day card by Stephanie Evergreen

 

Last month in TheCR Network…

February is for lovers. Community lovers that is.

It might have been a cold and snowy month for most of our team, but with 95+ companies represented and globally located we were able to live vicariously through our members located in warmer climates.

Member Questions & Discussions

Inside TheCR Network members have access to groups and forums based on their work and priorities. Here, they can ask questions for other members to answer or report on their own insights and experiences. Some of the hot topics this month were:

  • How do you get members over the “it’s a stupid question so I won’t ask” hump?
  • What are some best practices around community approvals?
  • Do you have different tiers for your MVP/super user program?

New Resources

TheCR Network members have access to TheCR Library, which includes an archive of Roundtable Reports, TheCR Research, Resource Bundles organized by use case, member case studies and more.

  • Community Maturity Model Resource Bundle. This month we revamped and re-released our Community Maturity Model Resource Bundle to include new resources our members co-created with our team.
  • New crowdsourced conference guide. It’s a common challenge to keep track of industry appropriate events so we decided to take the challenge on as a network. The collaborative document is filling up fast with helpful info and insights about various conferences and events that might be helpful to members.
  • Advocacy Program Quick Case. Every week we host two virtual Happy Hour chats for our team to connect with other members around work and personal interests. It was one of those beautiful community moments. Two members bumped into each other in Happy Hour chat. After some casual introductions, one member mentioned she was researching how to launch an advocacy program and another member replied that she had just been there and launched a program last year. A case study was shared right there in Happy Hour and with their permission we grabbed the most helpful parts of their conversation, reformatted it and released it as a quick case so other members could benefit from the information exchange.
  • Four new Roundtable reports. We create reports from every single Roundtable call. In February we released four new reports filled with best practices and lessons learned on a variety of topics including: 2014 trends for social business, State of Community Management research overview, how to manage up in a networked world, and how gamification can drive business objectives in your community.

Roundtable Calls and Member Events

Roundtable calls are the heartbeat of our programming. Every week we host a live, interactive call with expert facilitators covering various topics and case studies that are important and supportive to our members’ work. Here are the discussions we hosted this month:

Social Business and Transparency
This was a well attended Roundtable call hosted by one of our members from a large, financial institution. She shared an inspiring case study and best practices on transparency and engagement in enterprise social networks.

Community Maturity Workshop
As you know we’ve been collecting survey data for our 2014 State of Community Management Research both inside the network and with our extended network of friends. (Have you taken the survey yet? It closes Friday and we would love to have you included!) What you might not know is that inside the network we have an active Community Maturity Assessment Working Group who has been collaborating with our team and building maturity assessment tools. Their work informed our survey creation and this month we gathered for a workshop, facilitated by Maggie Tunning, to take a peek at the early results and discuss insights.

How Do you Measure the Success of Community Managers?
This is a hot topic for members and the second time in six months we’ve gathered to discuss. We heard from experienced team leaders on how they assess the success of the community managers on their teams, and we also heard from individual community professionals on how they measure their own success.

Crowdsourcing and Collaborating with Consumers: Understanding the Difference
For this discussion we brought in an external expert, Julie Wittes Schlack who is the VP of Innovation at Communispace, to take a detailed look at best practices for collaborating and crowdsourcing with consumers.

Book Club: The Circle by Dave Eggers
Is sharing really caring? Are you spooked by the public’s disregard for privacy? No? Then you haven’t read The Circle by Dave Eggers yet. It’s a novel that takes a very interesting look at where society could be heading with its technology and the slippery slope of privacy and transparency. It’s not as far fetched as you might think and it’s particularly interesting to discuss with others who work is the social and community space. Our team gathered with members for a book club chat and decided that the book affirms that the conversation at hand is not just about technology — but the intent of the people who yield it.

Alumni Series: 20 Questions w/ Claire Flanagan
We gathered for a small and intimate discussion with longtime TheCR member, Claire Flanagan to discuss her career journey in the community space. Along with Claire’s perspectives, members weighed in with their own thoughts on what they’ve learned over the past five years, where the career path of a community manager can lead, and the current trends that are affecting and shaping the way they approach their community work.

Want to join the conversation?

What do you think? Enough for one month? I’ve only just highlighted some of our more prevalent discussions. There have been many more questions and discussions, high quality content curated and archived for future research needs, and many peer-to-peer introductions made by our team as part of our concierge service we provide members. If you are interested in being a part of TheCR Network you can learn more about membership here. I’d love to help you get started!

See you next month!

 

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Do you manage a community? Take the 15 minute State of Community Management survey and save $500 on individual membership through Friday, February 28th.

Become a Part of the Network You Need… Before You Need It

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By Jim Storer, Co-Founder and Principal at The Community Roundtable

2013 has been an amazing, busy and productive year here at The Community Roundtable. Membership grew by 34% and we now reach members in thirty-one US states and seven countries around the world. I am personally thrilled with the collaboration and camaraderie that the Network fosters – watching members help each other with real issues and solve problems together is gratifying and brings us one step closer to realizing our vision for a truly interactive hub for advancing community strategy and management. The best reward for us is that our progress also makes our members proud.

To support this growth we’ve made significant changes this past year, including doubling the size of our team. 2014 will also bring changes to what membership in TheCR Network looks like. First, we’ll begin bundling our Toolkits with membership starting in 2014 and our research library will continue to grow to support our additional members. After a lot of discussion Rachel and I have decided to increase the fee for TheCR Network membership. In order to provide quality content and programs, access to industry-leading research and our signature professional concierge service, we feel this is essential. As of January 1, 2014, TheCR Network membership fee will increase from $995 to $1,499/person/year and will include your choice of one toolkit along with your membership seat. Contact us for special team pricing for three or more people.

Current members will be grandfathered at the current membership rate, meaning if you join by December 31st you can lock in the $995 price. In other words, if you have been thinking of joining, now is a great time to do so!

Members of TheCR Network enjoy:

  • Weekly member-only roundtable calls with industry leaders like Jeremiah Owyang, Richard Millington, Maria Ogneva, Bill Johnston and more
  • Access to over 200 case studies and reports in our research library highlighting best practices from Fortune 500 companies
  • Our professional concierge service, matching you with a member or expert that has experience with your specific issue
  • Downloads of all TheCR Research in pdf format
  • Exclusive discounts on training, events, research and Toolkits
  • The opportunity to define TheCR roadmap and research priorities

We know it’s not always easy to convince your boss to allocate budget for your professional development. We are happy to help you with cost justification and referrals. We’ve drafted a justification letter for you to use and we are also happy to speak directly with you and your team. Contact us to learn more.

As 2013 draws to a close I want to thank you for being a loyal friend of The Community Roundtable. TheCR Network members are a vibrant part of our world, but we also appreciate your continued support. We will continue to invest in curated content and research for our wider community of friends and followers (including our curated Twitter stream, Pinterest boards, Slideshare presentations, favorites and blog). Over the last two years we’ve added services and content for those of you just starting out – including training and toolkits that can be purchased a la carte.

Join TheCR Network now!

Here’s to a happy, healthy and prosperous 2014. We can’t wait to see what the new year brings!