The Community Roundtable

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

Community Rules of Engagement

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By Shannon Abram, Relationship Manager at The Community Roundtable.TheCRNetwork_MondayLaunch_Image

Today is a very exciting day – TheCR Network moved to a new home. After years on the same platform our dedicated community team spent the last few months packing up the old Network, and spiffing up our new home. I know I’m biased, but I have to say – it’s lovely. Shiny, new and highly functional!

I wanted to share our community rules of engagement, because I think our community team did an amazing job of highlighting the behavior we encourage and explaining the behavior that is unacceptable to us. We are firm believers in both communication and modeling, and I think these rules paint a clear picture of the type of community we are trying to create, together.

I’d love to hear about community engagement guidelines you’ve shared with your members – please share!

TheCR Network Rules of Engagement

Every community has a culture and we feel pretty strongly about the things we encourage and the things we discourage – and they all stem from our core values:

Supportive. Fun. Respectful. Trustworthy. Transparent. Challenging.

Things we encourage and support . . .

Sharing. We want to know what you are working on, thinking about, reading or discussing. Seriously – if it’s about your work and it’s on your mind, it’s interesting to us!

Questions. We don’t think that there is any community question that is too obvious to ask. Often the simplest question is the most profound. Questions are triggers for others to share what they know – which they might not realize they know. If there is something you are curious about, pondering, don’t understand or what to hear from a peer – ask!

Ideas. Ideas are great things. Sometimes they spark intense conversations and actions. Sometime they fall flat. You never know until you share them. Go for it!

Support. Life in general and the work our members do specifically is hard. Community leaders often bear the brunt of people’s emotions, inconsistent policies and organizational mistakes. That can leave you exhausted. Additionally, because community management is an emerging discipline there is a high need to learn and we are all fumbling in certain areas. We are here to support you and we encourage you to support each other. So let someone know you appreciate them, their ideas or perspectives. That peer validation means the world to people.

Challenges. We grow and learn and do our best when people challenge us to do so – in supportive ways. That may mean sharing a difference of opinion or experience. That may mean encouraging someone to do better because they can. That may be disagreeing – respectfully – with their ideas.  You can do this in a supportive, comfortable way by prefacing an opinion with ‘In my experience…’ or ‘…  has worked well for me’ or ‘I feel like…’ which leaves room for others to have different points of view.

Participation, input and feedback. Don’t see that great blog post about strategy that you’re looking for? Think the community needs more case studies? Well don’t just stare… make it happen! While we may be the hosts of this party we are by no means the sole arbiters of what gets discussed and presented. If you feel strongly about something . . . do something about it.

Things we will discourage . . .

Attacks. We have a low tolerance for attacking or singling out people by name for criticism (whether community members or not). We’ll give you two strikes for this type of thing and then, goodbye. While we encourage challenging each other, that is best done from a supportive vs critical position.

Pitches. There can be a fine line between helping someone answer a question and pitching them on a solution, but we can all tell an obvious pitch when we see one. Don’t do it. This is a place about exploring, finding information, and understanding options.

Violating Trust. This is a private community and as such, the members have an expectation of privacy. The content and discussions within the community are intended to be kept within the community. If you would like to use someone’s case study or comments, please ask first. The Community Roundtable does summarize and anonymize the content of roundtable calls and may use that for market research products (which help support the community). If you have questions or concerns about this, please contact us directly.

Naming Names. We are here to discuss challenges and how to overcome them. To describe the challenge, it is not necessary to call out individuals involved by name. It’s bad form and typically people have valid reasons for their positions, even if it makes your job harder – so don’t expose all the identifying details, others can help you solve the problem without knowing all the gory details.

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Interested in learning more about TheCR Network? Join our community manager Hillary Boucher for a free webinar where she’ll share a behind the scenes look at the Network, and gives advice about best practices for member leadership programs.

 

New member programs matter

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By Ted McEnroe, Head of Research and Content, The Community Roundtable

“You never get a second chance to make a first impression.”

I try not to take too many words of wisdom from old shampoo commercials, but that Head and Shoulders Shampoo tag line does resonate for me when we think about communities. Joining a community is a major step for a member. In external communities, it often means they have an issue about which they need to learn – or a resolution. In internal communities, it can mean something as basic as a new job or promotion that brings them into the community.

Regardless, joining the community marks the moment when they have to walk into the room and say hello.

How do you think they feel when no one even notices?

Bottom line – the research backs up what intuition tells us. Communities that create new member programs to get members settled, help them understand expected behaviors and navigate the community have higher levels of engagement than those that just leave the front door open for people to come in.

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Another piece of this we should note – and will write about more later. When building out your new member program, think about making the most human connection possible. Program elements that feature real people having real conversations have a greater impact on engagement than handing out a new member guide or automated welcome message.

But if you’ve taken time to create a community – the research shows, it’s worth taking time to give new members the best possible first impression.

Real rewards for community advocates

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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.

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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!

Engagement and Community Architecture

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By Rachel Happe, Co-Founder of The Community Roundtable

Most of us who drive cars stick to driving on roads. Why? They helps us get where we are going faster – even though the route is rarely a straight line between where we start and our destination. We could try and take a more direct route but at a minimum it would involve driving over uneven ground – at worst we would have to remove barriers like trees, houses, rocks, animals, etc. That would be slightly, um, crazy – even if there were someone that was encouraging us to do so and helping.

My point? Infrastructure matters – a lot.

The online community space is still relatively immature and because of that, we are still blazing trails and paving roads – but like the cow paths that have determined much of the street layout in cities like Boston – we are not always doing so with much forethought or planning. The result is that community managers have to invest a lot of effort to help people get where they want to go because the infrastructure is not helping.

But we actually know a lot about how the shape of networks influence relationships, conversations and outcomes. Experts in the social network analysis space – Valdis Krebs, Robert Cross, Marc Smith, Patti Anklam – have been researching and analyzing the shape of networks long before social technologies became popular.

Recently there has been a little more awareness about network structure and its impact – including the following articles:

However, far too many organizations do little to evaluate and architect their technologies in a way that works with their existing environment and business objectives. Because of that, new social network deployments tend to ignore the existing network of relationships and communication patterns in an organization while adding a new social network architecture on top of it that is often at odds with the network that already exists. For example, an organization that is highly hierarchical in information flows might deploy a open stream-based solution to break down silos. While the intent and goal are understandable it ignores the existing patterns of behavior, which get cut off and punished when they don’t respect the hierarchy. Implementing a boundary spanning solution will likely not go very far because it runs counter to what’s rewarded and restricted in the culture. A better solution might be to look at a group-based solution that still keeps conversations in their hierarchical context, while getting people comfortable communicating in a networked way. Once that behavior is established, smaller efforts to connect similar groups can help broaden and evolve the network.

For the user, deploying a tool that disregards the current network flow adds conflicting extrinsic motivators that can completely stall adoption and use. It is then left to the community manager (if one exists at all) to try and understand how to encourage and reward behaviors that the alignment between the existing and new network structures does not make easy. Sometimes, it’s as if they are asking users to drive right through a building – and because the barriers are virtual and relational they are not visible to the organization, the community manager or to the user no can see what is going on.

Most organizations and community professionals don’t even see this problem because it is such an implicit assumption of the software. Most platforms, in turn, have relatively defined network architectures because it is easier to understand and deploy. But in making the software deployment easy, they have sacrificed the flexibility to create a network architecture that can be adapted to different environments and different business objectives. It’s also what makes some current platforms better than others for different use cases – the stream dominated tools are better for connecting across boundaries and identifying opportunity but strain to serve as collaboration solutions. Group and space dominated tools are better for collaboration but can easily create more silos. As organizations move toward enterprise solutions they need platforms that can do both – in a way that creates information and relationship flows where they are needed and cut off flows where it’s not helpful or creates too much noise.

So what can community program owners and community managers do to better align their infrastructure?

  • Educate themselves about social network analysis and how network shape affects outcomes
  • Define what their ideal network structure would be given their current culture, business objectives and member needs
  • Analyze their current network architecture and identify where it supports and where it hinders information and relationship flows – and how that effects the value generated for the business and for users
  • Evaluate the UX and feature sets available and how they might be adapted to better serve business objectives and member needs

While in many cases, community professionals will not be able to change the fundamental community architecture of their network, by understanding how it’s impacting behavior and engagement they can mitigate unintended consequences through adapting the UX, creating training or running community programs that help reduce barriers. And hopefully, they can stop asking members to drive through buildings.

Holiday Tips for Internal Community Engagement

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We have become regular participants in a great weekly twitter chat for Internal communities also often known as Enterprise Social Networks or ESNs called #ESNchat.   Last week’s talk centered on behavior in those communities around the holidays.  For the complete conversation from the chat go here.  Below are some of the highlights from that chat that may be helpful as we approach this year’s holiday season:macy's turkey

Ideas to increase engagement in your ESN during the holiday:

  • Uploading holiday photos
  • A place to post offline get togethers that are happening within the company
  • Stories/pictures around corporate charitable activities happening, volunteer opportunities
  • Ask employees which charities they support and possibly crowdsource which charities the company will give to this year
  • Aggregate holiday travel tips
  • “I’m thankful for…” posts – which can be a good way to get executives engaged in the community

But beware of:

  • Holiday party photos – particularly of employees who may have been celebrating a bit too much
  • Alienating those who may be lonely or without family and friends at this time of year
  • Overly religious postings promoting one religion or holiday over another
  • Behavior that does not conform to community standards

Examples of successful holiday themed campaigns mentioned include:

  • Halloween costume contest – one company did #pethalloween with pictures of dressed up pets
  • Turkey drive for the homeless that got 1400 turkeys donated from one company
  • SAS software’s #lovethehub centered around Valentine’s Day

Your ESN may seem a bit too chatty and not enough business-like over the holidays, but don’t panic.  That’s one way to bring an unengaged employee into the fold and get them started using it.  Good luck and happy holiday posting!  You can catch #ESNchat every Thursday from 2-3p on twitter.

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The Community Roundtable provides resources and programs to assist community professionals with the unique challenges and details they face daily.  Our newest resource is The Social Executive Toolkit designed to help social and community teams understand executive adoption so that they can effectively coach their executives.

The Case of Flat Hillary: How TheCR Network Kept Members Engaged and Connected During a Slow Time

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Depending on your community, you may be heading toward a drop in engagement over the holidays. Community members are busy shopping, cooking, and hosting or attending holiday parties. While communities aligned with these activities may see higher engagement around the holidays, many communities will see a drop. As a community manager, you are probably busier than normal as well, and a drop in engagement is not what you want to worry about right now.

So don’t. Instead prepare appropriate content, align expectations by providing context for leadership who may not like seeing the drop when reviewing analytics, and take advantage of the quiet time to plan and build community initiatives.

The reality is that most communities will see a drop in engagement at some point during the year. Since every community is different in culture and demographic, it will vary accordingly.

At TheCR Network, our peer network for community and social professionals, we see things quiet down considerably during summer vacation and holiday season. Our community focuses on professional development and networking and we find that our members align their participation with their own work schedules. It makes sense that during prime vacation times things quiet down around the TheCR Network.

Last summer we were aware this would happen and so I set out to create an initiative that would help keep a baseline of engagement, but would also appropriately match the general tone that comes with summer and vacations. I wanted it to relate to our common variable — our work in the professional community space, but it also needed to match the fun, break from routine feeling that comes with summer vacations.

Inspired by an activity I did with my kids based on the popular book Flat Stanely, I created Flat Hillary — your friendly, flat community manager FlatHillary1-150x150ready to take a trip around the network. I introduced Flat Hillary to the community with a fun letter that laid out the rules.

  1. Take a picture of Flat Hillary, helping with your community work,
  2. Post it in the network,
  3. Sign the back, and
  4. Pass her along to the next host.

My goals for the initiative

  1. Our network is global and most of our activities are virtual and so many of our members have never met each other. I wanted to create something tactile, a physical representation that the network exists and connects our members. We all know the importance of connecting face-to-face and while Flat Hillary could not replace that, I thought receiving something you could hold in the mail would help provide a feeling of connection.
  2. I also wanted to create “member collisions” (as Jim Storer refers to it.) Hosts had to reach out to the next interested member, ask for a mailing address and send Flat Hillary along — creating more opportunities for recognition and introductions. (Oh hey, I follow him on Twitter and I think we were on a call together recently.)
  3. A third goal for the initiative was to make our community work visible. Community work can be very diverse. At times it’s sitting at a computer, but it can also be organizing and attending face-to-face meetings and events. It was really interesting to “see” where other people worked and what they chose to highlight through the pics added into the network. Some pictures elicited a response of recognition from other members (That looks like my listening station!), while others pictured highlighted an interesting facet of a member’s roll that belongs uniquely to them. It added another dimension to our connection, recognition and comfort with each other.

Results

Flat Hillary was an immediate success. A diverse array of members signed up to participate right away and as the pictures started to roll in more members came to comment and join in the fun. As I had hoped there was a feeling of enthusiasm and fun around participation. While we were learning more about each others’ work and connecting, there was also a lot of laughter.

Flat Hillary is still making her way around the network though the engagement with the initiative was definitely higher in the summer and I think that makes sense. People were willing to engage, but it had to match their pace and headspace of summer vacation. In this example, adding a little fun was exactly what people needed to stay connected. While we found it harder to get members on roundtable calls in mid-July, we had no problem getting people to post pics and comment on Flat Hillary’s adventures.

The Flat Hillary thread is a popular discussions in the TheCR Network.

Final thoughts

We usually don’t recommend micro-analyzing your community metrics to avoid panicking at natural lulls in engagement. Instead, keep a big picture view and find trends of high and low engagement. And while a drop in engagement can be perfectly normal (and unavoidable), understanding trends will allow you to plan and create appropriate content and programs.

As you become aware of quiet times in your community plan for it. During times of high activity you may spend a good portion of your day in reactive mode and have a hard time working on strategy or moving bigger projects forward. These quiet times are the perfect time to plan, write and build uninterrupted.

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TheCR Network is a membership network that provides strategic, tactical and professional development programming for community and social business leaders. The network enables members to connect and form lasting relationships with experts and peers as well as get access to vetted content.

TheCR Network is the place to collaborate with and learn from social business practitioners.  Join today

Cindy Melzer on Starting Community Management

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I had a serendipitous intro recently with a couple of different people from Isis Maternity – a local childcare retail and services company – and we got to chatting about online communities. They have operated in a community-centric way in the offline world for quite some time – bringing parents together for maternity and childcare classes and enabling relationships between parents and children. They have just started to explore extending the relationships they build with and among their customers to the online world. It clearly makes a lot of sense.

Cindy Meltzer who is now their community manager, recognized the opportunity to engage more effectively with their existing Facebook Page toward the end of last year.  Like many social initiatives, she started small with some basics and found that Isis’ latent online community was more than ready to engage. She was willing to share with me how she started out and their early results which shows a dramatic increase in members and engagement on their Facebook page as soon as she reached out in a human voice. Community management can start by simply asking questions:

Between October of 2009 and January of 2010, fans of their Facebook Page grew from 699 to 1043 – impressive but not nearly as impressive as the growth in interactions which grew from 7 to 463 per month over that short time.  Cindy and Isis graciously shared these stats to show others who are just starting out what a dramatic difference community management can have and Cindy recently sat down with me to talk a little more about her experiences as a new community manager:

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This post is a follow-up and was inspired by our post The Value of Community Management.

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.

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