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The Community Roundtable

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

Ensuring Consistent Brand Voice through Community Governance

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When we talk about the eight competencies of the Community Maturity Model people tend to get really excited about the work they do for culture, or content and programming. There are even those among us (Jillian, I’m looking at you!) that get super fired up about metrics and measurement. Policies and governance tends to get overlooked, which is crazy since our research shows that paying attention to the policies in place in your community has a big impact.

This case study from Aetna illustrates how having a comprehensive governance strategy for your community can ensure a consistent brand voice. You’ll learn how Aetna uses a community playbook, comprehensive social media training, and regular social media audits to achieve their community governance goals.

Download the free case study now. 

Community Manager Spotlight Recap: AMA with Becky Scott, iTalent

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By Shannon Abram, Relationship Manager at The Community Roundtable.

Last week we hosted our third community manager AMA to great success! In case you missed it we’ve archived the entire Community Manager Spotlight AMA webinar here – and it’s definitely a don’t miss listen for community professionals. Becky Scott, Senior Community Engagement Manager at iTalent.

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About Becky:

Becky could be called a social media addict since she lives and breathes social media and community.In reality she’s quite passionate about bringing brands and their customers together —whether it’s on sites like Facebook and Twitter or company-owned properties like blogs or forums. Becky has a varied background that includes technical project management, marketing, editing, and writing. She also fancies herself a photographer at times, busily filling her hard drive with photos. She doesn’t really like piña coladas or getting caught in the rain, but does sing a mean karaoke song.

Becky has managed online communities for 15 years and social properties since Live Journal was a “thing” and Facebook required university emails. She honed her writing and editing skills on sites like AOL’s Aisle Dash, Ask Patty, Tree.com, and ucsd.edu. Two of her previous brand communities have won awards from Forrester, ComBlu, and Lithium Technologies.

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CM Spotlight AMA Archive: Patrick Hellen, CloudLock, Inc.

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By Shannon Abram, Relationship Manager for The Community Roundtable.

When we invited Patrick Hellen, the community manager for CloudLock, Inc  to be our October Community Manager Spotlight we knew we were in for a treat. When HE requested the webinar format be an AMA we knew it was ON. In this 30 minute event Patrick shares his unique perspective on community management while also sharing best practices for job hunting in the community management world.

We ran out of time at the actual AMA and Patrick didn’t get to answer all the questions we received. He was nice enough to send along his answers to even more community questions!

At this new role you’re building community from scratch. Tell us about that experience.

Overall, it was pretty straightforward, but it was intense. I started off by fully building an RFP, while I also built my inner support system. Before I had a single electron of community built, I had talked to, interviewed, and recruited people to help with set up, configuration, reporting, content creation, etc. This was actually the most important step – to fully ensure that I had a support system, and a pre bought in, internal group to help with the community once it was up and running.

From there, it really was just configuration and building. That ended up being a breeze once I had that system in place.

What are your community management resource must-haves?

Pocket – to save articles that I think are interesting and that I can reference later, Tweet deck – to keep in touch with peers and contemporaries, and a few communities – Salesforce’s success one, the CR, Community Geek, and Reddit.

What is the one thing you wish you knew when you were just starting out in community management?

That there’s a hell of a lot more data management involved than I expected, and that if someone doesnt have community built into their goals or job description, you can pretty much guarantee that when the push comes to shove, you get dropped off the TO-DO list pretty easily.

Thus, my initial support push at my current gig.

What do you do when your community goes “quiet?”

Panic.

Generally my initial push for quiet communities is to ask members for something. A subtle reminder that membership is not a receive info only type system, but does require their input and communication to survive.

So, Polls, questions, feedback requests, etc.

Check out the full archive for more:

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Patrick Hellen is the community manager for CloudLock, Inc – a cloud security company just outside of Boston, Massachusetts. He currently runs CloudLock Connect, a customer only collaboration community. Most recently he worked for Rapid7, where he managed their SecurityStreet Community.

He’s an unabashed Twitter addict, plays far too many video games, reads nearly constantly, and considers the internet to be mankind’s greatest invention. Follow him at @patrickch, and say hi.

Our Community Manager Spotlight Series is a behind the scenes look at the diverse world of community managers. View the complete archive here.

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3 Tips for Building Your Community and Social Media Team

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This is a guest post from Sarah Price, Community and Social Media Programs Lead for Google Glass and member of TheCR Network. 

Managing a community team or hoping to someday? Your community managers, forum reps and social support agents will be the face and voice of your brand. Here are a few tips for building a strong team you can trust.

1. Think Big Picture

Despite the title of this post, don’t think of your team as “the forum team” or the “social media team.” Forums and social media are just technologies. Instead, think about how you fit into your department, and your department’s and company’s goals. Is your team part of marketing? Then you might be a retention marketing team: focused on keeping the customers you already have. Perhaps you are part of support operations? You might be a scalable support team, since community is usually more scalable than 1-to-1 phone or email.

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Of course your team is likely a blend of marketing, support, PR, HR, legal, and more, but the point is not to limit yourself to the tools and platforms you use. Social media might be new to your business, but the underlying concepts, like building brand trust, aren’t. Staying focused on the big picture will help you set more meaningful business goals, such as leads generated or customer satisfaction, rather than number of likes or shares. It will also help you frame your roles, prioritize desired skills, and make hiring decisions.

2. Create Skill Synergies

Your team requires an incredible range of skills to be successful. They need to be dedicated and empathetic: if they drop the ball with the wrong customer, a PR nightmare could ensue. They need to have detailed knowledge about your industry and be oriented towards customer service, so they can solve issues. They need to be strong project managers to handle the myriad of details that go into administrating your community and social media properties. They will be writing content, so they need to have creativity and an endless pipeline of ideas and inspiration. There will be an onslaught of operational tasks to react to, which they need to balance against strategic work to take your community to the next level, requiring excellent time management, problem solving, and strategic thinking. And don’t forget about good judgment – they will be representing your brand. It is a very rare person who has all of these skills (and if you find them, send them my way! just kidding). So build your team with diversity and balance in mind.

If you have the luxury of making more than one hire, hire someone who is more creative and someone else who is more strategic; one who is a natural people person and one who is good with details. Pay close attention to team fit: will these people work well together and leverage each others’ strengths, or are they so different they will drive each other crazy? If your team is small and you are just hiring one, choose someone whose strengths are different from and complement your own and your peers’ rather than someone who is just like you. And if you’ve inherited your team, identify their complementary strengths and fit them to projects.

3. Lead with Trust

Trust is paramount. Not only do your customers need to trust your team – you, your peers, your manager, your cross-functional stakeholders, your company all need to trust them, too. Strictly require a few characteristics in every team member: willingness to get their hands dirty, a genuine love of helping others, strong writing skills, and demonstrated good judgment; they don’t have to know how to handle every situation but they need to know when they’re in over their head so they can get help. These characteristics are critical because they are the ones that build trust and allow ownership. They need to love what they do, but they also need to feel empowered. Because let’s face it, community managers face some pretty brutal stuff: trolls, flame wars, angry customers… and every mistake they make is public. Ownership will help them get through. Do quality checks, run operational metrics, hold them accountable to their goals; but don’t scrutinize every post or second-guess every decision. They’ll want to do some things differently from how you would – let them! They’ll learn from their mistakes or they’ll show you a new perspective. Of course help them prioritize against the business goals and take a stance on important issues (that’s your job as their manager and leader) but let your team take risks where the stakes are low to moderate. Put their successes above your own, show off their accomplishments, and help them build key relationships; they will have important insights to share and need cross-functional trust, too.

What are your tips for building your community or social media team and managing them to success?

About Sarah: Sarah has worked in the community and social media space since 2008, both for support operations and also for marketing. She has transitioned through several individual roles, including community manager, and now leads community and social media programs for Google Glass.

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TheCR Network helps members like Sarah connect with peers and community experts and provides actionable templates, research  and programming. Learn how TheCR Network helps community managers every day.

Recap: Community Manager Spotlight Webinar with Heather Ausmus

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

In March, Jim chatted with Heather Ausmus as part of our ongoing Community Manager Spotlight webinar series. Heather has used the Community Maturity Model in her community work and shared how she has developed a plan through FY18 using the model as a framework.

 Heather Ausmus is the Online Community Manager at Johnson Controls Building Efficiency where she manages the Connected Community, an external community for customers, partners and prospective customers. She recently also started managing Johnson Controls Building Efficiency social media programs. Prior to Johnson Controls Building Efficiency, she helped consumer brands develop and implement social media programs and was the Marketing Manager for a global consumer brand.

Watch the video below to learn more about Heather and her team’s use of the Community Maturity Model in their work, and hear her answers to great questions, including:

  • How she has proven the worth of the community internally
  • How she was able to scale her effort with such a small team
  • What tools she uses to run reports, capture the data and methods of distribution
  • How her community team engages with product management teams

Have a question for Heather? You can connect with her on Twitter or leave them in the comments below.

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Did you know that 95% of The Network members agree that the content and peer input improves the quality of their work? It’s true! Membership in The Network saves community and social business leaders time and improves the quality of their work by connecting them quickly with peers, experts and curated information. Learn how joining The Network can improve the work you do.

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