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4 Ways Engagement Benefits Communities

February 7, 2023 By Jim Storer

The most effective communities strike the balance of a well-crafted shared value. Communities help individual members feel seen and heard. That potent combination leads to members feeling empowered and more likely to engage; they ask more questions, problem-solve, and tackle leadership initiatives they might not have considered otherwise. In other words, when people feel their voice matters — they use it. This leads to a powerful cycle of benefit and contribution.

Empowered individuals are engaged, constructive, and productive, which contributes positively to the community culture around them.

Engaged and empowered members are also good for the organization that runs each community. A well-run community that provides real value to its members positions an organization as trustworthy, adaptive, and engaging.

Your community team challenge: maintaining this delicate shared value balance.

Engagement Benefits Communities

Creating engaged members

With great power, comes great responsibility (yes, we borrowed the quote from Spider-Man but it doesn’t make it any less true!), and there are huge opportunities for organizations here. Recognizing and nurturing the communities (and their members) that already exist create value for both the community member and the organization (we love shared value!).

If you’re unsure where to start, our Community Engagement Framework™ lays out the four stages of culture change in communities: moving from quid pro quo relationships to collaborative ones. As the transition happens, you’ll see the levels in which your members explore out loud — a core attribute of collaborative and innovative cultures — increase.

Community Engagement Framework

Mapping the stages of the Community Engagement Framework™ to the ways in which member engagement positively impacts communities is easy to see.

Four Ways Engagement Benefits Communities

  1. Validation leads to connections: Members find confidence in their decision to join the community by browsing, viewing, liking, and sharing content they find on the network. They will continue to expand their engagement as they become connected to the community and its members.
  2. Sharing leads to validation. The Care Bears got it right – sharing is caring. Members feel like they belong when they comment on threads, share their own content and thoughts — and get validation from others’ reactions.
  3. Asking leads to trust. Trust in the community occurs when members ask for help and get useful responses.
  4. Exploring leads to belonging and participation. When members explore the community they develop a sense of belonging by participating in open-ended discussions, sharing different perspectives, and being open to brainstorming. This is where the real value starts to build, as engaged members create engaged members.

Want to learn more? Download the Community Engagement Framework™ today to get started.

Ashleigh Brookshaw and Meghan Bates on Change Management

April 21, 2020 By Jim Storer

Conversations with Community Managers - Ashleigh Brookshaw and Meghan Bates

Join the community experts at The Community Roundtable as they chat about online community management best practices with a wide range of global community professionals. Topics include increasing online audience engagement, finding and leveraging executive stakeholders, defining and calculating online community ROI and more. 

Episode #68 features Ashleigh Brookshaw, ASSP and Meghan Bates, Personify.

In this episode of the podcast, Ashleigh and Megan share their perspective on the intersection of change management and community management, how to thrive as a mighty team of one, and how community champion programs can increase engagement and member satisfaction.

Listen Now:

https://media.blubrry.com/608862/thecr-podcasts.s3.us-east-1.amazonaws.com/AshleighBrookshaw.mp3

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

Subscribe: Spotify | RSS

Find more episodes of Conversations with Community Managers.

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.

Scale yourself as a community manager to take community to new heights

May 31, 2016 By Ted McEnroe

By Ted McEnroe, Director of Research and Training, The Community Roundtable

A female climber on a steep rock face viewed from above with the belayer in the background. The climber is smiling at the camera. Shallow depth of field is used to isolated the climber.

Have you ever met a successful community manager who says they wish they had more to do?

Me neither. Community managers wear multiple hats, work with myriad stakeholders and are expected to understand everything from business models to technical support – often working alone or (maybe) with part-time or volunteer help. 95 percent of communities in The State of Community Management 2016 had some sort of dedicated community management staff, and 75 percent had a full-time staff member. But only 31 percent of communities say they had a team of community managers, and even in communities with tens of thousands of members, community teams are the exception, not the rule.

How do you survive? Our research highlights some real opportunities to scale yourself, ease your workload and empower your members.

Start a Champions Program

SOCM FactEvery community manager knows how important key members are to keep the community vibrant and engaging. But not everyone is giving your advocates the training and responsibility to tackle real tasks in the community. TheCR Network has a champions program that taps into the interests and expertise of members and gives them real opportunities to develop their skills and share knowledge. Their skills expand the knowledge base in the community, and help take the content burden off the community manager.

Give Your Advocates Real Responsibilities, and Real Rewards

Advocacy programs are usually good about recognizing community stalwarts, but sometimes fall short of giving them other benefits and responsibilities. Nearly 90% give their advocates visual recognition in the community and 74% give them access to the community team – but many stop there. Best-in-class communities build beyond mere recognition with special opportunities to give feedback and gain access to executives, and they are also more likely to expect advocates to answer questions, test new products and organize programs.

Empower Your Members

Your advocates are key, but they’re by definition just a subset of your members. Don’t forget about “the 99%” in your community, either!

Ask their opinions: The research demonstrates that communities with formal processes for member feedback have substantially higher engagement – and finding out what’s not working for members can help you focus on the things that members really value.

Put them in charge: Best-in-class communities excel at getting members and internal experts to lead programming, not just community managers. And communities with member-led programming get higher engagement, too.

The bottom line is this: Good community managers manage their communities. Great community managers enable their communities. It’s an investment in the short-term, but worthwhile for your long-term community – and personal – health.

And we’ve got the research to prove it.

Check out the stats and gain valuable insights in The State of Community Management 2016 – available for free download now! And be sure to see how our other research can help!

Aaron Buchsbaum on the Rise of the Digital Onbudsman

March 2, 2016 By Jim Storer

community managers podcast - Aaron BuchsbaumWelcome to the latest episode in our community management podcast series, “Conversations with Community Managers” featuring Aaron Buchsbaum, Community Manager at The World Bank.

Join TheCR’s founder and principal, Jim Storer and director of marketing, Shannon Abram as they chat with community managers from a variety of industries about a variety of community topics, including:

  1. What’s your best advice for someone just starting out in Community Management?
  2. What are your best practices for increasing community engagement?
  3. How can you survive the zombie apocalypse? (Ok – they might not ALL be community questions…)

Episode #39 features Aaron Buchsbaum, Community Manager at The World Bank. Join us as we chat about how to prioritize a packed to-do list, his perspective on the rise of the community manager as a digital ombudsman, and how to engage with reluctant community members.

Check out the podcast featuring Aaron Buchsbaum here: 

https://media.blubrry.com/608862/thecr-podcasts.s3.amazonaws.com/AaronBauschbaum_ConversationswithCommunityManagers_TheCRPodcast.mp3

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

Subscribe: Spotify | RSS

Did you know you can subscribe to “Conversations with Community Managers” iTunes? You can!

—-

Interested in joining Aaron Buchsbaum as a member of TheCR Network?

Community management is an emerging field. Most of your colleagues likely don’t understand the challenges you face – whether you run an internal or external community.

Being a member of TheCR Network gives you access to the support, information, case studies, research and experts that make you smart and – more importantly – confident in your approach and recommendations. That translates into more support for you and your community program.

TheCR Network gives you 24/7 access to resources and community professionals around the world that have faced the same issues you are addressing – and who will help you find solutions.

TheCR Network helps you scale.

TheCR Network is a powerful network of over 250 community executives from industry-leading brands. We are proud of the company we keep and it represents innovative organizations that have a strategic commitment to community approaches.

By working together, TheCR network members scale themselves, extend their impact, and grow their community programs.

Join the leading community for community professionalsScreen Shot 2015-10-26 at 4.02.27 PM

Ready to join TheCR Network? Sign up for individual and team memberships here.

Interested in an Enterprise Membership? Contact us.

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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