The Community Roundtable

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

Beyond ChatGPT: Four Generative AI Tools for Community Managers

By

One of the biggest use cases for generative AI for community managers is help generating new content and copywriting. We think generative AI is a great tool for outlining, drafting, and researching content projects but IT IS NOT a substitute for thoughtful, people-generated content for your communities.

Since ChatGPT blazed onto the scene in November 2022 they’ve been the biggest generative AI name community managers have been discussing. But, ChatGPT isn’t the only (or even best) option for a lot of the content-related uses community managers have for generative AI capabilities. Google’s Bard is the other big name in general generative AI right now, but of course this is constantly changing.

Here’s a quick rundown of four generative AI tools for community managers working on content/copywriting projects:

Four Generative AI Tools for Community Managers

  1. Jasper is a popular AI content and copywriting tool that uses GPT-3 to generate high-quality, human-like copy. Jasper, like most of these tools, can create a variety of content, including blog posts, ad copy, and social media posts. Jasper AI copywriting tool
  2. Writesonic is another popular AI content and copywriting tool that uses GPT-3 to generate high-quality copy. They focus on writing factual and hyper-personalized content that maintains your brand voice and is SEO-optimized with your chosen keywords. Writesonic AI copywriting tool
  3. Anyword is an AI content and copywriting tool that focuses on AI performance writing for marketing teams. And stands out for it’s ability to write optimized copy for search engine results pages (SERPs). The also have a Canva extension so you can generate copy during the design process. Anyword AI copywriting tool
  4. Grammarly is a well-known grammar checker that you might already use (we do!) We just learned that Grammarly also offers an AI copywriting tool that can used to improve the grammar, style, and clarity of your copy, in addition to generating copy in the your voice or the voice of your brand. Grammarly AI copywriting tool

Which Tool Should You Choose?

As always, the best generative AI tool for you and your community depends on your specific needs, preferences, and resources. Looking for a tool that can generate high-quality, human-like copy? Jasper or Writesonic are good options. Looking for a tool that can write copy optimized for SERPs? Anyword is a good option! And if you are looking for a tool that can help you improve the grammar, style, and clarity of your copy, then Grammarly is a good option.

We’d be remiss not to reiterate that any generative AI tool are not a replacement for human copywriters. They are a valuable source of ideas and inspiration, but shouldn’t be used as the sole content generation tool (learn more about the challenges of using generative AI here) in your toolbox. Ultimately, the best content for your community managers is still going to be written by human community managers. They are the ones who truly understand the nuances of your voice, tone and language, and the unique needs and requirements of your audiences.

Other Factors to To Consider

Here are some additional factors to consider when choosing a generative AI tool for content generation and copywriting:

  • The type of content you need to create. Some tools create certain types of content better than others. For example, Jasper is a good choice for creating blog posts, while Writesonic is a good choice for creating ad copy.
  • The price. Generative AI tools can range in price from free to hundreds of dollars per month. It is important to choose a tool that fits your budget.
  • The ease of use. Some tools are more user-friendly than others. If you are not familiar with generative AI tools, it is important to choose a tool that is easy to learn and use.

More Community Technology Topics

Four Ways Generative AI Can Help Community Managers

By

Generative AI (like ChatGPT and Bard) can help community managers in a number of ways. As we discussed in the SOCM 2023 and Four AI Prompts for Community Managers, ChatGPT (or any generative AI) is not designed to do your work, but to accelerate your work. You still need the ideas, you just need to learn how to express them as prompts. 

We like to like of generative AI as another team member to help us generate ideas, draft copy (that we heavily edit!) and research ideas or topics that we are learning about. But that’s just a tip of what community managers can do with generative AI.

Four Ways Generative AI Can Help Community Managers

If you need help getting started, here are four ways generative AI can help community managers accelerate their work.

Four Ways Generative AI Can Help Community Managers

  • Automating repetitive tasks: Generative AI can be used to automate tasks such as moderating comments, generating FAQs, and creating social media posts. This can free up community managers to focus on more strategic and creative work.
  • Providing insights into community behavior: Generative AI can help analyze community data and identify trends and patterns. This can help you understand how your community is interacting with content and programs, drive decision making for new content, and help identify areas where community members are struggling so you can improve the user experience.
  • Creating engaging content: Generative AI can be used to create engaging content such as blog posts, articles, and videos. This can help community managers attract new members to their communities and keep existing members engaged.
  • Personalizing the community experience: Generative AI can be used to personalize the community experience for each member. This can be done by recommending content, suggesting friends, and providing targeted support.

Here are some specific examples of how generative AI is being used by community managers today:

  • Reddit: Reddit uses generative AI to moderate comments and identify spam. This helps to keep the community safe and welcoming for all users.
  • Stack Overflow: Stack Overflow uses generative AI to generate FAQs and answer questions. This helps to provide users with quick and accurate answers to their questions.
  • HubSpot: HubSpot uses generative AI to create blog posts and social media posts. This helps to attract new leads and keep existing customers engaged.

As generative AI technology continues to develop, we will see even more ways in which it can be used to help community managers accelerate the work they do, allowing more time for creating meaningful relationships with members.

Want to learn more about the impact of AI on online community management? Check out this post Four AI Prompts for Community Managers or search “AI” in the search tool above!

Five Tips for Community Managers Getting Started with ChatGPT

By

Not every community managers is super tech-savvy – and that’s ok! It feels like there are always new platforms or services to try out – and you can’t really tell which ones it’s worth investing time in (remember Vine? Clubhouse? RIP!)

Generative AI is here to stay, and if you aren’t comfortable using it it’s time to learn. Below we’ve shared five tips for community managers getting started with ChatGPT (or any generative AI technology).

Five Tips for Community Managers Getting Started with ChatGPT

Five Tips for Community Managers Getting Started with ChatGPT

Familiarize Yourself with ChatGPT: Take the time to understand what ChatGPT (or an equivalent generative AI technology like Google’s Bard AI) is and its capabilities. Learn about its natural language processing abilities, its training process, and the types of questions or prompts it can handle.

Identify Your Use Case: Determine the specific purpose for which you want to use ChatGPT. Start with your community use case (customer support? brand awareness? employee collaboration?) and then clarify your objectives and how ChatGPT can assist you in achieving them.

Collect Relevant Training Data: If you have specific domain knowledge or context that you want ChatGPT to understand better, gather relevant training data. This could include historical chat logs, documents, or relevant articles to help improve the model’s performance in your desired area.

Experiment and Iterate: Start by asking the iterative AI of your choice a variety of questions or providing different prompts related to your use case. Experiment with different phrasings, instructions, or settings to see how the model responds. Take note of the strengths and weaknesses of the model’s output and iterate to refine your prompts and maximize the usefulness of the responses.

Provide Feedback and Adjust: As you use ChatGPT, provide feedback to OpenAI or the platform you’re using to help improve the model. Remember – we are at the beginning of this new technology, and it will (and should) evolve. Report any issues, biases, or problematic outputs you encounter. Additionally, adjust your own prompts, instructions, or guidelines based on the feedback you receive from users or community members to ensure responsible and effective usage.

Want to learn more about the impact of AI on online community management? Check out this post Four AI Prompts for Community Managers or search “AI” in the search tool above!

Catherine Hackney on Community Tools

By

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

Episode #91 of Community Conversations features Catherine Hackney, Principal at Confident Communities Consulting.

On this special State of Community Management 2022 episode, Catherine and host Anne Mbugua explore:

  • How does thinking about tools affect community work?
  • What does the SOCM 2022 report tell us about community tools?
  • How you can better understand your audience’s needs and expectations.
Catherine Hackney on Community Tools

Listen to Catherine Hackney on Community Tools

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

Subscribe: Spotify | RSS

CommunityConversations-Transcript-91Download
Catherine Hackney on Community Tools

About Catherine Hackney

Catherine Hackney is the Principal at Confident Communities Consulting, LLC, a Higher Logic Certified Partner. She is a reliable online community management consultant with nine years of experience. Cathering demonstrates expertise in increasing member engagement and of the Tradewing and Higher Logic platforms. Catherine was the recipient of the Higher Logic MVP award in 2016-2022. Learn more about Catherine.

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.

Adam Ballhaussen on Technology Integration and Optimization

By

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

Episode #88 of Community Conversations features Adam Ballhaussen, Senior Director of Customer Education and Advocacy at Docebo.

Adam shares a look at how Docebo leverages Insided’s community solutions alongside other internal systems and offers advice for creating holistic community initiatives. We also chat about using online community programs for support, knowledge base, and product outcomes.

Adam Ballhausen

This episode is sponsored by Insided. Learn more about Insided.

Adam Ballhaussen on Technology Integration and Optimization

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

Subscribe: Spotify | RSS

Adam Ballhaussen on Technology Integration and Optimization – TranscriptDownload

About Adam Ballhausen

Adam’s approach to building Customer Education and Advocacy programs that get results is to be an empathetic leader, a diligent student, and an inspired visionary – in that order.

He’s a seasoned CEd & Advocacy leader, passionate about building communities and creating intuitive learning experiences that delight customers. As a lifelong learner, he has a knack for making complex concepts easy and fun to learn. With a background in marketing strategy and design – and an immense, admittedly geeky, love for technology – he builds learning experiences that work.

About Docebo

Docebo is redefining the way enterprises leverage technology to create and manage content, deliver training, and understand the business impact of their learning experiences. With Docebo’s multi-product learning suite, enterprises around the world are equipped to tackle any learning challenge and create a successful learning culture within their organization.

Check out more podcasts from the Community Conversations series:

Three Ways Verint Community Drives Success

By

Online community case studies from Sage Software, Olympus Cameras, and Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development (CIPD).

This guest post is sponsored content provided by Verint. Learn more about Verint here.

More and more companies understand that support communities can play a key role in their self-service and customer success strategies. Many customers view the online support community as the most powerful, convenient, and responsive place to turn to when they have a question, concern, or need about a company’s product or service.

The problem, however, is that organizations often don’t fully recognize the full value, capability, and potential of their online community. That’s why at Verint, we realize that a community needs to be customizable so that it not only fits the look and feel of the brand but also reflects the organization’s values and business goals.

Verint Community is designed to meet your specific business goals, and we’ve had years of experience building customized communities across a myriad of use cases and industries. Verint Community’s capabilities range from delivering instant information for customer service to building brand loyalty to making life easier for employees.

Here are some of the different ways Verint Community meets the diverse needs of our customers and employees, as well as some success stories from our customers.

Instant Customer Support

One of the most useful and popular elements of an online community is delivering immediate, instant, and around-the-clock customer support – whether that’s through forums, FAQs, articles, or other avenues of information. We’ve seen firsthand how organizations have used their community to deliver a better customer experience, and higher CSAT scores, increase call deflection and save on contact center costs all while placing the information their customers need in one centralized place.

To see this in action, look no further than Verint Community user Sage. Leading companies around the globe trust Sage to deliver software solutions for everything they need to manage accounting and financials, operations, people, payroll, and payments. In North America, Sage offers 22 different solutions for customers, and with such an expansive portfolio, meeting customer expectations and providing agile customer support is a major priority.

Three Ways Verint Community Drives Success

That’s why they chose Verint Community to create their customer-facing community, which they named Sage City. After launching this platform, they reduced licensing and maintenance costs by consolidating on a single community platform, increased customer engagement to more than 20,000 visits each weekday and grew return visitors to account for two-thirds of total traffic. Here’s a case study detailing the success of Sage City.

Elevating the Voice of the Customer

One of the most rewarding results of launching an online community is that it allows for the brand to see the people who use their products or services turn from customers to devoted fans. By bringing together likeminded customers, a brand can use their community to build the sort of loyalty that drives real results – especially when prospective customers see the energy and excitement happening on the community forums.

This is how Olympus Cameras used their Verint Community to create MyOlympus, which has driven an array of positive results across Europe. They’ve evolved their services to meet changing customer needs while also growing their platform. Currently, they’re engaging with more than 400,000 European users for more than half a million monthly page views.

Three Ways Verint Community Drives Success

Here’s a case study that shows how MyOlympus has delivered real results with Verint Community.

Enhancing Team Productivity

An online community isn’t solely a customer engagement tool. At Verint, we’re seeing more and more organizations using their community to build relationships, give workers the tools they need to do their job, and create a virtual watercooler and collaborative space at a time when more people are working remote.

The Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development (CIPD) is the professional body for HR and people development with more than 145,000 members across the world. CIPD provides thought leadership through independent research on the world of work and offers professional training and accreditation for those working in HR and Learning & Development (L&D).

Three Ways Verint Community Drives Success

For more than 18 years, CIPD has been using Verint Community to connect members and employees. They’re currently seeing more than 200,000 users stop by their community at some point during the year, including a significant increase in mobile users in recent years.

Learn more about CIPD’s experience with Verint Community here.

Save the Date: Customer Community Summit is June 15th

By

After a two-year hiatus, we are thrilled to welcome our community audience back to Boston for a one-day, exclusive customer community summit. This all-inclusive experience will take place at Convene Boston on Wednesday, June 15, 2022.

This event is designed for community professionals working with external communities – including customer or partner communities focused on support, product innovation, and marketing/brand awareness.

We’ll combine live product demos featuring new features and functionality from leading customer community platforms, with expert panels and case studies from some of the top customer communities today.

What: The Customer Community Summit is a one-day immersive learning experience for customer community professionals.

Why: Launching, maintaining, migrating, and managing online communities can be overwhelming and, without an experienced team, can lead to expensive and time-consuming mistakes. Learn from solutions providers and online community professionals who have been in your shoes.

Who: Anyone responsible for launching, managing, and evolving online community initiatives. Community managers, project managers, stakeholders, IT professionals, and more are welcome!

We’ve also built in a lot of time for networking with community peers, and connecting with community technology providers to help you get the information you need when selecting a new community platform, or migrating an existing community to a new solution.

The Customer Community Summit will take place at Convene Boston – which means the food will be amazing, and there will be unlimited coffee, drinks, and snacks all day.

We’ll cap the Summit off with a casual cocktail party and head to a series of dinners hosted by our community partners. This is a the perfect event if you’re looking to learn more about the customer community landscape, are currently evaluating a new community platform, or just want to connect with community professionals facing similar challenges.

You can view the agenda and learn more about registration here.

Welcome to the 2020 Connect Technology Track

By

This is a guest post by Technology Track Chair, Jillian Betjlich.

If there was ever a year for technology to demonstrate its reach, 2020 has been that year. Amidst chaos and confusion, technology has been a common denominator allowing us to connect, engage, and collaborate with individuals around the world. It has allowed us to transition to virtual workplaces and educational institutions, get the information we need instantly, or simply just spend time with a familiar face and voice.

We knew technology had changed how we work, play, and interact, but this year it has truly proven its immense impact on how we live and thrive. Technology is here to stay. (The pandemic and 2020 are not. Phew!)

Some of the sessions at the Technology Track 2020.

Behind the scenes of all that chaos, confusion, change, and transition are community professionals harnessing the use of technology to bring about the environments we need and want. We’ve created digital worlds, changed behaviors for the better, dug deep into code and data, and leveraged every last drop of functionality. And we’re so ready to share our experiences, lessons learned, best practices, and more with you.

This year’s technology track will feature live demos, interactive panels, and practitioner-led case studies on can’t-miss topics, covering everything from online community platforms to community analytics and vendor roadmaps. Whether you’re a full-on techie, community nerd, or just getting started, this year’s track is sure to leave you feeling like a platform expert.

We look forward to nerding out with you!

Jillian Bejtlich
2020 Technology Track Chair

Lili McDonald on Being Comfortable with Community Technology

By

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 #69 features Lili McDonald.

In this episode of the podcast, Lili shares her experience with online community technology platforms, how community managers can streamline community operations, the power of an online form, and how setting boundaries can help you stay sane.

Listen Now:

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

Subscribe: Spotify | RSS

Find more episodes of Conversations with Community Managers here.

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.

Webinar: Best Practices for Evaluating Online Community Platforms

By

Best Practices for Evaluating Online Community Platforms

Each month our community manager extraordinaire, Kelly Schott, shares a behind the scenes look inside TheCR Network.  She’ll explore the research, programming and professional development available exclusively to Network members and highlight best practices for community management excellence.

November’s webinar focused on best practices when evaluating community and engagement platforms.

Are you evaluating and assessing community or engagement platforms? You are in great company – a lot of people are. This is being driven by shifts in the vendor space, the growing importance of these technologies to organizations, and the maturity of current programs.

Watch Kelly as she shares five tips for evaluating online community and engagement platforms.

Watch the Webinar Archive:

Watch more webinars.