The Community Roundtable

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

Community Perspective: Chip Rodgers

By

One of the benefits of membership in TheCR Network is access to experts from every stage of the community journey.

We’ve invited Chip Rodgers, former community executive at SAP, Ciena, and MicroStrategy, to have a discussion with Rachel Happe, co-founder of TheCR, and Network members about Chip’s experiences and perspectives on community and where they fit at the executive table.

They’ll discuss:

  • Navigating business and community needs
  • Having conversations about community across domains
  • What community practitioners who are looking to grow their career and programs need to know.
  • How community in large organizations is evolving to make room for cross-channel discussion

As a prelude to the Roundtable call, I chatted with Chip and wanted to share some highlights with you!

You’ve spent your career building communities. What are some of the biggest differences now from when you first started out in community management? 

 

“Communities were an anomaly in the corporate space back in those days.  The whole idea of creating an online community was completely foreign to most companies and business leaders.

For SAP in fact, it took a visionary leader on the management board to really make it happen.  SAP was about to launch the NetWeaver platform and wanted to attract developers, ISVs, and other partners to build solutions on the platform.  An online community was a way to allow all the technical folks to build solutions, share code samples, work together to co-innovate, ask questions, solve problems, and share successes.  But at the time, there were not many other examples to point to, there were no business case examples, and it was really a leap of faith to even get it off the ground.  In addition, the team that launched the community was pretty much on their own figuring out how to make this whole “community thing” work.  There was no support, there was no Community Roundtable, there were no online resources or other people talking about the “how to” of community.

Today, there are tons of companies that have launched successful communities across many different industries in both B2C and B2B environments.  That means any organization that decides to take the plunge to build a community can look around and find MANY supporting organizations, other community managers, other examples in their industry, business case examples, amazing research on the value of communities, etc.  These didn’t exist back in those days.

So as tough as it may seem sometimes to be running a community because maybe the rest of your organization doesn’t quite “get it”, you’re not alone — you have lots of friends with great ideas and support to help you make the community successful and to get the word out about your own success as it comes together.”

Where do you see the community industry in five years?

“I see it only continuing to grow.  Customer communities are very powerful, but we’ve only scratched the surface — both in terms of organizations deploying communities and in terms of the value organizations are getting out of communities.  So many organizations today that have deployed communities see it only as a “support community” or think that it only helps with call deflection.  That’s a very narrow view of the value of community.

Organizations taking full advantage of customer/partner communities make it part of their brand promise, make sure employees understand and fully embrace community, and work with community members to connect more deeply, solve their problems, listen to their concerns, share their successes, incorporate their ideas back into products, and celebrate them as the heroes they are.

The full value of community can be very powerful, yet not everyone has woken up to the value.  I’m convinced that will change for the better though!”

Did you have any community management mentors along the way? Any specific advice they gave you that stood out to you? 

“Yes!  I learned a ton from some of our early community pioneers like Mark Finnern, Marilyn Pratt, and my old boss Mark Yolton.  A great example is that we had a very strong policy that we would never take down content that just happened to disagree with our point of view or that was critical about some aspect of a product (other than abuse of course).  It’s easy to say that in principle.  It can be very hard in practice — especially when you have a complaint that gets attention from senior leadership.  But we found that we’d built enough of a culture in the community that many times other community members would say “that’s not been my experience”, in effect defending the company.  Anytime we had a controversial post, our moderators would bring it to our attention and we’d let the right product manager know what was being discussed.  They would watch and possibly comment to provide the company’s perspective.

It took time and some uncomfortable internal discussions, but you can’t imagine how that policy builds credibility and makes for even more passionate, engaged, brand advocates.  Philosophies like that built a very strong culture of trust between the company and our customers and partners — and they are vocal about that to other prospective customers, on social media, and to press and analysts.  It’s very valuable.”

Want to hear more from Chip?

Members of TheCR Network can join his Roundtable call on June 7th at 2pm ET. RSVP here.

Not a member of TheCR Network? Learn more or join today for exclusive access to community management resources.

 

What is Conversation Research? An Infographic Explainer

By

jason falls

Recently, Jason Falls, the Co-Founder of the Conversation Research Institute (CRI) joined members of TheCR Network for an exploration of conversation research. With years of experience in social technology, both on the agency side and brand side Jason developed the concept of conversation research. Even though people may think that this is a new concept, Jason believes community management professionals will be familiar with the premise of his work. He’s simply put a new label on it.

Based on the great discussion inside the Network we put together an infographic highlighting what Jason taught our members. Jason stress to the participants that they should not expect to replace traditional research with conversation research. Conversation research is more of a supplement to traditional research, and a great way to augment what you might already be doing.

Conversation Research - Jason Falls

Members can access the full roundtable report, including three case studies that Jason shared, as well as best practices for applying conversation research and lessons learned here.

Not a member of TheCR Network? Learn more and join today to have exclusive access to expert practitioners like Jason Falls – and our complete archive of over 350 roundtable reports on community management, community strategy, metrics and measurement, and more! Join TheCR Network.

Do you have an award-worthy community program?

By

TheCR Connect Awards Community Management

Seeing the work of hundreds of innovative and creative community professionals is one of the biggest perks of my job here at TheCR. Not a day goes by when I don’t say, “Wow – that’s awesome!” in response to something a member tells me.

Last year we launched a recognition program to acknowledge and reward the outstanding community work we see every day. I was delighted to present nine members of TheCR Network with awards that recognized their unique strengths and contributions to community management.

THECR AWARDS 2016_BANNER

 

This year TheCR Connect awards are evolving into a more formal recognition process. Since there is no way we can stay on top of all the amazing work that our members do, we’re opening up the process and encouraging members to submit award-worthy community work in four categories: Best Design Element, Winning Welcome Wagon, Best Reward and Recognition Program and Outstanding Community ROI. An additional award – The Community MVP will be awarded by nominations from community peers.

You can learn more about each award – and more about the recognition process here. Submissions and nominations are being accepted from April 25, 201717 until June 30th, 2017 at midnight PT.

I can’t wait to see what innovative community work our members submit – and to see the peer nominations for Community MVP!

Why Build an Editorial Calendar for your Community?

By

 

editorial-calendarOne of the most common questions we get from members is,  “How do I increase the value and the volume of member engagement?” This challenge persists across all community types, sizes and use cases. One way we’ve found to increase audience engagement, in terms of both quality and quantity, is to implement an editorial calendar for your community programming.

Earlier this year Georgina Cannie shared some best practices for creating an editorial calendar with members of TheCR Network. In addition to the practical tips she outlined, she also gave a great overview of the benefits of building and maintaining and editorial calendar. I wanted to share her great advice here, for any community managers considering the process.

Stability + Freshness

When you implement an editorial calendar you formally introduce a cyclical timeframe into your community program. These program and content anchors provide increased familiarity and stability to your members. Now, they know what’s going on, what to expect and when to expect it. Since the topic of each cycle is shifting and different collaborators are used, you can create a space for fresh content without confusion. Consider the success of widespread reoccurring events – like the popular Throwback Thursday (#tbt) on social media.

Don’t Reinvent the Wheel

By maintaining the same time and program structure in each editorial cycle, your community team (or you!) doesn’t have to create fresh content plans each week. A program template has been designed and content is plugged into it, which allows the community manager to focus on the value and the curation of the content itself.

Listening + Response Channels

By implementing this structure, the behavior of catering to passing member interests is no longer detrimental to the community effort or the community manager time due to positive reactivity. The shifting topic cycle is the perfect excuse for a community manager to act on community listening and plug-in what members are asking for without disrupting the entire framework. While it might seem like a lot of work in the beginning, an editorial calendar actually frees up your time in the long run to provide better content to your members.

Do you currently use an editorial calendar in your community program planning? What benefits have you found to introducing this structure into your day-to-day community work?

 

Introducing: Community Case Studies from TheCR Network

By

The number one request we get from community practitioners is to hear the stories of other people, facing the same challenges they are. And it’s not just anecdotal – our research has shown that while every community is different, data proves that communities with different use cases face similar challenges and use the same community management strategies, operations and tactics to achieve success.

Luckily, working with our members in TheCR Network gives us a front row seat to some amazing community stories – and now we’re going to share them with you!

I’m excited to announce our new series: Community Case Studies from TheCR Network. Nothing makes us happier than seeing our members succeed – and we want to share those successes with you. Added bonus – as our members tell their community stories they are also sharing how they achieved specific successes – and passing along best practices, research-backed tactics, and techniques you can implement in your community today. Each member success story will share their challenge, their goal and the outcome – a true insider look at how some of the world’s top organizations are implementing community programs.

We kick off the series with Getting the New Member Experience Right, a case study shared by member Camilo Lemos, Community Manager at Autodesk. Camilo outlines how the Autodesk community team took on redesigning its entire Customer Support Community, a peer-to-peer platform built over 30 years ago to support their software technology/web applications customers. Definitely, a must-read for anyone facing the redesign of an existing community or looking to improve a support community that is already up and running.

Download your copy of Getting the New Member Experience Right here.

Throwback Thursday – Best Practices Webinars

By

Best Practices WebinarOne of the greatest perks of working at TheCR is access to all the big, beautiful brains on our team. Hillary Boucher has more community management knowledge than you can shake a stick at and even though she is kept pretty busy with her day job (running TheCR Network and our community teams) she took some time last year to sit down with me and share some of her best practices for specific community programming.

These webinars are short, to the point and contain the how-tos for quick wins in your community. Whether you are thinking about revamping your new member on-boarding process or undertaking a community platform migration, we’ve got the best practices to help you reach your community management goals.

Take a peek! Is there a community management topic you’d love to see Hillary take on in 2017? Send it to us and we’ll try to get it on the calendar!

Community Management Best Practices Webinars

Best Practices for Training a New Community Manager

Best Practices for New Member Welcome Programs

Best Practices for Community Platform Migration

Best Practices for Content Programming

Best Practices for New Member Leadership Program

Want more Community Management Best Practices?

community_metrics_button community_strategy_button newsletter_signup_button

Can’t find what you’re looking for? Drop us a line and we’ll do our best to help you find the community management info you need!

Announcing TheCR’s 2017 Member Advisory Board

By

TheCR Member Advisory aBoardAt The Community Roundtable, we try to practice what we preach and lead by example. Our business model relies heavily on building relationships, which in financial terms means we are constantly focused on generating more value for our stakeholders – friends, guest experts, members, clients, team members – than they contribute. We believe this is how generative and compounding business models work.

Because of this approach to running a business, we’ve always been customer- and value-focused first and revenue-focused second, although we also believe in a sound, sustainable financial model.

Eight years in, we’ve benefited enormously from this approach. One of the outcomes of a relationship-first approach is that we’ve had very few contentious conversations with any of our constituents. Building great relationships is wonderful from a personal perspective, but it also returns amazing value to the business.

A reflection of that approach is our 2017 Member Advisory Board. We worked to create a board that is diverse, both personally and professionally. They come from different sectors and include an ex-Marine, a former English professor and people from consulting, client and vendor organizations. They represent manufacturing, professional services, and software companies and all have storied community careers. Perhaps most importantly, they are all friends and supportive critics – helping us see more sharply what we have to offer and challenging us to do better.

We are incredibly honored to have these members of TheCR Network step up to advise us as we make choices about where to spend our resources and focus our efforts. They have already done so much to help us understand their needs and challenges by being open and honest with us.

2017 is already flying by and we look forward to flying even higher because Amy from EY, Carrie from Talk Social to Me, Chris from ESRI, Christopher from Knowledge Architecture, Claire from Jive, J.J. from CA Technologies, Lori from Steelcase, and Monique from Oracle are in our corner.

member advisory board

TheCR Network 2016 Year in Review

By

As we close in on the end of 2016 we are always excited to take a minute and look back at the year. It’s easy to forget about all the things you’ve accomplished when your days fly by (anyone who works in community can probably commiserate!)

In 2016 we saw membership in TheCR Network grow, we expanded our live events series and we got to work with new community professionals all over the world. We are incredibly lucky to collaborate with and learn from some of the brightest minds in the community space. Here’s a quick look back at our 2016 – we’d love to hear what made your top ten list for the year?

thecrnetwork_infographic_2016_final

 

TheCR Connect 2016 – By The Numbers Recap

By

It’s no secret we’re sort of data nerds over here – I mean have you seen the SOCM lately? Here’s something you might not know though – numbers aren’t my favorite thing – but I’ve never met an infographic I didn’t like. (Longtime readers might remember our brief infatuation with #infographicthursday!). That’s why recapping our latest community manager event – TheCR Connect – through the lens of an infographic seemed perfect to me.

Here’s a little peek into our two day community workshop last month. If you were there I’d love to hear your favorite stat – maybe we’ll even update the infographic with the best ones!

Giving Thanks for My Community – #thankitforward

By

#thankitforwardThis year we’re celebrating our fourth year of the #thankitforward tradition. You can read more about it here if you aren’t familiar with the practice – but basically we want to encourage everyone to take a moment to specifically thank people in their lives who have made a positive difference.

I’m happy to share my list with you – and grateful that it was so easy for me to pick out people in my community that have helped me this year!

1. Amy Turner

Late last year Amy joined our team – and now, less than 12 months later I’m trying to figure out how we can clone her. I’m watching WestWorld – we can’t be that far off, right?! (I joke – WestWorld is a legit nightmare!) I digress – Amy was a godsend. I know I’m not the only person at TheCR who can’t imagine how we survived without her – it’s like the universe looked at the gaps in our skill set and sent us a perfectly organized, friendly, funny and kind co-worker.

Look, I know I’m gushing but Amy has made a huge positive impact on my year – and not just by being a great teammate, but by being a voice of reason, a confidante and a someone willing to laugh at my (admittedly) terrible jokes. Amy, I’m so thankful for you.

2. Hillary Boucher and Ted McEnroe

I’ve just returned from three months away from TheCR after the birth of my daughter. Stepping away is never easy for me, but this year it was especially tough since our big event (and one of my professional babies) TheCR Connect would take place right at the end of my leave. Which meant that about 90% of the planning, organizing and general cat-herding that goes with event planning would happen without me.

Luckily, I’m surrounded by exceptional team players. In swooped Ted McEnroe and Hillary Boucher – both who have more than full time roles to handle with the team. Together, with the help of the whole team they produced the best event we’ve had to date. It makes me (almost) worried for my day job! Seriously though – to know you are part of a team of real team players, who are happy and eager to step up when needed – even though it increases the burden and stress on themselves? I’m so lucky to be part of the TheCR Team.

3. Various Podcasts Guests

Look, I know I’m sort of cheating. I’ve already named three folks that helped to make my 2016 a good year. I’m going to really tear up the rulebook now and call out nine members of TheCR Network who took time out of their busy schedules to chat with us for our podcast series. Here’s a giant heartfelt thank you to J.J. Lovett, Tracy Maurer, Marjorie Anderson, Shirlin Hsu, Renee Vogt, Tamera Rousseau-Vesta, Kirsten Laaspere, Aaron Buchsbaum and Maximilian Ebnother! It has been a pleasure to talk with each of these community professionals about their work and their journeys.

So there you have it – my list of three (ok, fine, 12!) people in my community that contributed to my 2016 in a positive way. And now, it’s your turn. Blog about it, tweet about it, or just drop by someone’s desk and say, “Thanks! You’re pretty great!” I can confidently say that right now just about everyone can use a little extra kindness.

And finally – one more thank you. I’m so grateful for our wider community community. Thank you for reading, for engaging with us and for sharing your stories and your voice.