Category Archives: Community

The next challenge

Community, Community Manager Breakfast, Life

In community management, we often reference Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs.

1280px-Maslow's_hierarchy_of_needs

First and foremost, it states, humans focus on the need for food, shelter, safety, etc. (Not much of a surprise there.) It’s only once these are met that they can—and will—move up the hierarchy. We’re never content, us humans. It’s what makes us great, and leads to moon landings and the Mona Lisa and Third Eye Blind’s self-titled album.

I’m lucky enough that I frequently have achieved the “esteem” level of the hierarchy. I feel my work is valuable—I help people connect and accomplish things.

But like many of the lucky people in the first world, I’m always chasing self-actualization. I want my actions to mean something more than a good day’s work, or a promotion, or an award. I want to be changing the world for the better.

I chased this with UserVoice, helping companies treat customers better. I chased this with ZOZI, helping people live more active lives. And I’m very excited about my next attempt: Starting in June, I will be taking the role of Community Lead at Coursera, helping them achieve their lofty goal of providing universal access to the world’s best education. They—soon to be “we”—are truly trying to change the world for the better.

As always, this transition is not without sadness. I’ve learned an incredibly amount at ZOZI from my manager, my coworkers, and my employees. We created some great things—moving our customer satisfaction from sub-80% to 100%, launching the ZOZI Journal—and we’ve helped many people get out in the world. Leaving was not an easy decision, but I believe it was the right one. Regardless, as with UserVoice, I wish the ZOZI team all the best and will be closely following their progress (and using their product).

At Coursera, I am going to be working with some of the most brilliant people of my career on some very juicy challenges. Community is an integral part of Coursera, and they already have some great community programs. I won’t lie; my excitement sits right next to a very talkative fear, sure I won’t accomplish my goals. But truly, isn’t fear the path to self-actualization?

Thank you to everyone who has ever helped me, from my bosses to coworkers to many community managers I’ve interacted with. I’ll need you now more than ever—expect some emails and coffee dates. 🙂 And yes, I will continue to see you at Community Manager Breakfast.

Wish me luck!

-Evan

Photo courtesy of Wikipedia.

I’m speaking at CMX Summit East!

Community, Community Manager Breakfast
Audience at CMX Summit
CMX San Francisco 2014 – I’m in that audience somewhere!

I’m very excited to announce that I’ll be speaking at the fantastic CMX Summit in NYC this month!

This will be the third CMX Summit I’ve attended. I can’t recommend the event enough: This is one of the few places where you can actually learn insightful, proven community management strategies and tactics from the pros. And the smattering of speakers from other fields—like this year’s former nuclear submarine captain—bring useful tools and experiences that make them a perfectly compliment to the community professionals.

I’ll be speaking about the massive importance of measuring the ROI of community management efforts efforts. No matter how scary or difficult you find it, it’s time to make ROI a priority. I’ll walk through the things you need to accomplish this mighty goal, provide some examples, and hopefully leave you with some useful info and a good chunk of courage.

I’ll also be hosting my Community Manager Breakfast in the morning before the official talks start…which should be very different with hundreds of attendees instead of a dozen. 🙂

Hope to see you there!

 

Events drive retention

Community, , ,

The effect that user groups has on sales and retention is undeniable. Over the past five years at Brainshark, we have carefully watched the effects of meeting our customers for these in-person events.

Here are the results:

  1. Within 90 days of the meeting, our customers use the product an average of 15% more.
  2. Renewal rates are 10-15% far higher for customers that participate in the user group program.

From CMX Hub

I am so ecstatic that community professionals are beginning to measure and share numbers like this. I will keep yelling until I go hoarse: Community management is about retention! It’s a hard thing to measure, but it is measurable, as demonstrated here. CEOs are not great at understanding this, and you’ll often get pushed to focus on lead-gen or upselling. These are not the jobs of community, and if you try to build a community while pushing your product, you will face significant challenges. Community management is about retention.

Community Manager Breakfast March Notes – Ambassador Programs

Community, Community Manager Breakfast, ,

At last month’s Community Manager Breakfast, the group chose to focus on a juicy discussion topic: Ambassador Programs. The fantastic Meredith Black (Who is looking for a community role, FYI!) took notes. Check out the high-level bullet points below, and join us at the next breakfast to get the full experience!

What is an ambassador?

Users who are active, engaged, show up offline, spread the word (evangelists).

How do you build an ambassador program?

DO:

  • Have a strategy and plan
    • (Do you want ambassadors to be pre-beta-testers? Are you looking to recruit? Etc.)
  • ID the ambassadors, then reach out with money/resources/support
  • Show tons of love to early participants
  • Have barriers to entry for selecting ambassadors (see NextDoor)

DON’T:

  • Make too many rules – instead, let the users have some say
  • Build the relationship around money – instead, make it authentic
  • Ramp it up too early – instead, determine ambassador milestones before the call-to-action

How do you develop a sticky ambassador program for a product/service with a 1-time use case? (Example: a site where you research which grad school you want to go to)

Top issues:

  1. Users have unequal experience (novice vs. expert)
  2. Users aren’t motivated/interested to stay engaged
  3. Product/service is hedged by legal/compliance issues

DO:

  • Have tools in place: community blog, great platform, user profiles, following capability
  • Prioritize motivating and retaining key segments that disengage
  • Bucket and grow different segments BEFORE merging them
  • Customize attention to build real relationships
    • Get 1-on-1 = Hangouts, 15-min phone calls scheduled by users, etc
  • Source content from users
  • Research successes in similar programs

DON’T:

  • Expect your community to solve its own problems
  • Force different segments to merge too early
  • Ask for company resources without a plan for ROI, milestones, or metrics
  • Forget to advocate with users for your/company’s needs
  • Hesitate to use exclusivity, if it adds value
  • Use an ambassador program if there are legal/compliance issues – instead, find other ways

February Community Manager Breakfast Notes – Metrics, Offline Community, and more

Community, Community Manager Breakfast, , , , ,

At February’s San Francisco Community Manager Breakfast, we eschewed the pre-set topic and chose topics as a group. The result was a fantastic, varied conversation with folks from all different experience levels, business types, and focuses. Although you won’t get the full context from the notes – you’ll have to come to breakfast for that – there are some great observations and suggestions below.

A huge thank-you to Meredith Black for taking the notes! If you’re looking to hire someone very intelligent with events skills, check out her LinkedIn!

1. Launching a community from scratch

  • Choosing community focus
    • Test with Minimum Viable Communities – do things as simply as possible (Facebook groups are easy) and see what sticks. Less risk.
    • Consider that you may have more than one community – especially if you’re a two-sided marketplace. Don’t treat them the same.
  • Research
    • Go to Twitter chats, forums where market exists.
    • Hang out, follow, engage in conversations.
    • Note what engages people, where gaps are.
    • Once your community has started, these places can be perfect for sharing about your CMTY organically.

2. Engagement

  • What is a real, loyal CMTY member? Sticky, engaging, and offering value.
  • Do user testing for ways to push interaction.
  • ID the evangelists (Customer Support can be a great source):
    • Figure out how you can help them.
    • Give them responsibility – they want it, and it’ll help you.
  • Personalize:
    • Be the face of the brand: sign social media posts with your name, be the face/voice of the brand.
    • Use a personal email (ie Shannon@monument.com) – if you can’t handle the volume, have the rest of your team help with it.
    • Do the things that aren’t scalable (a la Paul Graham)
      • Phone calls, emails, friendships, 1-on-1 asks

3. Platform

  • Hard to launch a CMTY without a platform/ways for members to communicate.
  • Facebook Groups definitely work – but FB has a tendency to interrupt/pull functionalities. Move off it as soon as you can.
  • Platform suggestions:
    • Mobilize (built by former CMTY mgrs.)
    • Jive (can segment, has gamification)
    • Mighty Bell
    • Discourse
  • Mobile community platforms still pretty rare.
  • When moving a CMTY from one platform to another: do it in buckets, introduce users to forum, measure activity.
  • Moving has risks, challenges, so it’s necessary to get the CMTY more engaged.
  • Platform architecture can be overwhelming – don’t underestimate.

4. Offline CMTY-building

  • Offline is a trend (vs. 4 years ago).
  • Development is the same (set the tone/rules, power-user program, scale it).
  • How do you find your initial members?
    • Relationships are built face-to-face: get out there, tailor, make it personal.
  • Collaborate/empower users so they initiate events for the brand.

5. Offline Metrics

  • Know what the actual company goals are (often, management isn’t sure):
    • Brand recognition/association
    • Member-to-member interaction
    • Retention
    • Goodwill
    • Etc
  • Don’t have ROI measured yet? Provide management/C-suite with tons of general data:
    • Activity level
    • # signups
    • Engagement volume
    • Etc
  • Tell both stories – metrics and personal:
    • Emotional: interviews, feedback, Yelp reviews, etc.
  • Share successes pre-emptively:
    • Data
    • Learnings (shows you’re not just flailing)
    • Roadmap that can be quantified
  • These are the same challenges as for other soft departments (like PR).
  • Tools:
    • Google Analytics
    • Sprout Social
    • CRM
    • Good ol’ spreadsheets

6. CMTY+ (cross-functional integration)

  • Make friends internally and externally – get buy-in of tech team, C-level, support, finance, etc.
  • Don’t reinvent the wheel – partner instead.
  • CMTY+Sales:
    • Community can help retain, make repeat sales more likely.
    • Leads are more qualified/shared.
    • Deals close faster.
    • Benefits maybe aren’t apparent through regular CRM data.
  • CMTY+Marketing
    • Leverage current customers for leads to new growth.
    • Track evangelist movements, put in a bucket, use for PR/marketing (collateral, landing page quote, great story, reference for potential investors, etc).

Hope to see you at the next breakfast!