My AMA with Bassey Etim, Community Desk Editor at The New York Times

Community,

Last week I had the pleasure of hosting an AMA with the very smart, very pleasant Community Desk Editor at The New York Times, Bassey Etim. Taking questions from me and the crowd, Bassey mulled on building moderation teams, the future of journalism, and getting buy-in from coworkers.

(Feel free to skip the first minute, which is mostly me getting set up in Blab and waiting for Bassey to call in.)

Bassey is speaking alongside folks from Etsy, Spark Capital, Genius, and Pure House at CMX Summit East, which I’m organizing!

My interview on Community Signal

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Last month I had the great pleasure of being on Patrick O’Keefe’s Community Signal podcast. I’ve been a big fan of Patrick’s excellent blogging on community for some time, and his podcast has maintained that high level of quality.

Patrick did excellent prep and obviously knows his stuff, so I think he really got one of the best interviews of my career out of me. We touch on retention, volunteer management, legality of community members doing free work, the reddit revolution, free speech, choosing the right company to work for, and more.

Listen to the podcast here.

I’m joining CMX!

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Evan Hamilton speaking at CMX East 2015
Me speaking at CMX East 2015.

I’ve been consulting for the last couple of months, because I wanted to find the right fit for my next full-time position. I wanted to find a company that could be home, where I could feel supported but also challenged, where I could feel respected but be constantly learning, where I could care about the product, where the founders truly understood and valued community.

And so, I’m incredibly pleased to announce I’ll be joining the team over at CMX Media as Director of Community! I’ve been a huge fan of the work that David Spinks has been doing in the community space for years. I’ve been to all but one CMX Summit (and spoke in NYC last year), many of their meetups, and recently discovered I am the top contributor on their fantastic Facebook group.

Their mission of advancing the community industry is one that is very close to my heart (I’ve literally been hosting my community manager meetup for 5 years). So I was over the moon when David and Carrie asked me to join the team. I highly respect both of them and can’t wait to learn from them on an everyday basis (plus, they’re a ton of fun to be around). And I’m excited to take a break from larger startups and get my hands dirty at a small company once again.

I’ll be transitioning into this full-time role over the next few months as I wrap up my consulting contracts. My initial focus will be making CMX Summit East 2016 the best Summit yet (A tall order!), and gradually I’ll start focusing on the CMX Series events, the Facebook group, and any other way I can think of to connect those in our industry and push it forward. I’ll need your help! Either in the comments here, via email (evan at cmxhub dot com), or via Twitter/LinkedIn, let me know what you want to see from CMX. David and Carrie have created an amazing community, but all three of us have a lot more we want to do, and your voices are a crucial part of that process.

I look forward to interacting with you all even more than I do now! See you soon. 🙂

Notes:

Community Manager Breakfast, my newsletter, and this blog will continue operating independent of CMX.

If you were interested in working with me on a consulting basis: I will still be available for consulting alongside the super-talented CMX team, so please do still drop me a line.

Looking back on 5 years of Community Manager Breakfast

Community, Community Manager Breakfast

According to my records, I’ve been hosting Community Manager Breakfast for five years. Wow. That’s a long time, especially in the world of startups! With that in mind, and in honor of today’s Community Manager Appreciation Day celebration, I decided to mull over the changes I’ve seen since I first launched this little meetup back in 2011.

1) We’re less focused on social media.

That’s huge. When I first started in community management, it was clear that social media was going to be “a thing”. And we all wanted to be part of it. But it wasn’t 100% clear how it fit in with community management. For a moment, we seemed to toy with being content creators, garnering likes and retweets. We had a lot of big discussions around social media during those early breakfasts. But gradually something became clear: social media was a great tool for engaging an audience, but not always a great tool for connecting people to each other. And as many of those channels become increasingly noisy and broadcast-focused, I am glad we didn’t hitch our success to them.

2) Individual specializations are starting to develop within community management.

Five years ago, community managers did a lot of things…but not in a good way. We often were the first marketer, the website copy writer, the office manager, the customer support rep, etc. These days we’re increasingly being actually hired to do what we do: bring people together. And this means we can start to specialize within that general focus. Now we see developer evangelists, event organizers, open source facilitators, support community managers, and more. This gives our discipline more depth and more directions for practitioners to grow in.

3) We’re formalizing our practice.

While five years ago we were merely seeking to bring some sense and definition to community management, now we’re focusing on formalizing, documenting, and improving it. While it’ll forever develop and change and improve, we now are starting to see things like the commitment curve providing repeatable structures that we can build off of, rather than always starting from scratch.

4) Community managers were and are great people.

I’m so lucky to have met every single person who has come to breakfast and for all the support you’ve given me over the years. I’ve met so many of you that, to my great embarrassment, I can’t always remember everyone’s name! But please know next time you see me: I think you’re great, I thank you for coming, and remind me of your name and we’ll have an awesome conversation. 🙂

Here’s to another five years of breakfasts! Hope to see you at one if you’re in SF or NYC!

Nobody seems to own retention. Let’s take it on.

Community,

The other day I ran across Bill Johnston’s analysis of a report on customer lifecycle marketing. Next time I see Bill, I’m going to have to buy him a drink, because he’s spot on.

Here are the basic punchlines:

  • Customer lifecycle marketing is one of the hot new things. It’s simple: Instead of thinking about customers just when you’re trying to woo them, think about customers throughout their whole lifecycle with your company.
  • Retention is a HUGE part of that.
  • …but nobody seems to own retention.

This is where community professionals come in.

I’ve long argued that community-building is uniquely suited to focus on retention. What other practice emphasizes long-term gains, engagement, satisfaction, and return business as heavily? None I can think of. There are oodles of professionals focused on acquiring customers, but very few focused on retaining them.

Community professionals should own retention.

Not help out. Not advise. Own. We are the best people to do this, and it gives us a seat at the table that “helping with acquisition” or “decreasing support costs” or “making people happy” doesn’t.

Ask around. Who owns retention at your company? Likely, nobody. Take it on. Do cohort retention analysis. Ask people why they unsubscribe. Plaster “retention” on your cubicle, because this is your chance to make a huge difference, get the attention you deserve, and build some wins for company and customers.