WHITE PAPER. The Top 10 Essentials to Build Your Clients Communities. Introduction. Essential #1: Get Educated, Get Passionate

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1 WHITE PAPER A Division of The Top 10 Essentials to Build Your Clients Communities Introduction Communities have always been an integral part of our everyday lives. Just about everyone belongs to and participates in various communities, from corporate communities such as user groups and professional associations to personal communities such as sports teams, homeowners' associations and religious groups. But even though communities are integrated into our daily lives, the role of community manager is still being defined. Some community managers work in the service side of the business, in moderation and customer support, while others are representing their organization's brand 24/7. The role of community manager is as unique as the organization he or she represents. Furthermore, the efforts of the community manager can be difficult to measure. Organizations are still seeking meaningful metrics that can inform them as to the impact that community has on their businesses. But as of yet, true benchmarks haven't been defined benchmarks that provide baseline information that organizations can leverage to improve their communities, products, and services. While challenges exist, they aren't stopping good marketers and community managers. These professionals are certain of one thing: building a thriving community is now a vital part of the ongoing success of any business or organization. Those organizations without a community initiative, whether for profit or not, will get left in the dust as competitors build their communities to attract prospects and customers. Smart marketers and community managers need to get the word out about their organizations to the right people at the right time, whether they're existing members or potential new members. Smart marketers and community managers need to participate in, facilitate, and nurture community engagement and interaction. This combination, when properly executed, will drive toward the clients' desired goals and objectives, whether they are building the brand, generating leads, managing their online reputation, or communicating information in a timely way that breaks through the noise and fosters engagement. The bottom line is, without community dialog, organizations miss out on incredible opportunities to learn about their members how they feel about you, what they need and want from you, and how they engage with you and the community as a whole. And this dialog is an extremely cost-effective way to gather invaluable information on how organizations can become more competitive. In this paper, Top 10 Essentials to Build Your Clients' Communities, you'll learn how to build and strengthen your clients' communities so your clients can better reach their goals and objectives and you can become an indispensable part of their team. Essential #1: Get Educated, Get Passionate As community manager, you are responsible for participating in, and facilitating a dialog within, the community. You are in a unique position to gain the community's trust and to

2 truly support it. To help you do your job, spend time digging deeply into several key areas of the organization. Get to know your client's: Products, services, messaging, positioning, and brand inside and out History and background as well as the background of key officers or employees within the organization Competitive landscape: what is the market size and who owns what share? Reputation: what is the current perception of the organization, both online and offline? Community to date: how has your client been running their community, what challenges have they faced, and how have they addressed them (or not)? Once you have a firm grasp of these key pieces of information, you'll be able to find that special something that gets you excited about what your client offers. Is the organization a market leader in its space? Is the community focused on a cause about which you are passionate? Was the company founded by a visionary entrepreneur who is well-known in the industry? Has the product won awards or received excellent reviews in several noteworthy publications? Share that excitement and passion with the community it will stimulate their passion and engagement. Essential #2: Involve Key Client Stakeholders Members of the community aren't the only ones who should have a voice. It's essential that community managers include key client stakeholders in the community dialog. Involving senior officers, PR, or marketing representatives of the organization not only to shows the community that the organization cares about their needs, but positions these stakeholders as knowledgeable, trustworthy evangelists for their organization. Training these stakeholders on the etiquette and process of conversing with the community is crucial. Develop a brief, simple, and straightforward training program to enable key client stakeholders to be involved in the community dialog. Work with client stakeholders on the guidelines of engagement and get their buy-in to following those guidelines. Some guidelines of engagement to consider might include: transparency and disclosure, a response decision tree, and photo/video copyright guidelines. Remember, in our digital world, things are constantly changing and you need to change with them. Be sure to shift and evolve your guidelines as needed. Encourage and make it comfortable for client stakeholders to engage with the community in their own, personal way. People are smart and they'll pick out canned responses that sound like they came straight from the legal department or the PR machine. But authentic, real people from the organization who communicate as such will help build the trust that's so vital for a vibrant and thriving community. Essential #3: Don't Reinvent the Wheel, Just Use It in a Different Way You're a marketing professional. You know communications best practices like the back of your hand. There's no need to toss out those practices just because the medium has changed. Take a look at your marketing skills and experience as well as the best practices P a g e 2

3 you've been using for years. How can they work to your client's and their community's advantage? Also, take an objective look at your experiences in the communities in which you participate. What has called you to contribute? What has kept you engaged and loyal? What has made you angry and want to bail out? Apply all this knowledge to help build, facilitate, and grow your client's community. Essential #4: Measure and Make it Mean Something Remember the research adage, What you measure is what you get. Be sure to gain a thorough and complete understanding your client's goals and objectives. Once you understand those, you can create metrics that matter. Some meaningful metrics might include: Growth: While follower numbers, RSS subscribers, and friend counts aren t particularly useful metrics on their own, they can be great benchmarks to determine growth. Some things to measure include Twitter followers/fan page members/social media friends, # of active commenters, number of new subscribers in a given time period, etc. Presence: How visible is your client in their space and how does their visibility measure up against that of their competitors? Some metrics might include types of comments/posts written about the organization, product reviews, company reviews, who authored the mention (client, colleague, recognized social media contact, or influencer), etc. Engagement: This is the extent to which people and groups are investing time and energy in the community. Things to measure might include quality of conversations, the length of time community members spend on the site, the number of comments on an article, post, or forum, or the number of positive or negative comments about any given post, the organization, or members in the organization. While an entire paper could be written on this topic, these suggestions provide good foundational metrics that will help you measure the performance of your community management efforts. And don't forget, things change. As your client's goals and objectives change, what and how you measure should change with them. Now you have data. But data isn't enough. Beyond metrics and reports, community managers must be meaning makers. Translate data into actionable initiatives that will make your clients and their communities successful. Some important questions to ask include: What does the community activity "mean" to your client's business? Are there emerging problems that deserve a closer look? Are there things that community members really care about to which the company has paid little attention in the past? Is there an emerging customer segment that presents opportunities? P a g e 3

4 Essential #5: Be Committed to Your Client, Be Dedicated to the Community Being a good community manager isn't just about facilitating the conversation or answering questions. It takes a great deal of finesse and skill to balance your client's interests and those of the community. To avoid alienating one or the other side of the "conversation," get your client stakeholders to buy in to acting for the good of the community, no matter how challenging it might sometimes be. Remind your clients that there are many upsides of having a community tighter customer relationships, member loyalty, and invaluable market research to name a few. Without the agreement to act for the good of the community, community is just lip service or worse yet, can be perceived as an overt sales tool. It won't take long for the community to notice and act accordingly: by leaving. The bottom line is that community managers must develop the skills necessary to be dedicated to the community to best serve both the community and the client. Essential #6: Let It Flow The healthiest communities are organic. Once fed and nurtured, they develop lives of their own. Yes, it can be scary to simply facilitate and let the community evolve on its own. But trying to assert control over a community's organic growth not only thwarts community participation and discourages its evolution, but also thwarts what your client can learn and gain from the community. For a healthy, vibrant community, be sure to create a platform that makes it easy for the community to participate and interact. Avoid the pull to control the conversation in the hopes that you'll extract something specific from the community that you or your client are seeking. Instead equip and encourage the community. With this freedom and the proper facilitation, you and your client are in a prime position to learn even more from the community than you targeted. Essential #7: Be Real Know that your community members are sharp and perceptive. They can see a scripted response from the communications department a mile away. As a community manager, it's important to be a real person. Being authentic with your community builds invaluable trust in your client's organization. Trust builds relationships. Relationships build engagement. Engagement builds action. When things get tense, use humor. When things get exciting, be the cheerleader. Avoid placing yourself above others in the community with inflated titles like "guru" or "expert." Instead, simply be a passionate member of the community. Being a brand won't help you forge relationships, build trust, or help you facilitate conversations. Being a person will. P a g e 4

5 Essential #8: Don't Just Hear, Listen The good community manager doesn't just log time, skimming community conversations and tossing in some comments or assistance here and there. The good community manager listens to the community to understand its needs, helps them find answers, facilitates conversations, and connects members. Deep listening provides benefits to you, your client, and their community. While some of these have been discussed in previous essentials, there are more. For instance, really listening to your community's conversations can provide: Data that can be used to measure and improve the community platform Keys on how to better inform and educate the community Opportunities to add true value to the community conversation, facilitate engagement, and build trust But beware. As marketers, we can sometimes get caught in the trap of subjective perception -- making things mean what we'd like them to mean so that they conveniently feed into our own projected (or expected) outcomes. Be sure to step outside that world and be objective so you can have an honest understanding of the community conversation. Essential #9: Stay Agile One of the beauties of communities is that they're fluid. Anything can happen, and maybe anything will. News and information that concerns the community can pop up in an instant, conversations can quickly shift, and opinions and sentiments can change on a dime. Things can get out of hand if you're not on your game. Stay agile. Be sure to build in the time necessary to closely moderate your community and focus on what's happening in the world inside and outside the community. Shift your direction, tactics, participation, facilitation, and tone to provide what the community needs. Remember, in a fluid, organic environment, getting stuck in a rut of "what worked then must work now" could be damaging to your client's reputation and to the relationships you've worked so hard to build. Essential #10: Be a Leader While trying to control a community will likely have adverse effects, giving total control to the community could also be damaging. Be a leader. It's OK to gently but firmly take the reins, steer the conversation if it's getting out of hand or off topic, or moderate members who aren't following community guidelines. Facilitate. Make the tough decisions. Be a beacon and shine a light into the community so that members and your client can understand and participate in the conversation. And shine a light into your client's organization so the community can understand and be engaged with the organization. P a g e 5

6 Conclusion Communities are part of our daily lives. As marketers and community managers, we have the opportunity to participate in and nurture our clients' communities so that everyone involved benefits. Community members get a voice and get insight into the organizations with which they're involved. Your clients get invaluable insight and intelligence into what matters most to their communities and from there, can evolve their organization to best meet the community's needs. And marketers and community managers get happy communities, happy clients, and repeat business. About Social Instinct Social Instinct believes that communities are fundamental in giving us deeper connections to our families, schools, spiritual centers, and others who share our special interests. Our goal is to help communities thrive by providing them with easy-to-use tools that allow them to inform, engage and inspire their members. Kontribune is an online social publishing solution that makes it easy and fun to for all kinds of community groups to create and distribute professional-looking online publications. Kontribune Partners specialize in helping communities publish and maintain attractive and engaging Kontribune publications. For more information or to subscribe, visit us today at P a g e 6