Posts about Engagement

How does your community stack up against all the rest? Are your ‘best practices’ really the best?

Many people in the community industry look forward to the findings in The Community Roundtable’s annual State of Community Management (SOCM) report, which helps guide their community efforts, ensures they keep up on the latest trends and keeps them competitive in the marketplace. This year, The Community Roundtable uncovered incredible insights by surveying more than 300 communities of all types, sizes and ages.

Nonprofits are well-known for their dedication to making a positive impact in their field. The largest and most successful have been around for a long time, like the National Audubon Society, or have a mission and brand that is large and easily recognized, like Ronald McDonald House Charities.

These now-influential nonprofits wouldn’t have made it far without the help of their loyal supporters. Nonprofit supporters are the foundation of change-driven organizations, often contributing volunteer and advocacy hours as well as funding for essential projects.

Some companies naturally attract millennials. They’re the cool ones with foosball tables in their break rooms. But for the rest of the businesses out there, convincing Gen Y that your organization is a great place to work isn’t so easy. If you can’t afford (or don’t want) distracting foosball tables, how do you appeal to young professionals?

The easy answer? Lean on research, including studies and surveys, that flat-out asks millennials what they want.

We recently caught up with Alexandra Dao, Senior Manager, Research and Customer Insights for Vimeo. Alexandra spoke about how she works with current Vimeo users to do usability testing on new products. Although she doesn’t have a community manager title any more, Alexandra’s career began in community management - and she’s taken those lessons with her.

Imagine if Google’s Sundar Pichai wrote a guest blog post on your community about the future of cloud computing. Do you think your customers would be excited?

Community professionals often struggle to finds ways of getting one piece of content - a tweet, a video, a blog post, or a discussion thread - to capture your members’ attention, pushing them to engage more. It’s an obstacle many community professionals struggle with - especially since the internet is more vast than ever, making it harder to grab anyone’s attention.

You slave over your community. The alerts never stop chiming on your phone, your email is the first thing you check every morning, and you know your all-star members better than you know your best friend.

You are a master of online engagement.

So when your quarterly meeting with the executive team rolls around, you’re ready. You hit your presentation out of the park… until the CFO asks how online community engagement is impacting sales goals. Do all those forum posts translate to more revenue? Can you show them those numbers?

Charisma, drive, perception – all so-called "soft skills" essential in today’s workplace. Yet despite being widely known and valued, soft skills take a back seat to more defined skills like writing or expertise in Excel. Those are the skills employers use to grade your resume.

But how far will Excel get you if you can’t get along with your coworkers or persuade your boss to try a brilliant new idea? While considered less weighty than other skill sets, soft skills are critical for success.

What department should be involved in their organization’s community? Generally, people would say it depends on what type of community it is. Some might say support, since communities are a natural gathering place for customers to seek help. Others might say human resources, if it’s an employee intranet.

2017 is shaping up to be our best year yet! Last month we announced our acquisition of Socious, bringing the best minds in member engagement together to lead in product innovation and the community industry. Now we can’t wait to introduce the newest member of the Higher Logic community family: we have acquired Kavi, an online collaboration software company.

Where do you turn to for information? Community management is a growing industry, with more resources than ever before - but sometimes it can be hard to find the golden nuggets within the ever increasing sea of content.