Have you noticed experts don't tend to contribute great content to brand communities anymore?

The strategies we're using to engage experts in communities are often ridiculously out of date.

This leads to a lot of empty knowledge bases/galleries etc...

Let's fix this..

#CMGR 1 - Identify who the experts are.

A lot of strategies seem to regard 'experts' as some homogenous group. In our experience, three groups contribute most knowledge

1) Partners/consultants
2) Company veterans
3) Senior-execs / VIPs

1 - A community doesn't grow just because it's a great community. It grows when you attract more visitors than you're losing.

I'm going to share tactics and techniques which seem to be working best in 2022 (and when I'd suggest using each).

#CMGR 2 - First, the channels you use depend upon community type. i.e. it doesn't make sense to individually invite people to a support community. But it certainly does for peer groups.

Prioritise channels with biggest source of growth (notice the difference in influence too!)

I've been astounded over the past year how few organisations (even the very largest) have done any sort of user testing of their community experience.

My team has spent countless hours watching people browse community sites live. Here's a few handy things we've learned:

#CMGR 1 - Majority of members don't read more than a few words of any homepage. They jump to find a single word or phrase.

2 - Members REALLY struggle to find responses to posts they've made in the past. They forget the category and can't find it. Really frustrating for them.

1 - I want to share some data from a client we worked with last year where we did something that I think was a little clever to definitively prove the incredible value of their community.

But first, some background....

#CMGR 2 - The client was a mature community in the tech sector. Despite the community's size and scale, the community team had been downsized the previous year and their budget was being squeezed each year because they couldn't clearly prove the value of the community.

1- Ever wondered what happens if you don't hire (or don't replace) a community manager?

For the past 3 years, the FeverBee community has served as a fascinating (and unintentional experiment).

Here's the data...

#CMGR 2 - Back in July 2017, my colleague @ILOVETHEHAWK left her role managing the FeverBee community to take up an incredible new opportunity @discourse. For various reasons (time/money), I didn't replace her.

I removed spam/replied to a few questions, but that's been about it.

1 - Why bother hiring a community consultant/strategist?

Can't you just do the work yourself?

Maybe, but then why haven't you done it already?

You didn't have the time, skillset, resources, or it was never a priority.

#CMGR 2 - As a result, many #CMGR folks are so busy 'doing the work' they don't realise their communities often aren't making anywhere near the progress they should be making.

They often fall far behind best practices, struggle to gain internal support, and disappoint members.

1- A while back I worked with a director of community who had a simple policy; on any night out she would always pick up the food/drinks tab for company's IT team.

This wasn't cheap. It frequently ran into several hundred dollars.

#CMGR 2 - But she felt it was a bargain.

It meant she could call in favours when she needed to.

It meant she could get her priorities on their agenda.

It meant she could often make progress when so many other departments were stuck waiting for updates on their systems.

In almost every client survey I do, members rank 'making friends', 'events', and 'building a reputation' as the LEAST important factors to them.

Top are 'finding information', 'quick answers to questions', and sometimes 'product reviews/what to buy/use'. #CMGR How do we reconcile that with the idea that we work in community?

Or with building a sense of community? Or with the literature that shows the importance of brands providing a sense of belonging?

Right now every community strategist should be preparing for the coming recession. If the pandemic is the earthquake, the recession will be the tsunami for us. This means planning for a sharp and sudden drop in your budget.

A few example scenarios: #CMGR Scenario 1: A budget cut of 25%.

Smaller team - thus closing ideation, events/activities, and slower speed of moderation/post approval. Likely small drop in participation. No more budget for platform development, staff training, event attendance etc...

1- Let’s review some rules again.

If you're ever looking to work with consultants, this might help: 2- If we have a call to discuss a schedule project, I send a proposal, and then you ghost me. We’re done (both in your current company and anywhere you go next).

Don’t show up at an event or in my inbox 6 months later and say you were ‘too busy’ to even send an email update.

1 - Recently scraped a huge dataset from 35 mature customer communities to analyze which factors are statistically significant predictors of community retention (i.e. members making a 2nd, 10th, and 50th post etc..)

Based upon this I've got a theory we might not like. #CMGR 2. Only two variables were statistically significant.

First, whether the user's first post was to start a thread or reply to an existing one. Members who started a thread tended to stick around for a little longer than those who replied to an existing one.