EP101: Inclusive Fan Communities w/ John Todd

This is a special episode of the Community Corner podcast as it's the last one for a while for its host, Beth McIntyre. Over the last year and a half, Beth has spoken with almost seventy community professionals from all different kinds of businesses, managing various communities and community programs. In her last episode, Beth reflects on what she has learned from them. First of all, there is no one size fits all. One of the biggest challenges we hear from community professionals is the inability to prove the business value or the ROI. There is no one magic metric that will quantify the value of every community. You should ask what value your community is driving. Once you know that, you will be able to work backward and determine the “how”. Secondly, imposter syndrome will tear you down. Every community leader or manager has a different background. They learn from their life experiences rather than being educated by a degree in community management. As a result, there is a shared feeling among people in the industry that they make it up along the way. Beth describes her mission to end the imposter syndrome in the community industry. Thirdly, community-led is the future of business. The industry is at a point where community has become a buzzword. Beth shares her thoughts on how community professionals can build sustainable communities that will last and outlast community management teams.

In this episode of The Community Corner, Sheldon Maye joins Beth McIntyre to discuss the strategies and processes for building employee resource groups (ERG). He also shares how he ensures a successful ERG at Accenture and some of the metrics he tracks to prove their value. ERGs are basically clubs that support employees' professional development and career growth. Sheldon talks about the right time and approach for starting an ERG. He also reveals how they implemented a new scorecard to measure ERG success and the metrics that they’re tracking. Lastly, Sheldon gives tips and advice for launching and growing an ERG.

Startup Grind is the world's largest startup community of startups, founders, innovators, and creators, with over 600 chapters in 125 countries worldwide, which brings like-minded yet diverse individuals together to connect, learn, teach, help, build, and belong. Phin leads the community and partner success teams. The advantage of operating in the startup world is seeing the different trends as they develop. One of these trends that Startup Grind has been focusing on more recently is Web 3. The goal of community managers is building relationships person by person, city by city, product by product, and so on. Keep in mind the numbers, but focus on the relationships you can build. Managing the community at scale requires you to have community operations, systems, and processes to ensure that you can keep a consistent brand experience.

Zoom is a communications platform that started with video as its foundation. It's known for being intuitive, user-friendly, scalable, and reliable. They launched the Zoom community in August 2021. As the Senior Manager for Global Community, Alexis has the role of strategizing, building, deploying, and growing the community for all zoom users across the globe. Launching the Zoom community included a specific role specialization approach, where someone on the team manages gamification, other user roles, design, analytics, content strategy, etc. They also focus on a consistent user and customer experience. Success metrics can be found differently depending on the purpose of your community, your target goals, and capturing the ROI. The Zoom community aims to deliver a happy experience to customers and provide them with a platform to collaborate and share success stories. When launching a community, strategize and prioritize, think long-term versus short-term, and focus on the end-user experience.

Andreia Tulcidás joins us today to talk about building an advocate program within a community. She takes us through the steps she took to launch the OutSystems' user groups, how they've become an integral part of their community, and how they work together with their leaders to incentivize and reward. OutSystems is a modern application platform that enables organizations to tackle any critical application. Building a champion program from the ground up requires understanding the purpose of the program and the people you want to bring value to and finding ways to collaborate and incentivize.

Today, we’re joined by Howard Gray, Founder of Wavetable. He discusses engagement, creating engaging experiences for audiences and community members, and how to inspire them through edutainment and personal stories. Wavetable is a production studio that integrates a variety of creative experts and educators of learning and live entertainment. The company focuses on learning, discovery, and community-based projects. Wavetable helps brands, influencers, and IP owners uniquely leverage their connection to their fans and followers by developing live, community-driven learning experiences. Edutainment is a portmanteau of the word education and entertainment. The word describes educational resources and methods that also have an entertaining aspect. Recent trends like gamification, Web 3.0, and community may positively impact the spread of edutainment. Keeping your work engaging requires you to use different formats and modes for your activities and to switch between them regularly. To connect with members and their stories without getting too personal, you have to create conditions where people feel that they can enroll in the activity and conversation. Also, find common ground and use inclusive language for the other person.

Jenny Li Fowler, Director of Social Media Strategy at MIT, joins us in the next episode of The Community Corner Podcast. Jenny discusses the specific challenges in building a community at an educational institution. She also shares how her team at MIT thinks about community and social media and how they are adapting to changes in technology and the industry. MIT is one of the leading universities and global leader in science, research, technology, and education. Jenny provides consultation and strategy for any announcements, events, or campaigns at the institute level. She also manages social media channels. Social media management optimizes content for whichever channel it’s being posting on and targets the audience. Community management builds cohesive bonds within people, and it addresses its members. Social media helps the higher education community solidify and speak with it. Technological and innovative trends can engage positively with higher education communities and develop into something bigger. Try to familiarize yourself with the language of these innovations and use them to understand how they can be helpful.

Today, we’re joined by Nivi Achanta, the Founder and CEO of Soapbox Project. Nivi wears almost all hats associated with community engagement, content, and events. Today, she talks about how she built her community from scratch with diversity in mind and how she implements it into every stage of planning and programming. Soapbox is a media company that makes social impact easy for busy people. Keeping a community inclusive without being exclusive requires a set of filters. One of the primary filters is that if you don't understand a community's problem or concept, and if you're not willing to work at these intersections, it may not suit you. Building a diverse community requires a tactical approach to people you follow and interact with, representing a wide range of perspectives. You need the right tools to address different groups in your community. Focus on creating a diverse, inclusive, and safe space.

Today, we’re joined by Triin Ilves, Community Manager at Klaus. While Klaus is a customer success company, community is in everything they do. Triin manages Quality Tribe, their community for people interested in quality and customer success. Triin discusses how they make data-backed decisions to community programming and how they are inspiring their members to become advocates for their community. A community is a great resource when it comes to creating new content, getting partners on board, organising events, and different co-marketing activities. It makes sense to surround yourself and learn from the companies and the people who are acing their skills early on. Working with partners helps you come up with new ideas and can make your initial idea even better. This can lead you to build a better product in the future. Put some effort into spotting trends and what might be important for the community. Try to do things with your community members that could be beneficial, not only for them but for you as well. When it comes down to making sure that you have the right people, or doing events in an up-and-coming field, don't just focus on the buzzwords, but focus on the resources and tools you can use.

Today we have a special episode, Community Manager Appreciation Day, where our guests reveal what they are grateful for and proud of about their communities: Katie Ray, Head of Customer Community at Clari, shares her accomplishments of growth and engagement from her time managing the Saleshacker community. She also discusses her current work, hyper-growth, and engagement growth in the Clari community. Next, Diane Yuen, the new Community Manager at Alation, has extensive organic community experience after building her gaming community for seven years. Diane shares her story of taking on her first full-time community role. Jennifer Serrat, Associate Director of Community Engagement at IE University and Community Moderator at CMX, shares a story about some out-of-the-box thinking that led to the revival of her community in the middle of COVID. Kaleem McGill is the Community Manager at The Better Product Community powered by Innovatemap. He shares how he and his team audited and revamped their onboarding process for new members. And finally... Neha Agarwal, Head Community at Quora India, shares the strategy she and her team used to launch Spaces in Hindi.