Issue 26  July 26th 2018

Building an Indispensable Community Requires an Investment

This self-proclaimed "rant" from Richard Millington of Feverbee hit home for a lot of us this week. How often are we the only ones aware of the impact that the community could have if we were only given the right resources or opportunities?

Managing a community, and being responsible for a brand’s best and most valuable customers, should be one of the most exciting and important jobs in any business. It should be a job others aspire to and covet. But too often the task of engaging customers online falls to a junior staffer with limited experience and worse prospects.

Too often these staff are forced to chase meaningless measures of engagement rather than forging an indispensable community among their members and their colleagues.

It’s impossible to build an indispensable community when we’re forcing members to choose between clicking ‘like’, ‘share’, or ‘comment’.

feverbee.com  

Where community crosses the developer journey

You may have heard your Marketing & Sales teams referring to the "developer journey" at times. As defined by Alfredo Morresi, a developer journey is:

the route between a developer with no knowledge of a technology and the same developer that feels confident to use it in production and actively share the expertise acquired.

So where does community come into play? How can we partner with marketing and sales to make sure that this journey is not only successful but helpful for everyone involved? Alfredo digs into that topic and more in his latest blogpost.

medium.com  

5 Tips on How to Seed Your Community With Content Before you Launch

Seeding your community platform with content is a controversial topic at best. On the other hand, launching a new platform with no traffic, no content, and no obvious engagement is a risky move. So how do you do it right? Ballistiq offers a few suggestions of how to seed content and invite engagement without coming across as inauthentic.

ballistiq.com  

Brand Communities Are Frequently Sabotaged By Bad Audience Research and Analysis

It's not enough to just know who your audience is -- you have to acknowledge what you don't know about your audience, and then take the right steps to find those answers. This week, Feverbee took to its blog to explain why investing in research about your community is essential to building a strong and healthy foundation. These aren't shortcuts -- it's a lot of work! But taking the time to walk through these questions that Feverbee (and others, like myself) ask of companies looking to build successful communities can save you months, potentially even years, of work.

feverbee.com  

Leadership inside Community

We often say that community is built from the top down, but this article takes it to another level. What if the reason why we don't always feel empowered in our work is because the leadership isn't doing enough to engage us and excite us about what we're doing? And vice versa, when goals are clearly defined and each individual not only has the power to make a difference, but knows exactly what that difference is, we're engaged and excited about what's happening.

Wondering how to create community leaders who have these principles of empowerment and engagement in mind? Emmy & Naomi from Redefining Communities tackle how to build up effective leaders in your community, from finding the right people to what characteristics all leaders should posess.

medium.com