Author: Lana

[Recap] How to Engineer Serendipity

| Lana

Recap notes from CMX 2023 Summit session. Grammatical errors and typos are my own 🙂

Abstract

Serendipity is unplanned. Engineering is planned. How do you plan the unplannable? Join this interactive session and find out. – David Spinks, Co-founder, CMX

Notes

Can you engineer serendipity?

We only realize something is serendipitous by looking back

The Serendipity Process

  1. Trigger – a cue that sparks an experience of serendipity
  2. Connection – the recognition of a potential valuable outcome
  3. Follow-up: An action taken to obtain the valuable outcome
  4. Valuable outcome: the positive result of the serendipitous experience
  5. An unexpected thread – the feeling that the experience was “surprising, random, or unusual”

As community managers, we facilitate. But if it’s unexpected, the more they will have a feeling of serendipity.

Perception of Serendipity (A Serendiptitous Environment)

For Serendipity to occur, people need to

  • not be busy
  • have lots of energy
  • share common interests
  • similar personalities
  • are in unfamiliar places
  • are with unfamiliar people (“never expected”)
  • high willingness to socialize
  • are comfortable in social interactions

The Five Levers of Serendipity

  1. Immersion – a conference, a class (active participation and interactions vs. passive in Slack, chats) will run into the same people over and over again. Lots of triggers into one immersive experience.
  2. Variation – People to come across different people, topics and experiences. (What area are you from? What platform do you use?). People to find shared interests – discussion tables, birds of a feather.
  3. Facilitation – Example of fertilizing a plant, researching to grow. Create opportunities for people to meet and facilitate for people to make those serendipitous connections
  4. Pollination – A lot of serendipity happens outside of community – forums, Slack channels, etc. Serendipity feels the biggest when you see someone you don’t expect. Increase the likelihood to connect and meet. E.g. Swag communicates that people are of the same group of people.
  5. Repetition – See someone at the library, park, etc. More likely to take that follow-up (“Didn’t i see you at the ballpark?”). Need the frequent repetition to increase the odds that they will connect
    • Example: One community asks ” What did you do yesterday? What will you do today? ” awarding community with more community

Three Commitments

  1. I will talk to strangers
  2. I will lead with curiosity (ask questions)
  3. I will follow up

Practice

  1. Prime your mind
  2. Find an “unfamiliar person”
  3. Say “Tell me about yourself”

[Recap] Gamifying Community: Unlocking Potential Through Play and Reciprocity

| Lana

Recap notes from CMX 2023 Summit session. Grammatical errors and typos are my own 🙂

Abstract

Measuring and incentivizing member engagement is perhaps the most challenging part of any community leader’s role. How do you build a system that encourages the behaviors you want to see more of in your community? How do you design reward mechanisms that highlight your most active members? Gamifying Community explores how incentivisation and play can be the key to unlocking truly engaged communities. Based on ATĂ–LYE’s proprietary engagement system called Blocks, the session is a deep dive for community practitioners to think about their own methods of measuring and incentivizing member engagement. – Leen Sadder, Director of Community, ATĂ–LYE

Notes

How to bring people together?

  • Platforms that bring together around a common interest
  • Create physical spaces
  • Brand activation for co-creation and inclusivity

Launch leaning programs for leaders to gain skills to become responsible leaders and collaboration

Community-driven companies are the future

Gamifying Community

  • Unlocking engagement potential through play and reciprocity (even exchange, give/take relationship)
  • They were a physical space for community and had to transition to digital during COID
    • A curated
    • community of practice
    • with a space-enabled
    • free – wanted to focus on bringing the right people in and create value in a different way. Rethought currency system to be engagement-focused. Needed new incentifization model via gamification
    • membership model

Community Blocks

  • A DIY, no-code, gamified incentifization system for small-scale, phygital communities
    • points members collect that add value to the community to unlock membership levels, perks and prizes

Base gamification on core values: connection + growth + impact = belonging

  • Connection – fostering connection and relationship
  • Growth – learning
  • Impact – collaboration and co-creation

Add value to different tasks

  • Introduction on Slack
  • Attended an event
  • Added high value to collaborating on a project

Bundle existing member benefits into locked levels

  • Turn membership packages into different levels you can unblock. Each unlocked tiered access to space access, content and events, perks and partners, learning programs, etc.

Reward repeat behavior

  • Created badges (10) and paired with one-off awards to indentify most-engaged members and create more value

Be scrappy

  • There are tools to help, but test it out being scrappy (no-code) that is sustainable.
  • Integrate into things that are already doing with tools that you are already using. – integrations
  • Collect data to iterate program and how to ask members to commit to program.
  • Use member handbook to communicate with community
  • Fast launch to test out on membership
  • play and have fun with it

Community Lab

  • 10 years of experience in growing, burturing and mobilizing communities
  • Created frameworks – playbook, toolkit, etc. for consultancy

[Recap] Growing a Joyful Community While Grieving

| Lana

Recap notes from CMX 2023 Summit session. Grammatical errors and typos are my own 🙂

Abstract:

Learn how to show up and build a community from the ground up when your personal life has hit the fan. This talk will apply specifically to earlier-stage start-ups and communities. Hear what to keep, what to drop, what to share, and how to get through each day. – Evelyn Wiseman, Head of Community, Youshd

Notes:

Community at an early-stage startup

  • Wear a lot of hats, but what should you take on?
    • You should do all of the community things as well as the things that you’re good at and can do quickly.
  • What can you take on?
    • Whatever they ask you to do within reason.
  • What can you firmly say no to?
    • Avoid anything that will take a long time to do.
    • Don’t say yes to sales (avoid lead gen). Once you do well, they will give you more to do which will take you off your focus.

Definitions save lives, data doesn’t.

  • At an early-stage startup, there’s not much data yet. You are a data point.
  • Choose a north start metric (at least 2). Ensure that you and your CEO and head of product know the definition of “engagement” and “active member”. It will allows you to be more persuasive and get things where you need to go.

Grief happens. Smile! You’re in Community

  • Stop, drop, and figure it out.
  • Don’t be afraid of human resources
  • If you happen to move to a new company after your time of grief, you will be a different person and have different boundaries.
  • When something bad happens, who cares about work. It can be stressful, but it doesn’t matter as much as your mental health does.

At an early-stage startup, define the context

  • Define what is community?
  • Ask the same questions:
    • What do you want to take on
    • What can you take on
    • What can you firmly say no to
    • What do you need to share and with whom?
  • When something horrible happens, you re-evaluate your time.
    • Stick to what you’re good at and what you like.
    • Setup your boundaries and be consistent with them. People will pick up on your patterns.
  • Communicate and ask for what you need and advocate for yourself.
    • There’s no such thing as a community emergency, but there is about a human emergency

How to manager others through grief

  • Ask questions and listen (empathize)
    • How are you doing?
    • Do you need more time?
    • Can I help you with anything?
  • If things are hitting the fan, wait 24 hours.
  • Save conversations in real-moments (not in Slack, email, etc.) but see their eyes

[Recap] Tactics from Morning Brew Learning

| Lana

Recap notes from CMX 2023 Summit session. Grammatical errors and typos are my own 🙂

Abstract:

My session will cover the variety of tactics I’ve learned as Director of Community at Morning Brew ideating, launching, and scaling Morning Brew Learning’s Digital Community of 3,000+ professionals. I’ll share how to think about community as you’re building a V1 of a product, how to nurture that community as you release the product, how to get feedback from your community to iterate on future products, and when/how to infuse community into different product offerings. The talk will be extremely tactical, giving you frameworks you can immediately apply to your own digital communities and businesses. – Kyle Hagge, Director of Community, Morning Brew

Notes:

  • Variety of different interests and background experience allows community managers to better relate to different people
  • Think about personal monopoly – build your stack 3 things that you’re passionate about and eventually you’ll be the primary person that organizations will look to.
  • Morning Brew learning transitioned from Audience (newsletter) vs. Community (Education Courses). Are you building for an audience-based or a community-based product?
    • Audience = one to many (not in contact with each other – only with Morning Brew)
    • Community – many to many (experiencing product with others who are experiencing it as well)
  • Why do community? Yes, you’ll make more money. Need to make money to display impact for an organization. Generating revenue.
    • Generates revenue: newsletter was ad-based
    • Creates brand evangelists: are they falling in love with the product to refer peers?
    • Find pain points: nice, but find content gaps (typos, missing information)
    • Increase LTV of customer: visitors paid how much to take classes (generating revenue). go deeper, charge more.
    • Displays social proof: post courses on linkedin, telling friends, “cool company, great experience”
    • Makes product feel more human: meet readers in person and makes both sides feel more human – knowing the faces behind the product and care about successes and career
  • Tactics from building morning brew learning
  • Don’t just gather – but help solve a problem
  • Community is more of a slack chnnel of your existing audience. It’s not just bringing people together anymore – help them solve a problem
    • What “persona” are we serving with our existing product/service?
    • What problem does this persona face? Want to grow in career, become better at their job to become a better manager, etc.
    • How could a community help solve those problems? Build more skills to teach personas
    • What experiences will we have that allows us to achieve the community goals?
  • Tech is on the margins – focus on the quality of experience. No need to use the latest product. Need to focus on the customer experience; keep it simple and basic so that they can focus on the event and the speaker vs. where they are, how to use the tech. Sometimes the lamest platforms are the best (ubiquitous to solve the problem)
  • Community managers are architects (builders) not stars – focus on the community design and experience. Where to comnnect with people, where to find answers, etc.
    • Onboarding
    • Engagement
    • Subgroups – as community scales, easy to feel like you can’t meet everyone. Build deep connection with smaller group. Focus on niches – focus on a member meeting 5 people to form deep relationship
    • Feedback
  • Friction is good – don’t automate the humanity out of your community. That’s why people are coming to community form. Safeguard from automation.
    • Personal – he made a personal video for every new member (!), but it made a difference that it seem like he cared. “Put in time before I gave a single dollar.”
    • Intentional
    • Relational – Always respond and follow-up to automated messages. More likely to come back – white glove treatment.
  • Tactics for Events
    • Create rituals – habits to familiarize with space (use the same song to start an event, play the same song) and it’s a trigger for them to know what to expect. Start by have people go to the chat to warm it up (introduces people to know where the chat is…energizing and fun) and speakers like an engaged chat
    • Expectations – be clear about how you want people to act in your events.
  • Clarity if kindness
    • For audience Q&A – attendees confused about what to do. “Going to Q&A and here’s how you do it” – tell them what the expectation is. They will be more likely to participate.
  • Throw an after-party (breakout room)
    • Give people a roadmap on how to have conversations with other attendees so that they get to know each other.
  • Tactics for creating connection
    • Coffee chats live pairing two attendees together. What are you hoping to get out of this? Manually pairing, but it was powerful in helping them meet the people they want to meet. Help them connect the dots to deliver value to customers
  • Focus groups. on demand – feedback is incredibly powerful, show that it’s valued
    • Always give feedback to a survey to show that you actually read it. They feel heard.
  • Some things won’t scale, but it’s essential to. do- taking time to respond to surveys, etc.
  • Ask for advice, get money twice
    • Go to existing audience. and understand what you want us to build for you.

Steps to Build community

  1. Analyze existing audience/customer base
  2. What problems are they facing or subgroups is your audience facing
  3. why do people like your product?
  4. Design community
  5. integrate community into existing company ecosystem

CMX Summit 2023 Notes

| Lana

I’ll be attending CMX 2023 in Redwood City this year and below is the list of sessions that most interest me. I’ve linked my notes to the sessions below:

Wednesday, October 4

Thursday, October 5
(+es = offered at the same time)

Recap: 20 Ways Organizations Use AI To Interact With And Serve Customers (Forbes)

| Lana

Here are some of my knowledge nuggets as a thought follower from Forbes Technology Council’s article, 20 Ways Organizations Use AI To Interact With And Serve Customers which shares ways AI can augment an organization’s product and services to effectively communicate with their customers:

  1. Personalized Customer Experience – responses catered to the individual
  2. Adaptive Entertainment – real-time changes to digital experiences
  3. Chatbots; Behavior Analysis – 24/7 customer engagement and ability to analyze buyer behaviors, preferences, and inclinations.
  4. E-Commerce Searches – Personalized guidance
  5. Real-Time Delivery Tracking – AI predictions notifying customers about package delivery
  6. Tailored Purchase Offers – Predict which customers will buy complementary or higher-level products.
  7. Sentiment Analysis – Predict how customers feel during interactions
  8. Customer Feedback Analysis – AI sentiment analysis applied to feedback to detect nuances in emotions and pinpoint problems early
  9. Disease Prevention – identify patients who are likely to develop a chronic condition
  10. Content Generation And Curation – use user data to show different information based on actions
  11. Guided Customer Support – customer support solutions using real-time sentiment analysis and guidance
  12. Fraud Prevention – using machine learning models to detect genuine customers from frauds
  13. Predictive Maintenance – analyze data from connected devices and sensors to anticipate failures and conduct preventative maintenance
  14. Dynamic Pricing – personalized pricing strategy
  15. Verified Customer Onboarding – welcoming genuine customers and keeping fraudsters at bay
  16. Customer Profiling – creating profiles of current and potential customers for better service, keep shelves stocked, etc.
  17. Talent Sourcing And Recruitment – better source workers for better talent matching and acquisition
  18. Body Measurement – online try-ons, virtual dressing rooms, fitness coaches, and rehab assistants
  19. Customer Complaint Management – better classification of customer complaints to connect customers to the right person at the right time
  20. Higher-Quality Patient Care – tailor-made treatment plans, identifying health issues early, reduce wait times by streamlining operations

Read the full article on Forbes.com:
20 Ways Organizations Use AI To Interact With And Serve Customers

My Takeaways

From the above, the following are of value to me to learn more about:

  • Personalized customer experience
  • Sentiment analysis
  • Content generation and curation
  • Behavior analysis
  • Guided customer support
  • Verified customer onboarding
  • Complaint management

Raising Your Game as a Community Manager

| Lana

Oftentimes in Community Manager forums the question comes up “What are some skills I should learn to become a better Community Manager?”. The usual go-to answers are to develop ones skills in time management, empathy and analysis. Easier said than done, right?

In this new blog category I’m calling “Raise Your Game”, I’ll share some peripheral skills that have helped me as a Community Manager – ones where you can actually get started with immediately and begin bringing your best to your position.

effectively raise your game

  1. Know how you learn. Do you learn by example or hands-on? Work within the parameters of how you process new information for the highest ROI.
  2. Whittle while you work. Don’t overwhelm yourself thinking you have to absorb everything you read. Break things down during your workday or work week and take note of one takeaway.
  3. Rome wasn’t built in a day but they were laying bricks every hour. Start small and remember that even if you’re moving zig-zag, you’re still moving forward and learning new things.

Recap :Centers of Excellence (Adrian Speyer)

Lightbulb on a stack of magazines
| Lana

Here are some of my knowledge nuggets as a thought follower from Adrian Speyer‘s article and presentation Centers of Excellence: The Next Big Thing for Community. What’s shared here is only the tip of the iceberg in terms of content so I encourage you to dive deeper by reading the article or watching the video.

EPIC Quote

There’s an opportunity for there to be a space – a digital home so to speak – for everything customers need to be successful – a center of excellence – but with community permeating all aspects of this – so the conversation is not to the community as much as it is with the community. It would touch all aspects: help, learning, connection, discovery, and thought leadership.

Adrian Speyer, “Centers of Excellence: The Next Big Thing for Community”

My Takeaways

  1. Communities should be the central hub for all customers to be successful along their journey – from pre-sales to learning best practices
  2. Communities should “broaden their horizons” and move past being just a support community.
    • Stop using the word “support” and use “success”
    • Focus on outcomes – what makes the customer happy (max ROI)
  3. Stop working in a silo. Think laterally and involve teams in a “Center of Excellence Advisory Board”
  4. Understand your customers by building personas.
  5. Focus on your members, finding the right people to run the community, and develop a robust plan (don’t just wing it).
  6. This takes time so don’t expect immediate results. Rather, focus on micro-successes.

My Action Items

  1. Redefine my communities as Centers of Excellence where customers find value beyond support and focus on highlighting content that will make them successful such as virtual events to connect with peers to discuss strategy and share their experiences (best practices and pitfalls).
    • Extend CoE concept to internal teams – product, engineers and developers. Hearing product feedback will help make the product better, improving customer experience and building trust in the company.
  2. Reach out to other teams – especially those in the field – to better understand what is keeping their customers from being successful (e.g. knowledge gaps) and develop community opportunities for them to connect and learn from others.
  3. Empower customers by partnering with them to develop customer-led/focused community programs so that they can share their success stories with others.

Thought follower…and proud of it!

| Lana

So many people want to be thought leaders – but what’s the point of leading if no one is following?

There are so many influential and brilliant community managers creating amazing content – books, articles, webinars, videos – that I’d like to start highlighting them as a thought follower. Author Todd Henry said in his article Forget Thought Leaders – We Need more “Thought Followers”

[Thought Followers]…are people who immerse themselves in the brilliant, challenging thoughts of others, commune with great minds, and then follow their own thoughts wherever they might lead. They have a disciplined Study Plan that challenges them to think about important problems and allows them to stretch their thoughts and explore uncomfortable places.

They aren’t afraid to humbly submit to the great insights of others and consider their implications to their own work. They are fiercely curious. They love process. They set aside time to savor great writing. They understand that brilliant ideas are excavated and assembled, not self-generated.

And this is what I plan to do starting in 2022 whether it’s listening to a podcast, reading a book or article, or watching a webinar or conference session. I’ll summarize each with my top 3 takeaways followed by my action items. I hope to follow my summary posts with my results as well!

So here’s to the Thought Followers! Let’s begin…