BUILDING COMMUNITY

A CONVERSATION AROUND PLANNING, STEWARDSHIP AND KEEPING IT HUMAN

Catherine Shinners

January 21, 2014 for the SIKM Community

enterprise social networks

#tweetchats

Pintrest boards

Facebook pages

wikis

Google+ groups

Communities

Linked-In discussion groups

Connect

Learn

Make sense

Influence

Adapt

Create

Challenges to communitysuccess

Often a lack of clarity around purpose & therefore

business relevance

An online presence doesn’t mean it’s a community

Vital nature of sustained stewardship & facilitation not

well understood

Creating value, assessing value communicating value

Our Conversation Today

• Community principles, dynamic, lifecycle and planning

• Stewardship, facilitation, engagement, participant roles

• Share experiences, insights, dilemmas, triumphs

Community principles & dynamics

Participation value is achieved

through participation

Collective created &

expanded from wide contributions

Emergence value emerges from collective

interactionsPersistence contributions captured for

sharing, viewing

Independent engagement

anytime, anyplace, at will

Transparency participants see

each other’s contributions

The Social Organization: How to use social media to tap the collective genius of customer and employee, Bradley, A., , McDonald, M., Harvard Business Press, 2011

Communities have a lifecycleand a unique set of dynamics

Community Lifecycle

High value content sparks engagement

Comm. Mgr. direct outreach, initiates discussions, prompts response, relationship building, seeks interaction to content

Program of online events – forums, expert bloggers, original content

Growing sense of community

Regular communications

Social media channel engagement

Recruit volunteers

Survey, poll members

Recognition programs

Promote community

Advanced analytics

Higher levels of interaction, engagement

Community sense of shared history, achievements

Volunteer-led activities

Advancement in UX, platform, metrics, analytics

Community more self-sustaining

Subgroup, affinity group formation

Reformation of purpose

A life-cycle perspective on online community success, Iriberri, A ., Leroy, G., ACM Computing Surveys, Volume 41 Issue 2, February 2009  

Inception Establishment Growth Maturity

Planning elements

Engage and education stakeholders

Identify strategic business alignment

Plan for inception & establishment

Determine critical success factors and KPIs for early phases

Lay groundwork & infrastructure for growth and maturity phases

Inception

Business Strategy Alignment

Customer engagement, loyalty• Obtain feedback, information on

customer needs

• Improve customer service

Visibility, reputation• Improve or enhance reputation

• Increase access to expert

knowledge

• Exchange information with

credible sources

Productivity• Increase quality of knowledge

Increase idea creation

• Enhance problem solving

• Accelerate new business and product

innovation

• Save time during information seeking

and sharing

Employee communication, trust• Better understanding & alignment

across organizations

• Increase level of trust8

External Facing Internal Facing

Inception

Community Business Model

Competitive Strategy

Position in value network

Revenue Impact

Value Chain

Market Segment

Value PropositionBeing involved in this community is important to me because…

Customers or prospects, partners or employees. Market segment(s), targeted level (CXO, leaders, end users etc)

Expert curation > original content > topical forums > showcase customer leadership > demonstrates commitment to customer

Differentiation, customer loyalty, satisfaction, underserved segment, disruptive potential, product insight

Identify how the community is aligned with business initiatives or strategic engagements or programs

Enhance customer loyalty, advance opportunity with partners, give access to expertise, value to product or support.

Inception

Community Architecture Inception

Community Management

Facilitates, stewards regular interactions Manages volunteers

Face of community, promotes, advocates Monitor community health

Evangelizes, recruits, engages members Define, refine strategy, outcomes

Content & Events Programming

Social Media, Marketing

& Communications

Platform, UX, Analytics, Operations

Original content

Expert curation

Regular, online events

Targeted discussions

Promote trending topics

Social media

engagement & promotion

Regular member

communications

Marketing strategy

Compelling, evolving UX

KPIs, benchmarks

Identify, manage tools

Educate stakeholders

Metrics, reports

Governance

Terms, conditions Company policies

Executive sponsor Legal, IT, HR

11

Critical Success Factors• Identify executive sponsor

• Effective education of stakeholders

• Resourced for lifecycle and business strategy success

• Community manager, social media manager, content specialists, analytics talent

• Content and programs: Plans and budgets for events, content development, content curation, recognition programs

• Communications and marketing plan in place

• Metrics: tools, services to analyze effective performance

• Governance model alignment with larger organization

• Technology and user experience attuned to targeted community

Inception

Cultivate, facilitate spectrum of engagement

Identify leaders, influencers

Recognition, volunteer programs

Regular cadence of events, programs, communications

Active cycle of engagement

Analytics, metrics aligned with purpose, relevant to management

Refine resource requirements for growth

Internal and external advocacy

Partnerships in place

Benchmarking, active listening12

Establishment

Frank Fiishbach/Shutterstock

Calling Attention–Gathering Up

Cadence of community-wide events

Vladimir Koshkarov/Shutterstock

Social learning

Peer-to-peer

Varied contexts

Narrative models

zeljkodan/Shutterstock

Rich resources

Freshness, regular flow

Varied

Connected to people

Expert curation

Pal Teravagimov/Shutterstock

Serendipity, small delights

Design for light approaches, too

KornnphotoShutterstock

Social roles in community

Create an environment where people can bring a multiplicity of approaches and roles

Support people moving in and out of leader, active mentoring to lower profile roles

Sharer

lurker Writer

CreatorEditor

Connector

synthesizor

mitigator

negotiator

contextualizerinterloper

infovore

monitorcounselor

gossip

critic

expertbroadcaster

re-broadcaster

Thanks to Thomas Vander Wal, Gordon RossSee Cathexis blog post:

The City is Experienced on our Feet: Social Business as the Urban Planning of Enterprise 2.0

Community Types

Team Collaboration

Community Collaboration

Network Collaboration

Crowdsourcing

Purpose - Motivation

Members of group known to one another – shared identify as part of a project focus – even though embedded in hierarchy, participants cooperate on equal footing

Shared identity around a topic or set of challenges

Set of relationships, personal interactions, connections among individuals who have a personal reason to connect.

Activity can be done by anyone who wants to from a large group

Money, Love, Glory – can be all three

Type of learning

Problem solving, resource and idea sharing, clear task interdependencies, explicit timelines and goals, members

Expertise of practice within a domain

Pre-articulated or validated reputation credentials

Quickly solve problems, share ideas, make future connectionsReputation

Anonymity is often ok, no pre-defined credentials necessary

Reputation may follow

Source of Learning

Sustained interactions across project timelines

Sustained partnership From access to the network

From access to the network

Modality of learning

Formal – through experience of sustained interaction and artifact creation

Formal-experience of practice is a learning resource

Informal – through interactions

Independent, hyperspecialization, micro-tasking

Primary value

Explicit, applied, realized,

Explicit, applied, realized, reframing

Tacit, immediate, potential value

Explicit, applied, realized, reframing

Secondary value

Tacit, immediate, potential value

Tacit, immediate, potential value

Explicit, applied, realized, reframing

Tacit, immediate, potential value

Model Collective intent Collective intent Nodes and links Nodes and links

Resources• Promoting and assessing value creation in communities and network

s: a conceptual framework, Etienne Wenger, Beverly Trayner, Maarten de Laat, Open Universiteit Report 18, 2011

• Designing effective knowledge networks, Katrina Pugh and Laurence Prusak, MIT/Sloan Management Review, September 2013

• Community Roundtable – Rachel Happe

• Feverbee – Richard Millington

Palo Alto, CA +1-650-704-3889catherineshinners@mercedgroup.com

blog: collaboration-incontext.comwww.mercedgroup.com

http://about.me/catherineshinners

www.linkedin.com/catherineshinners

@catshinners

Skype: CatherinePaloAlto

Catherine Shinners

PresidentMerced Group

Social Business Strategic Consulting and Enterprise 2.0 Services

Case Study

• Business benefit - visibility and reputation

• Segment – education leaders and innovators

• Purpose – foster peer-to-peer leadership dialogue – education innovation

• Expert curation, original content, events, featured luminaries

• Recognition program

• Customer UX oriented at education leader segmentPublic Service of Cisco

Know Your Constituents

PISA

Mobile learning

STEM

Media Literacy

Global Standards

Millennial generation

Social Media to build community

Public Service of Cisco

A Focus on Community Building

Awareness and global reach – new members

Engage with and facilitate leader conversations

Drive participation and community engagement

Advance sense of connection for leaders Better understand community needs – active listening

Establishment

Awareness, Reach Recruitment

LinkedIn Group• Promoting events, content• Bring content to relevant discussion groups • Email through LI - campaigns to bring in your members

Twitter• Targeted, focused outreach to influencers, leaders,

innovators• Meet and greet – call to action to join

Facebook• Targeted ads to leaders with geo expansion• Global content, commentary

Community Connection

LinkedIn

Listen & participate in relevant domain groups

Monitor expert discussions

Calls to action to community events programming

Twitter

Monitor domain #hashtags for trending topics

Participate in #hashtag live chats

Promotion of community events, content

YouTube

Great, original content featuring peer leaders

Engagement

ParticipationActive listeningAuthentic voice

Community Engagement

• Focus, target outreach at members

level, quality engagement peer-to-peer

• Actively participate in conversations,

bring great content, cultivate authentic

stance

• Bring new experiences – help them

become more adept

• Innovate, experiment, display leadership

Be an authentic, active participant in the conversation

You have to be engaged to get engagement

Value Metrics for Community -KPIs

• Audience Engagement• Share of Voice• Advocate Influence• Idea Impact• Sentiment Ratio

• Benchmarking

A New Framework for Measuring Results in Social Media

Jeremiah Owyang & John Lovett, The Altimeter Group, 2010