Community ManagerInsights 2013

Community Manager Appreciation Day 2013 #cmad

Happy Community Manager Appreciation Day!

Each year, we check in with some of the top community managers in the industry and ask them about emerging trends, and business value to their company. Thanks to all the professionals that participated. Let’s start with an overview:

Who’s participating in your community?

1-10 employees

40%

15-25 20%

10-15 2%

2More than 26

38%

Real engagement means breaking down the silos and letting any employee work with a customer to listen, troubleshoot, or brainstorm. In 2013 we see a big increase in employees participating in the community.

What are you measuring? Phone call

volume Email volume Ticket volume

Traffic to community

Participating users

Participating employees

Sentiment, Customer Sat

Time to resolution Support cost

Peer-to-Peer engagement

Net Promoter Score

Ideas added to roadmap

Topics answered

Leads generated

Contact deflection

Shares to social web

Votes for new features

Inbound search

Proving ROI and engagement is critical. Here’s a few of the metrics being used to measure community success.

What trends are on the horizon for community management in 2013?

Social media adopts a Community approach

“The blurring of social media and community will continue. While social media is widely accepted as part of the marketing mix, the approach on social media will be to create a more integrated community feel, rather than simply use the channel to push product.” Lisa Barnett Online Community Manager eModeration

Photo: Karen_roe, Flickr

In 2013, a lot more noise.

“There are "only" a billion people on FB- still another 6 billion who have yet to join. As more and more people begin to connect to the multitude of platforms, how will companies/consultants cut through the clutter to have their message heard? Biggest challenge but also biggest opportunity: more people to engage with!” Ephraim Gopin Community Manager fring

We'll continue to work on growth

“We'll also focus on creating active users; making the most of the community. How to engage people, how to make the community their preferred resource, etc. ” Kristen Gastaldo Community Manager Blackbaud, Inc.

More TrafficMore Success in 2013

“We have just moved our community from a private community to a semi-public site. I am excited about this change as this should help us reach more of our customers, improve marketing SEO, and allow us to plugin the widgets into our products. We also gain the Twitter feed which is cool. ” Lee RoquetBitcentral

Nurturing Can Start to Bring Around Big Rewards

“With such huge savings in support costs using the Get Satisfaction platform we are now going to start in 2013 giving our SMEs (subject matter experts) "spiffs" if the "problem" status in a post on GS is resolved within a specified time-frame which either leads to better customer satisfaction or subscription revenue at Cazoomi.” Clint WilsonCazoomi

Kriztofor, Flickr

Fostering Community Champions

“We just launched our champions program, that will provide our customers with additional training, hardware to test, one on ones with product management, and may play an integral role in a product certification process and customer advisory board.” Kristen Gastaldo Community Manager Blackbaud, Inc.

What benefits has your company seen as result of your community

management efforts?

Staying Engaged “We have been able to engage at least one user from 75% of the organizations using our product. We're focused on integrating the community into our implementation process, so it's a resource from the beginning.” Kristen Gastaldo Community Manager Blackbaud, Inc.

Community Provides Leads

“Customer engagement - Community provides Q&A, troubleshooting and customer service via social media. Users get answers to questions quickly - keeps them informed, engaged and, most of the time, happy (unless they don't like the answer. Community provides Leads, leads and more leads (thank you LinkedIn!).” Ephraim Gopin Community Manager fring

Time is of The Essence

“Since I've been working in the GS community earlier this year, we've been able to improve our response time to community topics. Now customers typically get a response from an employee or Champ within an hour (during the business week), which ultimately leads to happier community members, and that's something I'm really proud of!” Caty Kobe Community Manager Get Satisfaction

Double Dare Ya “Our community size of active SyncApps subscribers doubled in 2012 to over 525 with some of the best software enhancement ideas coming from our Salesforce.com SyncApps users.” Clint WilsonCazoomi - Via Get Satisfaction Community

Value Your Relationships

“The community provides something no other product at Blackbaud has - access to every level of our team. Even our VP keeps up with the community. Most customers don't experience that. Overall, our customers and entire team see the value!” Kristen Gastaldo Community Manager Blackbaud, Inc.

Go AheadBrag a Little

One of my favorite things we've done in the last year to engage our community is showing them off. We do this three different ways: 1. "Loyalty in Action" tweets using their twitter handles and links to their sites. 2. Showcasing amazing loyalty program designs on our Pinterest account. 3. Spotlighting creative implementations of Sweet Tooth on our blog. Our community has been super responsive to this because who doesn't like to show off their hard work and success? Sherrie Rohde User Experience Manager Sweet Tooth

Responsive Savings

“We use our community to improve the customer experience and reduce operating costs. Both Badgeville and Get Satisfaction have helped us achieve significant savings with 72% Peer-to-Peer Response Rate.”

Nathan Roth, Community Strategist Koodo Mobile

getsatisfaction.com