Session: The Community Manager Certificate Program

Community ManagerThe Most Important Role You’ve Never Heard Of

Speakers: Jim Storer – The Community Roundtable

Kathy Baughman – ComBluKathy Baughman – ComBlu

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More About Jim

Jim StorerPrincipal and Co-founder

The Community Roundtable@jimstorer

@TheCR

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More About Kathy

Kathy BaughmanPrincipal and Co-founder

ComBlu@ComBlu

Lumenatti.comblu.com

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Session Agenda

• Brief Overview of Certificate Program• Need for the program• What is community management• Community management best practices• Introducing the first course work• Questions and Discussion

The Community Management Certificate Program

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Community Manager Certificate Program

• Co-developed by WOMMA, The Community Roundtable and ComBlu

• As brands add community to marketing mix, there’s an increase in the need for skilled and experienced community managers:– Very few people with expertise– Need to either:

» Find someone who knows the business and teach them community management skills

» Recruit someone who knows community but does not have product or brand expertise

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Community Management Certificate Content

Roles

Member Relations Growth

Engagement Measurement

Content Moderation

Reputation Management Off-site Integration

Why is the Certificate Program Important?

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Community Maturity Model TM

Strategy

Leadership

Culture

Community Management

Content & Programming

Policies & Governance

Tools

Metrics & Measurement

Stage 1

HierarchyStage 2

Emergent Community

Stage 3

CommunityStage 4

Networked

Familiarize & listen

Command & control

Reactive

None

Formal & structured

No guidelines for UGC

Consumer tools used by individuals

Anecdotal

Participate

Consensus

Contributive

Informal

Some UGC

Restrictive social media policies

Consumer & self-service tools

Basic activities

Build

Collaborative

Emergent

Defined roles & processes

Community created content

Flexible social media policies

Mix of consumer & enterprise tools

Activities & content

Integrate

Distributed

Activist

Integrated roles & processes

Integrated formal & user-generated

Inclusive

‘Social’ functionality is integrated

Behaviors & outcomes

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Case Study: Community Manager Growth

2005 2006 2007 2008 2009 2010 2011 2012

0

10

30

40

20

50

Company A

Company B

Company C

Company A = 2008, B2C, Customer SupportCompany B = 2009, B2B, Evangelism/SupportCompany C = 2009, B2C, Private Client Support

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Case Study: Community Manager Growth

2005 2006 2007 2008 2009 2010 2011 2012

0

10

30

40

20

50

Company A

Company B

Company C

Demand for CM expertise depends onmaturity, segment, application and industry

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Supply and Demand for Community Managers

2008 2009 2010 2011 2012 2013 2014 2015

0

?

Supply

Demand

We expect demand for CM expertisewill outstrip supply for the

foreseeable future.

What is Community Management?

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Community Management is the Discipline of Ensuring Productive Communities

Responsibilities• Define scope, ideal outcomes and boundaries• Ensure participants receive more value than they contribute• Promote, encourage and reward productive behaviors• Discourage and limit destructive behaviors• Facilitate constructive disagreement and conflict • Advocate for the community and its members• Monitor, measure and report• Marshal internal advocates, resources and support• Manage tools and member experience

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What is Community Management?

Visible• Managing content (publishing,

curating, tagging)– Updates– Blog posts– e-books/white papers– Pictures– Videos– Podcasts

• Managing events• Welcoming new members• Participating judiciously in

conversations• Reaching out to third party

influencers, partners, media• Communicating changes to policies,

tools, programming, etc.

Behind the Scenes• Back-channeling with members to

encourage participation• Building relationships with key

members• Taking issues offline• Working with internal advocates to

plan mutually beneficial programming

• Planning programming/campaign calendar

• Collaborating internally • Managing technology issues• Communicating value and benefits

of community internally

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What Makes a Good Community Manager?

Skills• Communication• Ability to match brand’s

personality• Understanding of human

behavior/motivations• Relationship building• Conflict resolution• Project management• Moderate technical aptitude

Attributes• Love of people• Judgment• Tempered enthusiasm• Empathy• Adaptability• Self-awareness

What are the Risks of Not Having Community Management?

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Community: Measurable But Not Direct

Investment

Community Manager’s Dream Scenario:Positive return takes time, but growth (and return) is eventually exponential.

More Typical Community Scenario:Early ROI and moderate success.

“Shiny Object” Scenario:Early and steady ROI suggests to leaders “we’re successful” and resources are allocated to the next shiny object. Tough to recover.

How do we get to this scenario?

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Example: Community Management

http://www.flickr.com/photos/jcolivera/2809988605/

Ghost Town

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21http://www.flickr.com/photos/pedjap/74410434/

Land of 1,000 Flowers

22http://www.flickr.com/photos/thomasfordmemoriallibrary/3467799183/

Drama Central

23http://www.flickr.com/photos/gordontarpley/1481380410/

A Circling Storm

http://www.flickr.com/photos/swirlingthoughts/162016762/

A Clique

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How are Online Communities Performing?

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State of Online Branded Communities

Third Annual StudyNovember 2011

Sponsored by ComBlu

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Overall Report Stats

• Three more industries– Enterprise Resource

Planning (ERP) is net-new– Divided insurance and

healthcare into sub-industries

• 14 more companies than last year

• Joined 10 more communities

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Community Pillar Breakdown

Note: Many communities had multiple pillars, so sum will not equal the total number of communities.

75% = Advocacy20% = Feedback33% = Support

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Study Aha’sSurprises• No huge gains year over year in best practice adoption

– Fundamental changes to study sample– Community management is a difficult skill set to find– High Performers (42 or more points) stayed flat at 33%

• Content practices not as high as expected– Only two had over 90% adoption (featured content and content aggregation)– User reviews (most closely associated with VOC) dropped from 54% to 27%

Good News• Engagement tools increased from 76% to 96%

– Much better job of matching mission and engagement approach• Better sunsetting practices• Some brands are integrating gamification engines across multiple properties• More brands are incorporating multiple engagement pillars in community

strategy

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Missed Opportunities

Rewards and Recognition: Up to 43% from 39% last year• NBC’s FanIt/myNBC Community is a great model of an integrated rewards platform

across multiple NBC communities.• EA offers a traveling navigation bar that follows members cross-properties.• Some brands, such as P&G, align rewards to purchase, requiring consumers to enter

a product code. While we believe P&G could also award “community points,” this method gets to ROI of driving purchase behavior.

Mobile• Not yet on the study’s best practice list; started to note use of mobile to extend

community beyond desktop.• 16%, or 40 of the 251 communities, we scored offered a mobile community app.

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Missed Opportunities

Recommendation Engines• Automated way to configure a combination of the consumer’s buying

habits, product reviews and information from others with similar purchasing patterns to recommend other products that the person may enjoy or need.

• Amazon uses a recommendation engine to recommend such diverse purchases as building supplies and baby clothes.– “People who bought this forklift strap also bought this two-person lifting

dolly.”

Advocates• Still only 20% adoption rate

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Brands That Get It: General MillsGood model for recruiting customer advocates• Pssst… and MyGetTogether stimulates product trial and

story sharing• Lengthy registration and surveys capture deep profile

info

Outreach to members when new opportunities arise to try products or host get-together

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Overall Classification

• Cohesive Strategy increased from 33% to 41%

• Majority of brands still in Experimentation Phase

• Big drop in Community Ghost Towns

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2011 Top Performers

• No brand = Highest scoring tier– Minimum score: 57– Verizon just missed

– HP– AT&T

• 33% of brands in study are High Performers– All are Cohesive Strategy

– Kimberly-Clark– Activision

• Brands that fell off:

• Three new brands on the list:– SAP (new to study)– Intel (new to study)– Xbox

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2011 Contenders

• 19 brands = Contenders– Between 42 and 49 points

• JetBlue Airways and Intuit also on most improved list

• Technology and gaming industries had the most High Performers (42 to 56) and Contenders, followed by Entertainment and Retail industries

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Average Best Practice Use Overall• Community manager (CM) lost

a few points since last year:– Studies show that CM

increases engagement; still missed opportunity

• Good news, too:– Jump in content

aggregation– Mission appropriate

engagement– Personal dashboards

• User reviews and user-generated content (UGC) took nosedive from 54% to 27%:– One of biggest stimulants

of preference

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Best Practice Use by Top Scorers • Only seven best practices (BPs) ≤ 74%

adoption rate

• Low rate (42%) of contests and campaigns may mean more meaningful interaction

• Advocates adoption is higher than entire sample (53% vs. 20%), still potential

• Content aggregation = 95% vs. only 32% among last year’s top five. Important activity for decision journey; other content practices also had high usage:

– New/featured content– Personal dashboard– Content rating/ranking– Content tagging– Content customization– Faceted search

SAPBravoEAIntelVerizon

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Brands That Get It: EATied With SAP

as Second Highest Scorer

Overall

Personalizes experience and offers SSO

Fun and captivating engagement (e.g., leaderboards, avatars, videos, etc.)

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Brands That Get It: EA

Offers sub-portals for game types such as sports

Surfaces appropriate forums on game-specific pages and offers centralized, searchable hub for all forums

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Best Practice Adoption by Pillar

• 20% are Feedback communities

• Important BPs for Feedback:– Polling– Rating/ranking– Forums– Leaderboards– Personal

dashboard

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Brands That Get It: Starbucks

zzLeaderboards

zzForums

zzPolling

zzPersonal dashboard

zzRating/ranking

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Best Practice Adoption by Pillar

• Support = 33% of communities

• 46% = Advocates; big miss for support

• Rewards and recognition and leaderboards both low for support

• 76% = Content rating; critical for support experience

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User Profile (top)

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Brands That Get It: Verizon

User Profile (bottom)

Support Communities = Core Strategy

• Detailed user profile tracks recent member activity and Kudos

• Displays member stats and badges earned

• Rollover feature allows members to easily view other members’ profile stats

• Shows member’s friends and their availability (offline/online)

• Displays member’s tagged content

• Member’s recent posts and messages are linked to the original discussion

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• Active forums with thousands of views

• Live Twitter stream shows Verizon support team actively responds to questions

• Top taggers leaderboard, top kudoed posts and recent solutions to member issues

ForumForum Sidebar (top)

Forum Sidebar (bottom)

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12 3

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Brands That Get It: Verizon

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Best Practice Adoption by Pillar

Some best practices that drive affinity showed low adoption rates:• Community manager was the

lowest in this pillar at 43%• Leaderboards and rewards and

recognition were also the lowest in this pillar; both practices are high return motivators and could help boost longer-term engagement

• Content customization was also very low; the ability to self-curate the members’ community experience impacts time spent in the community and return visits

75% = Advocacy communities

Home Page “Top Chef Just Desserts”“Millionaire Matchmaker”

• Single login• One gateway to every show

on Bravo

• Each show has its own page that offers visitors consistent engagement tools, setup, rich media and navigation

Brands That Get It: Bravo

• Ritualized experiences:– Common ways to

engage cross-property

• Integration across multiple social assets

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Brands That Get It: Bravo (continued)

Multiple screen engagement

• Talk Without Pity tab aggregates all Twitter conversations about a specific show

• Get-Glue functionality via Twitter– Check in while watching shows– Live chat with other viewers

Percent of Communities with High, Medium, Low Activity by Industry – 2011

• Telecommunications and Entertainment Industries both consistently had high activity levels

• Travel and Hospitality Industry also high

• High activity in Health Insurance Industry was surprise:– Wellness education

and policy support

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Social Media Integration by Industry

NOTE: ERP industry new for 2011. Healthcare industry split into OTC/Pharma.

Overview of the Community Management Certificate Program

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Key Take-Aways

• Focus on business goals

• Understand the target audience/member

• Build value for all constituents (what’s in it for them?)

• Understand the role and value of community management

Community Specialist(entry-level position)

Community Specialist module covers :• Contextual topics like

market trends, strategy, and culture

• Tactical responsibilities related to content development, moderation, enforcing policies, and measuring success.

Community Manager(mid-level position)

Community Manager module covers:• Operational aspects of a

community with the strategic vision that delivers business results.

• Builds on the implementation learnings from the Specialist Level

• Thought processes behind the creation of ROI modeling and executive presentation of a strategy.

Community Strategist (senior community and social engagement strategist)

Community Strategist module raises the level of thought from implementation to strategic vision. Provides process to:• Evaluate existing efforts• Establish a vision for the

future and align with multifaceted business needs

• Build the accompanying business case

• Champion the community across business units

Three Levels of Certification

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Topic Presenter/Author

Market Context & Program Management Rachel Happe, The Community Roundtable - Presenter & AuthorJam Delcambre, AT&T - PresenterLeigh Mutert, H&R Block - Author

Strategy, Leadership, & Culture Lauren Vargas, Aetna – Presenter and AuthorTonya Hornsby, P&G – Author

Tools Dawn Lacallade, Independent – Presenter & Author

Content & Programming Cindy Meltzer, Isis Parenting – Presenter & Author

Policies & Governance Tamara Littleton, eModeration – PresenterWendy Christie, eModeration & Tia Fisher, eModeration - Authors

Metrics & Measurement Misti Crawford, CSC – Presenter & AuthorElena Elena Benito-Ruiz, Ubikuos – Author

Community Management Kathy Baughman, ComBlu – Presenter & AuthorBecky Carroll, Petra Consulting Group – Presenter

Community Specialist Curriculum

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How to Register

Every Tuesday and Thursday Starting January 24th – February 16th

When?

Events & Education WOMMA.org

Certification webinars will be held:

Go to:

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Watch for More Info at:

womma.org

community-roundtable.com

comblu.com

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Download the report at: http://community-roundtable.com/socm-2011/

Download the report at: http://comblu.com/news/thought-leadership/the-state-of-

online-branded-communities-2011.aspx

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Download the Reports

Contact Info

Kevin LynchPrincipal ComBluTwitter: @ComBluBlog: Lumenatti.comblu.comEmail: klynch@comblu.com

Kristen SmithExecutive DirectorWOMMATwitter: @WOMMAEmail: kristen@womma.org

Jim StorerPrincipal & Co-FounderThe Community RoundtableTwitter: @jimstorerEmail: jim@community-roundtable.com