How to be intentional about community management

Over the past few years, I’ve gotten to know?Adrian Spyer?pretty well, and I’m thrilled to be able to share this new book review with you of his book,?The Accidental Community Manager A Guide to Building a Successful B2B Community.

If you are new to the online community industry and have found yourself in the same situation as Adrian, being an “accidental community manager,” this book is a great tool for you! The book is written as a guide to have alongside you day by day.

The book provides thoughtful insights, detailed strategies, and actionable tips for new and experienced community professionals. If you haven’t heard of the term before or aren’t sure what a community manager does, it isn’t managing an apartment building!

As a community manager myself, I’ve struggled to explain this role to others. I’ve also had clients ask me about managing a community but do not have the budget to cover the investment of hiring a community manager.

In addition, many community hosts have no idea what they would want a community manager to do besides create content and moderate the community message boards.

What does a B2B Community Manager do?

Community managers who work in the business-to-business (B2B) industry are the moderators and facilitators and are usually hired at large enterprise tech companies to support customers and clients or improve the experience of their customers or clients. Still, they do more than just any “customer service” person. They provide detailed reports to leadership focused on driving business results with a “people-first” approach by better understanding the customer.

Here are just a few of the things that a community manager does as part of their role:

• Set policy and tone to establish the community culture
• Drives community adoption internally and externally.
• Works with internal stakeholders, teams, and departments to promote the community.
• Decides on long-term (6–12 months) community strategy.
• Is the face of the community internally and externally.
• Manages the moderation team (if one exists) or volunteer moderators.

Why would a company want to build an online community?

Companies have found that it is beneficial to provide a place for their customers to meet each other and can provide valuable feedback loops to marketing and product teams. When getting to know the customers and better understanding their challenges can lead to better customer service and an increase in revenue for a company that prioritizes people first. This is the future of business as so many consumers are more interested in giving companies feedback on products for improvements and providing reviews on services online. There are many successful B2B Communities; Feverbee has a list from 2020?here.

What’s a B2B online community?

In this book, Adrian makes a clear decision that “followers” aren’t a community, nor are the people who use or consume a product or use a service.

In The Accidental Community Manager, a community is defined as:

• A shared space for people to gather and connect
• People who share a common language (jargon), customs, interests, or passions.
• People who share with one another voluntarily and among themselves in this space.
• People who feel a sense of belonging in this group are genuinely interested in supporting, assisting, sharing, and learning from each other.

Key Takeaways

• MVP Principle — Most Valuable People?-Community Managers are tasked with identifying, encouraging, and supporting external advocates and empowering them to be leaders. This happens when sharing insider knowledge, grinding special privileges, or through recognition. If done thoughtfully, this allows for the co-creation of content and members that will offer to help with onboarding and providing new members with a great experience.
• Set goals (KPIs) that are tied to stakeholders?and only report only the goals that are tied to the business goals and overall digital strategy. An example of these is reduced costs, an increase in customer satisfaction, an increase in revenue, or growth in advocacy.
• Get leadership to define the KPSs?and get more than “increase engagement,” as that doesn’t lead to clear outcomes.
• Pick a focus from SPAN?— Support, Product, Ambassador, or Network. Adrian says that?“A great community probably has all four components. However, start by choosing the best fit for your first focus,”?recommending not to work on all of these areas at once.
• Get Strategic with CARGO?— Solidify your community concept, acquire your members, find ways to keep them coming back (retention), return to the community goal and adjust when needed, and visualize the outcomes and how you and your stakeholders will define success.
• Community Guidelines?should provide the mission and expectations of member behaviors to create the community culture. Don’t just list “rules” but give members a guide on “best practices” for the space.
• Categories or Topics in a Community?— Consider each category as its culture and avoid conversation paralysis by not making so many category options that people don’t know where to start a discussion.

Community Management Skills

• Reporting and storytelling?— Essential for conveying the value of the community to stakeholders and providing quarterly or annual reports or updates.
• Writing?— Creating great content is vital to not only clearly communicate to the members of a community but to engage and inspire participation.
• Social Media?— It is likely that part of the role of a community professional is to coordinate with or, in some cases, act as a social media content collaborator to understand the messaging your marketing department is broadcasting to potential members.
• Analytics?— One of the key functions of a community professional is to provide deep insights into the data from your community and provide analysis and recommendations.
• Support?— Community Management, at its core, is a support role dedicated to talking to members of the online community and providing a place for members to feel heard and seen when they have a problem, challenge, or need.

Notable Quotes

• You are the heart of the customer experience. You are doing real advocate marketing. YOu are doing the crucial frontline PR work. You are an essential piece in reducing frustration as customers seek self-support.”
• “When you Don’t own the platform, you don’t own the data. You are making business decisions based on the data the platform decides to give you.” (Referring to building a community on platforms that are not able to be owned like Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn.)
• “You want the online community to be their space. If you are coming from the marketing space, to truly make a successful community, you need to stop seeing members as leads or prospects.”
• “Believe it or not, most people want to help if they’re passionate about a topic. They will love to be asked. Make sure you spend more time listening than telling.”

Thinking you need a community manager?Here are some things to consider before hiring a team.

If you are at a place where you need support, I would suggest that you document your process with a Standard Operating Procedure (SOP). If you plan to hire a community manager, you’ll need a process to guide this person. Many new community professionals are expected to be trained by you or your team.

If you don’t yet have a document that outlines your processes, it’s worth your time to set up an SOP. Start by writing out everything you can think of that’s required to operate your community. You can perfect the document later. For now, capture anything that comes to mind. Consider what software is required and the time needed to set up each community space within it. Take notes about how-tos, like logging into your community platform, updating content, adding new content, or creating events. Everything you currently do or that you want the community manager to do should be written out.

I wish I could tell you an easy way to do this, but it’s about getting what you know out of your head. Someone else needs to be able to read it, understand it, and take action from your guidance.

Pro-Tip — You could use artificial intelligence (AI) or voice-recording software to transcribe your SOP for you. Alternatively, you might hire a virtual assistant (VA) to capture your verbal brain dump and turn it into action steps. (But remember: This person’s job isn’t to read your mind. You still have to be heavily involved in the process.)

Consider what this community manager would do and how they would best support you in your current situation. For example, if you run a course, how can they help you gather course materials, set up events, or schedule social media to promote it? The more specific you can be about what you need, the easier it will be to find the right person. The community industry has become a booming field; there are different kinds of community managers now.

Some community managers are more operational-based, focusing on systems, processes, and efficiency. Other community managers are focused on the member experience. These professionals moderate the digital space and ensure members get what they need, and respond when expectations aren’t being met.

So many of the people I’ve worked with have the desire to hire a community manager right away. I did, too, at the beginning of my community-building journey. What I’ve learned is that it really depends on the community hosts’ individual needs, intentions, challenges, and goals, which will determine when and how to hire a community manager.

Ultimately, it comes down to budget; if you have the financial backing to hire support, great! But if you don’t, you’ll need to find ways you utilize ambassadors, advocates, volunteers, moderators, and members who want to support the community.

How, when, and why to hire a community manager

As a host of my own community for over two years and as someone who’s met dozens of community managers worldwide, I was so excited to offer my services to entrepreneurs as their community manager. I was eager to use my skills in this way, and I was ready to dive in. Following my first experience as a community manager (where I got a crash course), I thought it would be relatively easy to do it again. I was wrong. Very wrong.

What I learned was that many businesses and organizations are still trying to understand how a community professional fits in an organization. Secondly, many business owners have unrealistic expectations about how much revenue the community will bring in early on. They assume the community will fund the community manager, which may not be true.

If you are new to community building, you must find a reliable business model. There are so many ways this could happen–courses, classes, workshops, retreats, or subsequent products or services–that getting overwhelmed is a distinct possibility. There’s no one way to build an income stream around a community, and figuring out the best model for you and your people takes time. If your community strategy isn’t in place and it’s not generating revenue, you should think long and hard about whether hiring a community manager is necessary.

Pro-Tip — Keep an open mind when thinking about funding for covering the expense of hiring a community manager. If your community is not generating enough revenue to sustain a team. Consider how your other business revenue could help support the community as it grows. if your community is not generating enough revenue to sustain a team, you need to bring in a team to support growth.

Even if your revenue stream is reliable, you or your organization will need to be strategic when onboarding a new team member. If you are not the sole decision maker and you work with leadership that struggles to understand why a community is important, it’s time to get on the same page. For example, a community manager and a social-media manager aren’t the same things. But to those unfamiliar with how the community functions, the distinction may need to be explained. (Social media is about promotion, sales, and getting leads.)

Community management is about building relationships, solving problems, and facilitating a safe space. Many community managers offer technical support and quickly respond to members when problems arise. A good community manager will know many of the members of a community by first name and usually can tell you something about each one. Depending on how active the host is within the community, it may be the manager who’s the heart and soul of the space. Members should feel comfortable talking with them, expressing their issues, and asking questions when the needs arise.

No matter the platform, a community manager needs to understand the importance of their role. They could handle the daily operations so that the host could focus on the business development and growth strategies.

Before you hire a community manager:

• Develop an SOP for your community processes.
• Allocate funds to cover the investment.
• Make time to train this new person.
• Prepare a 30- or 60-day plan to guide them.

Questions, comments, or feedback can be sent to Deb at [email protected].