Using what online community leaders are doing, I extrapolate what's coming next for community managers and others using social networks and other digital media to engage their stakeholders. It was well received by the several hundred community practitioners in attendance, and can help inform planning in organizations for 2016 and beyond.

1. ‹#›Confidential
What
Lies
At
The
Cutting
Edge
Of
Communities?
by
Dion
Hinchcliffe,
7Summits

2. ‹#›Confidential
Where
Are
We
Today
with
Community
Management?
Where
Are
We
Going?

3. ‹#›@dhinchcliffe
How
Most
of
Us
Look
at
Community
Management

4. ‹#›@dhinchcliffe
What
The
Experts
Think
CMs
Actually
Do

5. ‹#›@dhinchcliffe
But We Now Know (Most Of) The Key Success Factors
Community Management & Moderation
• Content Management
• Activation & Adoption
• Engagement & Incentives
• Advocacy plan
• Training & Support
Proactive Communication
• Awareness & Desire
• Education – What’s in it for me?
Business Value & Strategy
• Community Objectives
• Business Goals
• Measurement Framework
• Governance
Bottom Line: Well-activated communities drive meaningful business results.
Organizational Engagement
• Executive Sponsorship
• Buy-In With Business Teams
• Sufficient Staff and Resources

6. ‹#›@dhinchcliffe
Answered Questions
New per month
00
450
900
1,350
1,800
new questi
new respon
new helpfu
new correc
• Total Users: All system users who have not been disabled.
• Active Users: Users who have viewed at least one item in the previous 30
days.
• Participating Users: Users who have commented, liked, rated/ voted,
edited, or created content in the past 30 days.
• Contributing Users: Users who have created new content in the previous
30 days
Community Vitality
••Impact metrics: reach, sentiment
••Online connections
•• # of Questions/Supporting Documents
••Process change / consistency
Community/Use Case Objectives
Indicator of:
•• Process Effectiveness
•• Productivity / Efficiency
•• Transparency / Synergy / Goal Alignment
•• Customer Engagement
Business Objectives
Indicator of:
Community Success Measures Are Maturing

7. ‹#›@dhinchcliffe
Community Managers Are Now Enabling
New Types of Work

8. ‹#›@dhinchcliffe
Reinventing Core Business Processes
▪ Using the power of
community platforms to
fundamentally rethink
traditional business
practices
▪ Make them faster
▪ More transparent
▪ Producing richer, multiple
outcomes
▪ More resilient to exceptions
▪ Self-documenting
▪ Scalable
…BASF as well
Nearly 4x faster process

9. ‹#›@dhinchcliffe
Community Becoming the Vehicle for Change

10. ‹#›@dhinchcliffe
Community Become the Organizing
Principle for Digital Experience

11. ‹#›@dhinchcliffe
Workforce
Communities at

12. ‹#›@dhinchcliffe
Lesson:
We’re
not
teaching
digital
skills

13. ‹#›@dhinchcliffe
A
Emerging
Community
Skill:
Working
Out
Loud

14. ‹#›@dhinchcliffe
Thriving with Community Advocacy and
Leadership Programs
▪ Community advocacy and leadership
programs correlate strongly to higher overall
community maturity levels
▪ In particular, formal programs have been
measured to correlate with improvements in
key community success metrics:
▪ The number of full-time community
managers
▪ The ability to measure value
▪ Higher levels of executive participation
▪ Higher levels of product team and
subject matter participation
▪ More user-generated content
▪ Higher levels of conversation vs.
content sharing
▪ More robust community tools
Community Proponents & Leaders
Formal Program with Activities
Aimed at High Value Engagement

15. ‹#›@dhinchcliffe
Top Three Lessons from Community
Advocacy Programs
▪ When building a community
advocacy or leadership
program, avoid over-
governing the program with
too many policies at the
beginning.
▪ Communicate from the
onset of the program the
plan to leverage your
advocates.
▪ Ensure the organization
elicits the feedback of the
top advocates in the
creation of the program.

16. ‹#›@dhinchcliffe
HR Has Discovered Community
▪ For employee engagement
▪ For hiring and recruiting
▪ For retention
▪ For learning
▪ For knowledge capture
▪ But are badly behind on the
experience and knowledge
curve
▪ And are now drawing upon
community managers

17. ‹#›@dhinchcliffe
Learning
Communities

18. ‹#›@dhinchcliffe
Workforce
engagement
is
the
challenge
The Community Opportunity In most companies, the majority of employees are not well engaged

19. ‹#›@dhinchcliffe
And
the
benefits
of
better
engagement
via
community
could
not
be
more
clear...

20. ‹#›@dhinchcliffe
Communities
are
key
to
a
solution
to
employee
engagement

21. ‹#›@dhinchcliffe
Common Industry Benchmarks Now Exist
@TheCR’s Full Strength
Community Management
Benchmark
Streamlined Community Engagement
Benchmark by 7Summits’ Heather Ausmus

22. ‹#›@dhinchcliffe
Community Management Team Structure Maturing
Community Director
Community Strategist
Community Manager
Community Moderator
Community Application Specialist
Chief Community Officer (CCO)
Low
Medium
High
Maturity
Future Maturity
Level

23. ‹#›@dhinchcliffe
Right Sizing Community Manager Teams

24. ‹#›@dhinchcliffe
Fitting the Pieces Together
community
frameworkmaturity
platform
internal
community
hybrid
community
external
community
advocates
distributed
community
• Curation
• Monitoring
• Research
• Planning
• Measuring
• Engaging
• Managing
• Moderating
• Facilitating
• Research
community managers
*
*
* = new areas of
leadership
#e20

25. ‹#›@dhinchcliffe
Marketing
Sales
Customer Care
Community
Processes
Social
Stakeholders
Goals &
Requirements
Community
Knowledge
Base
Community
Technology
Foundation
• Stakeholder support
• Listening/dispatch/reporting
• Community management
• Education/training
• Governance
• Crisis coordination
• CoE staff
• Project leads
• Solution managers
• #cmgrs
• Internal customers
• Executives
• Business partners
• Performance improvement
• Consistency
• Efficiency
• Oversight
• Risk management
• ROI tracking
Lines of Business
HR
Legal
Compliance
Corp. Comm
Product Dev.
• Best practices & lessons
• Playbooks
• Support cases/fixes
• Training materials
• Policy framework
• Content directory
drives
creates
uses
conducts
Other Support Units
• External social media
• Internal social platforms
• Listening
• Content management
• ESN(s)
• Analytics
• Compliance
• Identity management
• Standards & architecture
}
Business Units
Reaching Maturity: The Social Media Center of Excellence
by Dion Hinchcliffe and David Mastronardi
coordinated
action on
the edge
The Rise of the Social CoE

26. ‹#›@dhinchcliffe

27. ‹#›@dhinchcliffe
Next-Gen Case Example: Beyond the Social CoE
The Network of Excellence

28. ‹#›@dhinchcliffe
Network
of
Excellence
for
Social/Community
▪ Empowers everyone, not just those in the
center of excellence
▪ Actively enlists change agents to use
community approaches to meet business
objectives
▪ Provides tools, resources, best practices,
and playbooks to be shared with all
▪ Provides reference models and
technologies
▪ But does not require one size fits all
▪ Pools collective resources of the entire
organizations
▪ Uses online community to operate and
spread the network
▪ Scales better and does not backlog like the
old CoE

29. ‹#›@dhinchcliffe
Measuring the Business Value of Community

30. ‹#›@dhinchcliffe
Proof of the Value of CM

31. ‹#›@dhinchcliffe
And Becoming a Top Executive Role
Bosch lets CM’s proceed
to level 18, same as
C-level

32. ‹#›@dhinchcliffe
What’s
Next?
Communities
of
Communities

33. ‹#›@dhinchcliffe
Examples
of
Communities
of
Communities

34. ‹#›@dhinchcliffe
Other
Related
Trends

35. ‹#›@dhinchcliffe
What
To
Do
About
All
These
Trends
in
CM?
▪ Community management is becoming a
strategic part of business
▪ The role is maturing and becoming
elevated
▪ Think about how far along this
progression you want to go on
▪ And help lead it
▪ Organization for community is becoming
sophisticated
▪ Help your org head down the path
▪ This means education about community is
now more vital that ever
▪ As community becomes ver more
embedded in vital business processes
▪ Think about the vital new possibilities that the
emerging edge of community enables
▪ Develop knowledge and skills to realize
them
▪ Most important: Enjoy changing the world!