Rachel Happe on Community Maturity Model

Jay’s notes on webinar presentation with Rachel Happe, co-founder of The Community Roundtable. See Rachel’s slides for what to do about each of topics. She has a great array of how-to tips.

The Community Roundtable is a virtual table where social media and community practitioners gather to meet, discuss challenges, celebrate successes, and hear from experts. Along with providing a welcoming environment in which to gather and learn, The Community Roundtable is dedicated to furthering the discipline of community management. We are a great resource for community and social media managers looking for:

• Peers that understand and can help navigate day-to-day challenges
• Content focused on the unique needs of the practitioner and not on the latest top 10 list
• Programs that help with both tactical needs and with strategic thinking

One of our missions at The Community Roundtable is to further the discipline of community management – not just in our own community but more broadly in the marketplace. Our first effort to define the discipline is our Community Maturity Model.

Companies have bought in to social media and online community to the extent that they think it’s important and have put some resources into funding community management positions and tools to enable community but there is still a lot of uncertainty about what to expect of both the roles and the tools. That lack of clear articulation can create a lot of pressure and/or missed expectations for community managers.

Important aspect: keep the vertical columns congruent.

See About the Model.

STRATEGY

Create your network before you need it.

Customers now talk with one another. Their view and our must be in sync.

“Expectations – reality = satisfaction”

Acknowledge where you are. Honestly. Examine all channels.

LEADERSHIP

Big change. Transparency. We used to reward creating a good facade. Now it’s important to establish an honest dialog. If you can’t engender the truth from your constituency, you’re not going to find out where your problems are.

Be authentic. People don’t like to feel they are being managed. It doesn’t engender trust. Know who you are and how you want to represent yourself.

Be modest. Don’t take yourself too seriously. People more willing to talk and share their opinion.

Lead from the back. Set up boundary conditions. Reward what you want to encourage.

CULTURE
Involves everyone, not just managers. Vital element.

Tone is very important.

The more informal you make it, the more you recognize opportunities to learn. (Although there are limits.)

Communication mode: use as many modalities as possible. See what your constituents are using now.

COMMUNITY MANAGEMENT

Identify your Cheeseheads — the active folks who make it happen. Where they’re coming from. Reward and encourage them.

Bring catnip.

Ride the waves.

Ignoring issues and trouble-makers rarely make them go away. It’s your job to define what’s acceptable and what’s not.

CONTENT & PROGRAMMING

Blogs, ebooks

Keep a regular schedule

Be multi-modal

Bring something new to the table

POLICY & GOVERNANCE

Take calculated risks.

Know your legal and moral obligations to your constituency.

Defined expected culture and be firm.

TOOLS

This is where a lot of people start but it’s not high on the list of what community managers are struggling with.

To use a tool well, people really have to understand it. Increasingly, we have too many tools: we should use the most appropriate.

METRICS & MEASUREMENT

Many purposes. Compare. Know why.

Know where you’re going.

Keep it simple.

Some companies are oblivious to focusing on community growth.

SAP has made great progress.

Community managers should be generalists. It helps to be a little ADD. Marketing and customer support are good places to start.

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• Community tips for new leaders
• The Mac Community of Practice
• The wonders of community
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