We’ve covered a lot of community use cases on Community Signal. Here’s a new one: An online community for a funeral insurance company.

That is just one of many communities that Kirsten Wagenaar has helped build, in her 8+ year career in online community. As the founder of CMNL, the organization for Dutch community pros, she has been among the leaders in growing the community industry in the Netherlands. We also discuss:

• The reasonable approach to community ROI
• How client expectations for community tools are sometimes disconnected from reality
• Kirsten’s advice for starting your own community association

Continue reading “Online Community for a Funeral Insurance Company”

Pioneering online service Delphi, launched in 1981, has been a lot of things over the years, as ownership changed hands several times, and priorities shifted. But in 2017, what’s the enduring legacy of Delphi? What remains today? The forums.

Dave Cayem spent 15 years at Delphi Forums, surviving multiple acquisitions and eventually leaving as vice president and chief community officer, before moving on to senior community and customer service roles at CustomMade and Booster. Dave shares stories from his time at Delphi Forums, plus:

• Introducing a freemium model when people are already used to free
• How Dave addressed a community that was “not too pleased” when he joined CustomMade
• The similarities between community and customer service that he didn’t fully appreciate until switching from one to the other

Continue reading “Delphi Forums, the Enduring Legacy of an Online Pioneer”

You just took a new community job, and you’re already feeling the pressure to prove your worth. You need some quick community wins. What metric should you focus on?

Bas van Leeuwen has an answer. He is the co-founder of community metrics dashboard Community Analytics, and community measurement fills the second half of this episode. Analytics aren’t scary or difficult, you just have to know what to look for. Plus:

• The state of community management in the Netherlands
• Integrating community into an “inside-first” company
• Bas’ one community metric to rule them all

Continue reading “The One Community Metric to Rule Them All”

In January, Project Management Institute community engagement specialist Marjorie Anderson delivered a presentation to a room full of senior staff. She asked them a question: “Can anyone tell me what community is?”

Surprised by the answers she received, Marjorie endeavored to make community more well understood by those in the organization. Those efforts are a topic on this episode, as are Project Management Institute’s move to close 36 communities or practice in favor of ProjectManagement.com, a previously independent community that they acquired at the start of 2014. Plus:

• Why Marjorie initially thought she wouldn’t be a good fit for a community role
• The communities of practice model, and why it no longer served PMI’s members
• What Marjorie is focusing on as she revamps their community metrics

Continue reading “When You Ask a Room Full of Senior Staff What Community Is”

After 8 months at construction software provider Procore Technologies, Jenn Chen is close to the finish line. The company will soon launch their online community.

The process of getting there is the focus of this episode, including how Jenn worked for interdepartmental support and buy-in, conducted surveys with beta users (what happens if they don’t actually want a community?) and where she’s at right now. Plus:

• The conversation that led to her becoming a community pro
• The word to say if you find yourself in a room of salespeople
• How she has brought offline conversions, at conferences and events, online to the community

Continue reading “Community Experience is Part of the Customer Experience”

Emily Temple-Wood joined Wikipedia at 12, and became an administrator at 13. In 2016, she was honored by Wikipedia co-founder Jimmy Wales as Wikipedian of the Year. For nearly her entire time on the site, she has dealt with obscene, personal abuse.

“People have been harassing me since the first vandal figured out I was a lady,” Emily told Wired earlier this year. “Which was within a month or so of my joining the site.” She has turned that abuse into motivation, increasing the quantity and quality of women’s biographies on Wikipedia, through efforts like WikiProject Women Scientists.

On this episode, we talk about the abuse Emily has received, and how it has changed over the years, along with her methods of dealing with it. Plus:

• The incredible contribution of teenagers to online communities and collaborative platforms
• Why Wikipedia spoke to pre-teen Emily
• Is there more that Wikipedia should be doing?

Continue reading “The Cost of Being a Prominent Woman on Wikipedia – and Online”

As I mentioned on our last episode, I recently made a big career change. We talk about careers in community management, and how to advance, fairly regularly on the show. I also love to talk to guests who are in the moment.

I’m definitely in the moment, so why not put myself under the microscope, and talk about my own search for a new role? But I don’t want to just talk to myself. My friend Brandon Eley knows as much about my search as anyone else does, and he agreed to develop and host this week’s episode of the show. He pushed me to talk about the process I went through, and why I accepted this role, including:

• What hiring managers saw as my weaknesses
• Why I turned down or turned away certain jobs
• A role I wanted, after going through the interview process, that didn’t want me

Continue reading “The Ups and Downs of My Community Management Job Search”

While at online education company Penn Foster, Daniel Marotta was able to prove that not only did students who participated in their online community take more exams and pass more exams, but they also paid more tuition and defaulted less on their tuition.

Now at the largest provider of employer-sponsored child care, Daniel just launched a brand new community, and it’s always fun to talk to someone in the middle of a launch. Plus:

• Using community as a value-add to employer-provided benefits
• Jive Software’s decision to sell their external community business to Lithium
• Making gamification meaningful

Continue reading “Students Who Use the Community Pass More Exams – and Pay More Tuition”

When we talk about the beginnings of online community, we often discuss The WELL, which launched in 1985. It’s easy to forget that some people, like our guest on this episode, were building digital communities well before that.

Randy Farmer co-created Habitat, recognized as the first graphical virtual world. Over the last 30 years, he has helped companies like Lucasfilm, Electronic Arts, Linden Lab, Yahoo! and Answers.com to design better community products. On this episode, we discuss:

• Randy’s online community building efforts in the 1970s
• The importance of Habitat, and its recent revival
• Yahoo!’s acquisition of Flickr and what went on behind the scenes

Continue reading “Digital Community in the 1970s”