What’s Next for Community? One Community Manager’s 2020 Outlook

It’s been quite a year for online community. There’s been a bunch of research released this year about the value of online community in organizations, findings that help us understand where our gaps are as professionals, and trends that help us understand the direction that the community space is headed in the future – both from a technology perspective and from a strategic perspective.The value of community is catching eyes like never before and the demand for community professionals to deliver on that value is higher than it has ever been. What does the future hold for community as we prepare to head into a new year? Here’s my take.Executives will be more keyed into communityFor quite some time now, through research and in our own associations, we’ve seen rising interest in online community and its ability to help create customer loyalty and keep members engaged. There has also been a gap in what executives think the value of community is and what community professionals know to be the value of community. That gap has become more and more narrow as we are given tools that help us prove community ROI and show substantial connections to organizational success. Senior leadership has taken notice and is looking to community professionals to help make connections across lines of business and programs where, traditionally, customer experience and sentiment may have seemed somewhat disconnected and a bit fuzzy. And while this is not a magic wand to solve all of our association engagement issues, it is an opportunity for community professionals to align with the organization’s strategy, take a good look at what we’re measuring, and determine outcomes that will directly attribute community to value creation.Community is offered as a shared serviceExecutives aren’t the only ones who are keen on community. Lines of business within our associations are also taking notice. Gone are the days of “can you just post this in the community” because managers and business owners weren’t sure where else to put content. Community is no longer a catch-all for information and content that doesn’t have a home otherwise. It’s a strategic way to get the attention of your members and capture insights that your association may not have ever had access to before. Community is where customers are talking about products, certifications, services and what they need out of the association. With that, other business units are looking to community managers to help them make strategic decisions about how they can engage the online community members in lending their voice to product development and other efforts that help move the business forward. “Can you just post this in the community?” turns into “how can we get valuable input on this topic from our members in more engaging ways?” This creates opportunities for community managers to do a couple of things:

• Community managers can enable community-centered skills across the organization to help foster deeper engagement at all levels, whether that be online or otherwise
• Community managers can offer community as a service to business units and product lines where there is a desire to build community around that product or service, giving product teams the opportunity to focus on product development

While I cannot speak to the extent to which this model of community is currently practiced, what I do believe is that it provides an opportunity to extend the value of community and think differently about how we, as community professionals, engage with others within the association. Talk about breaking down silos!Community leadership will be front and centerWith all of the attention on community that I believe will continue to develop in 2020, there will be an expectation for community professionals to lead the way. As community managers, we have a responsibility to step into our knowledge of deep engagement, customer loyalty, and conversation to drive value. That means we cannot remain heads down in our online communities and just subscribe to the mentality of “I just want to build community.” Because guess what? Community is bigger than what is happening in the online space that you build for. It’s all throughout your associations and we must look up and out to understand how to better drive value, not just for our members, but for the rest of the association, as well. We have to think bigger when it comes to our strategy, broader when it comes to our reach, and more innovative when it comes to what we can accomplish. This creates new opportunities for community leadership roles that will have a seat at the strategy table and be involved in conversations around designing the future of our associations by nature of the work that we do and how we do it. This is what we have been waiting for. Don’t shy away from it. Skill up and show up. If you aren’t familiar with the pain points of others within your association, make the time to find out.ConclusionThe age of community is upon us. Those who were here before me have spent years researching, talking with people, and making the way for this profession to flourish and for its value to be realized in ways that we could never have imagined, but certainly hoped for. Let’s step into it. We owe it to our members and our associations (and our peers!) to embrace the recognition that community is a driving force behind organizational success. And while this is only my take on what the next year will bring for our profession, it opens the door for more robust conversation. If you’re interested to know what other community professionals think the future holds for community, check out Vanilla’s latest eBook on community predictions for 2020. We’ve come a long way, but we’ve got more work to do. I’m incredibly excited and optimistic for what we will accomplish next year, and beyond.What do you think the next year will bring for community? Is there something happening in your association that you think will surface in other areas soon? Let us know!