Our Community Christmas Wish (List)

It’s that time of year again. People are getting ready for the holidays. Gifts are being wrapped. Cards are being sent. And community pros are telling you what they predict will happen in the new year for the community profession. I’m no exception to the rule, as I’ve lent my opinion to a few peers for “what’s next for community” posts. But here, I’d like to just take a moment to share a wish list with you for what I HOPE to see happen for the profession in the coming year and beyond.

1. Standardization of community management roles. When you look on job boards, community management roles are listed in several different ways. Director of Community means Head of Community means Manager of Community Programs means Social Community Manager. Organizations are talking about these as if they all mean the same thing but, in my mind, they can mean different things. What I hope to see is the standardization of roles, role descriptions, and how to hire for these important roles within organizations so that leaders know exactly what they need, who to look for, and how to structure their org chart to provide these professionals support.
2. Increased importance of dedicated community staff. Everyone wants to stand up an online community, but is everyone ready to invest in the human resources needed to get that community up and running and ready for growth? Effectively building an online community CAN be done by one person. However, I firmly believe that it SHOULD be done with a team of people who can build programs, moderate content, and keep people interested in coming back and participating with someone leading the charge and setting the strategy at the helm. This is hard work – just like any other program in an organization. I hope to see organizations invest in it properly.
3. User experience design becoming central to community building. Community building is just as much about the experience as it is about anything else. In my mind, that means that when you are designing your community, you must have solid input from those using your community before rolling out new functionality, new features, or anything else that is going to affect how they navigate and participate in our online community. Pie in the sky vision here is a community UX designer role popping up where this is the sole purpose of the person in that role. And they would work, not only, with the community team but across the organization to ensure the community design is serving the community purpose. It’s an important piece of building online community and has to be kept top of mind.
4. More quality research in the community space. Venessa Paech and the fine folks over at Australian Community Managers just released some pretty juicy research about the state of community in Australia and boy was it fun to dig into. Research in this area will never NOT be wanted and there’s a ton of insight we can gain as a profession when community leaders in this space take the time to drill down into what is happening. Rachel Happe and The Community Roundtable team has been doing this for years and CMX has also put out some good research. The more insights we have, the better we can strengthen the profession. Let’s hope we get to see more of it.
5. The evolution of community ROI models. I’ve had a ton of mixed feelings about community ROI calculators. When I think of ROI, I think about the story you’re able to tell around the value that your online community is lending to the rest of the organization and not just the number that a calculator spits out. And while that calculator may help you tell the story, I believe that if you’re keyed into the metrics that matter for your community and connecting into the goals of the organization with some of those metrics, you don’t need a separate ROI calculator to show that you’re having a profound effect on the business. It’s already built into what you’re measuring and reporting.

So, there you have it. While I don’t have any grand predictions for this year, I am hopeful that as the profession continues to evolve some of these things come to life.2020 has been one of the most challenging years of our lifetime. Here’s hoping that 2021 brings about some much-needed change and hope.What’s on your 2021 wish list for community? Let me know in the comments below!