The Buy-in Battle
Unfortunately gaining buy-in for community programs is still a battle at many associations and businesses. You don’t have the staff, budget, or technologies to succeed. Your executives tell you the community needs X more users or engagement to justify the expense in building out a community program. Every conversation I’ve had with experienced community builders over the past year has been about setting realistic expectations for your senior level leadership.
Community takes time to build engagement. I’ve been so privileged to work in an organization where they understand that. We relaunched our community platform in the fall of 2018. We launched a mentoring program and student and younger member portal as key elements of 9 member benefits in January of 2019. These programs have exceeded expectations and have continued to grow (basically doubling in engagement). One of our senior leaders reported to our Board this month that membership numbers were increasing and she contributed the growth to the member benefit programs we launched in 2019. I greatly appreciate the fantastic support from executives who realize the work we do as community builders takes time to grow. But how do you get that support?
Honestly, a big part of that is having leadership who are aware of industry trends and are supportive of industry programs. But, another element is reporting out early and often the growth of the programs you’ve created and nurtured and how they translate to business goals. Below I’ve outlined some challenges and action items to receive support for your community and you as a community manager
Challenges:
Vanity metrics
Too often, I’ve seen community professionals reporting out on posts, likes, and engagement scores. What do those things really mean to the organization? How do they drive business outcomes and revenue? I’m not saying these aren’t metrics that should be monitored. I’m simply suggesting if you are going to get buy-in you need to take it a step further. You need to show your leadership how programs are driving membership and revenue. We host a resume workshop twice a year. I report out on how many participants have joined/renewed during the month of the workshop. How is the community driving membership and financial growth for your organization? That’s the question we need to answer as community professionals.
Infrastructure to report on business outcomes
One of the biggest challenges I see for many organizations is data in so many different systems. I recently attended the AWS Summit and really enjoyed sessions on integrating different systems to create a data lake to make reporting so much more seamless. We can do a lot of manual reporting when comparing data with different systems. But, integration really is key to be able to make that business case for how your community is impacting all the other elements of your organization. If your organization isn’t thinking about integration systems, I highly recommend starting the conversation.
Action items:
Focus on your strategic plan
Are you community goals in line with the strategic goals of your organization? How do they translate? When developing community KPIs, review your strategic plan and report on the elements of the community that prove the community is supporting the strategic plan.
Highlight business objectives
Every program or initiative that your community develops should support business goals and objectives. You should be looking at the metrics and comparing how that program helped reach strategic goals. How many individuals who participated joined? How many people clicked on the “renew now” link? How many people purchased that paper or event? This can be hard to do if your infrastructure isn’t fully integrated. But, it’s important to be able to provide some of these business outcomes based on programs.
Storytelling
Metrics are great and they are essential to get buy-in from leadership. But, communities are about people. Don’t forget to share the success of each of your members. Look at the threads where members' lives were changed because of the community. Did the community help someone get a job, develop a solution, advocate for change, or write a book? Report on these elements in addition to the metrics. In addition to my monthly metrics, I also have a Word document where I store member testimonials. If I get an email with encouraging information on how the community has impacted them I add it to my Word document. We also have a dedicated section in our events reporting sheet where we add encouraging chat comments. Hearing the actual voices makes the data so much more relevant and important for your organization!
Know your worth
One thing I’ve seen is organizations not being aware of the growth or importance of the community industry. It’s so important to be aware of industry reports. Be aware and share resources from Community Roundtable and CMX with your leadership teams. It’s not just you advocating for the community, it’s demonstrating that an entire industry that has proven the value of community to organizations.