The Periodic Table of Community Strategy By Michelle Goodall, Guild
Michelle Goodall has poured two decades of community experience into creating a Periodic Table for Community Strategy, distilling all the important “elements” into a quick visual reference. Here, she explains the rationale behind her 10 “elements” of community strategy, and how to use this superb visual guide.
1
TYPES AND CATEGORIES OF COMMUNITY
I believe there are broadly 10 categories or types of community – many will straddle multiple categories. I wrote about the 5 types of Community, or the '5 Ps of community' - Practice, Purpose, Product, Play, Place - which seems to resonate with many. Extend the 5Ps of community further and you get Social, Learning, Networking, Brand and Support communities.
2
COMMUNITY GOALS
All communities should support some kind of measurable goal. If you are investing in community as a brand or organisation, community should support your primary business goals - whether that’s to generate ideas and insight, to sell more, to get closer to your customers and prospects, to increase brand awareness, drive meaningful change, to power customer support, co-create things and so on. I've focused on aligning community to goals that apply mainly to business and organisations to help you more easily make the connection between organisational objectives and how community can help achieve them.
3
nity Owners, Admins, Hosts, Moderators, Analysts etc. I've also cheekily added Chief Community Officer as we believe it's time to recognise just how strategic community specialists are - and the powerful role they play creating value in organisations today. In truth, most communities are devised, built and run by a single Community Manager. If that's you, at least this element of the table highlights just how many hats one person has to wear! Perhaps you can ask for a raise and show those who need to know that Community Managers are multi-skilled professionals.
4
COMMUNITY MEMBERSHIP ROLES
Communities are not homogenous. They're collections of many individuals all with different needs, behaviours, motivations and roles. Some of these member roles may be defined or bestowed by the community hosts, such as Community VIP or beta tester. Some are naturally created through a desire to support the community, e.g. Community Advocate or Community Champion. Some roles simply evolve over time - from Community Newbie to Community Elder for example. I've purposefully not included Com-
COMMUNITY & MANAGEMENT ROLES
Depending on the size and complexity of your community strategy, your budget and the platform you choose, there may be a number of different community roles. From Community Sponsors, to CommuWWW.COMMUNITYLEADERSINSTITUTE.COM
23
