The Community Building Playbook

The Community Building PLAYBOOK

W W W.C O M M U N I T Y L E A D E R S I N S T I T U T E .C O M

Contents Benefits of Forming a Membership Community

4

Challenges with Launching New Memberships Getting Started Market Outlook Competition Audience Segments & Needs Identifying Audience Motivations Carving a Space for Your Community

6 7 7 8 9 11 12

Member Acquisition Member Acquisition Best Practices

13 13

Member Engagement Content Strategies Professional Development Content and Certification Programs Shared Activities, Events & Networking

15 15

Membership Community Structure Membership Offerings

21 21

Offering Vendors Access to the Community

26

Technology Platform

27

The Scoreboard: Measuring Success

29

Community Game Plan

30

Staffing Resources

32

Conclusion 33

17 18

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“A Member is Worth a Thousand Visitors.”

– R O B R IS TAG N O

Leading Data and Digital Community Strategist

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Benefits of Forming a Membership Community

A membership Community, when done well with the members’ information and networking needs put front and center, creates member reliance and loyalty for the sponsoring organization—and its’ advocates and fans—for information, advice, current trends, and connections.

Specific benchmarks and tools can help ensure the member site becomes the first site visited when a member needs help.

A member bookmarking the member site is the ultimate victory, as it confirms the trust and reliance the member has on the member site, and ensures a regular return and engagement rate. Paid membership conversions and subsequent renewals confirm the trust and reliance the member has on the member site. Conversions lead to renewals, future digital or live event participation, and referrals, which then lead to organic growth of the membership. That growth makes the community more valuable.

Bringing peers and buyers and sellers together in a trusted environment offers members the opportunity to find inspiration, best practices, and solutions when they need them.

Hosting a private membership community: 1

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Changes the dynamic of how the sponsor-client and the brand relate to one another. Inclusion as a member becomes a source of pride and self-affirmation as the member recognizes that they are supporting information services that seek to lift the full industry.

Creates a sense of “belonging” for the individual. The member finds a ready-made set of colleagues, whose challenges and problems align with their own, to interact with and learn from. They are no longer “alone” against the powerful market forces affecting their businesses.

4

5

Convenes like-minded people around shared issues and creates value for the people who are part of the discussions and sub-groups. Membership interactions solidify their loyalty to one another and to the host brand that makes it easy for them to find information and interact with their peers on a sustainable basis.

Strengthens host brand and community loyalty and creates enthusiasm for upcoming products or launches and for virtual events or future in-person events.

Energizes the pursuit of professional knowledge, strengthens professional connections, and builds a collective of people dedicated to improving their profession. These are the bedrock foundations for online membership communities.

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Creating a Community also Enables you to:

1

Create a solution to engage your community and position your brand at the center of your sector while creating additional revenue streams.

2

Attract an engaged audience that can be presented with other products and services which will provide ancillary revenue streams.

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4

Build on available free content, research, and sponsored media. This content can be shared in “small bites” behind the paywall to the gated membership community.

Create and provide networking opportunities through the membership directory and by offering moderated commenting on articles, webinars, podcasts, etc.

Contribute to the professional and career development of executive-level (Manager and above) leaders, solution providers, and policymakers.

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Challenges with Launching New Memberships

The benefits of a membership community are compelling; but, if it were easy, everyone would have a membership offering. That is why The Community Leader Institute, in partnership with 365 Media, has aggregated the insights from the world’s leading membership experts and combined that with specific recommendations to build this Playbook.

Common pitfalls this Playbook will help you avoid include: 1

2

3

“IT’S ALL ABOUT US NOT YOU” mentality. Some organizations piece together whatever they have off the shelf and assume everyone will buy it because the organization wants to sell it. Joining a membership or community is an emotional decision. An investment in understanding key segments of the audience and their motivational hooks is the core to building a successful membership program.

“IF YOU BUILD IT, THEY WILL COME” mentality. Many organizations under-invest in marketing their membership programs. Make sure people hear about all your hard work in launching a membership by supporting launch and ongoing growth - with robust marketing campaigns that clearly communicate the value proposition of the membership program.

“EVERYTHING BUT THE KITCHEN SINK” mentality. Some organizations bundle everything they have to offer into a membership, then add on another handful of features and benefits—which can be overwhelming for members. Often, we have found that less is more. Offer, and test to find out, exactly what your most engaged members want and overdeliver on a small number of critical elements, rather than

spending time and money developing new content and features that are not a priority for the members.

4

5

“LET’S REINVENT THE WHEEL” mentality. The flip side of the last problem can also occur. Building from scratch can be more challenging than leveraging, repurposing and reimagining existing assets (content, audiences, IP, etc.) Don’t underestimate the value of the resources, assets and content you’ve built up already and make the mistake of thinking that everything you produce needs to be “new”.

“DON’T CANNIBALIZE MY DECLINING BUSINESS” mentality. For many organizations, community is a big shift in the business model. Companies that hold on to the old way of doing business are missing out on the enormous potential of building a community of superfans around their business. We often find that, when done right, memberships lead to increases in traditional business lines (event tickets, sponsorships, etc.) because engagement is higher and there is more free word-ofmouth from your superfans.

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Getting Started

This playbook is also your workbook for getting started. Use the prompts on the following pages to get clarity about your community.

Market Outlook Conduct an assessment of your market, what are the trends, innovations, initiatives driving or hampering growth? What new or emerging technologies are in play and how will they impact your sector? What are your customers—and their customers’—key problems?

What’s happening to budgets? Travel? What’s happening to event attendance, engagement, customer touchpoints? How has your shift to virtual during COVID impacted and changed your customer’s behaviors, challenges and needs?

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7

Getting Started

Competition Assess the competitive landscape to identify what needs are not being met. Look at direct competitors and indirect competitors.

List the strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats posed by each competitor. Think laterally and tangentially about your competitors, list their assets and products. What are they doing well? What are the gaps in the market?To identify gaps and needs, don’t forget to look

for conversations and questions in your social channels, and your competitors — what are they asking each other for help with?

Whilst assessing competitors, also think collaboratively — are there ways in which you can collaborate in creating your community?

Consider whether there is an opportunity or appetite for certification programs. What exists already?

1

Competitors

2

Strengths

4

Weaknesses

3

Opportunities

5

Threats

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Getting Started

Audience Segments & Needs Look at your audience segments (you should already have audience personas identified—see our audience persona tool if you’re not sure how to do this.) What do each of these audience segments want and need? how are their challenges different —and at the same—what unites and connects them, or divides and antagonizes them? How are you serving them currently and what other opportunities are available to address their needs?

What other players are in your ecosystem? How do they interact with your audience? Are there any emerging trends? Map training needs against customer personas and consider how you might splice training programs—creating core content that serves your entire audience, with customized content to target and resonate with specific segments.

Customer segment

Wants, needs, challenges, pain, training gaps

Emerging trends

How can you serve this segment?

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9

Getting Started

One size does not fit all A one-size-fits-all approach to marketing is often ineffective. Once you’ve established key market segments and personas, you’re ready to identify brand enthusiasts within each segment and track the responsiveness to content testing. To get there, you should: Conduct in-depth interviews with key customers in each market sector to understand what needs your community meets (and does not meet) for each sector and why each need is so critical (motivational hook). Some of this research is already available, but in this chaotic economic period, it is worth conducting fresh qualitative conversations to listen for both tangible and emotional benefits you can provide.

Survey a larger population of customers across segments to validate motivational hooks found in the interviews. Share the survey results back to the audience in the form of trend reports.

Analyze the survey data using advanced methodologies, such as k-means clustering, to build a robust segmentation within each market sector.

Understand the product needs for each segment (tangible benefits), as well as the motivational hooks (emotional benefits) to be used in marketing.

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Getting Started

Identifying Audience Motivations Audience-Building Best Practices • Identify your “superfans” in each target market—those high-value personas with the highest purchasing power, highest engagement history, brand champions, and industry enthusiasts. Once identified, ensure you clearly understand the motivational drivers for someone in each segment to become a superfan.

• Targeting more tightly defined audiences will allow community builders to deliver distinct content and experiences to drive high engagement and connectivity. When the community organizer deeply understands each persona and its needs, they can deploy the emotional and motivational hooks that would make an individual enthusiastic about joining.

Specifics around what NEEDS your community meets.

• Many successful professional membership communities are “vendor-free” in that they celebrate the growth of the professional and provide peer-to-peer networking. When communities limit direct access from vendors, it can build more demand from vendors to participate in online and physical event offerings. How will you manage the relationship between buyers and sellers in your community?

• Specific content targeted to practical and emotional needs helps solidify the membership community’s place in the new member’s daily/weekly workflow. Having a central personality that the professionals respect working on their behalf, creates a highly personalized environment.

What motivates your superfans, in each customer segment?

Motivational hooks to use in marketing.

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Getting Started

Carving a Space for Your Community If you currently run annual events or trainings, it’s important to consider how a Membership model might fit alongside it. Community and Events can go hand-in-glove, a symbiotic relationship where each feeds the other—but for some event organizers there’s a fear that membership may cannibalize events.

Can you identify on-going/year-round content and training needs, separate to event content? Perhaps your event content is higher-level or more trend-based or conceptual? Or goes more tangentially or

Customer segment

vertically into areas your customers might need help, like mindset, or staff development?

Or can you envisage an opportunity to create year-round content/ training, the final modules of which are delivered at your live event, for example. It might be that your live events are an opportunity to get face to face and engage in person with peers and with your content, and there isn’t a clear distinction between which belongs where - there are lots of ways to sit community and events side by side, and for them to benefit each other, but it’s worth considering upfront: Event-based content or event specific benefits

Membership based content or member specific benefits

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Member Acquisition

As with most online marketing, the four critical elements of member acquisition are list, offer, medium and price. Successful membership communities adopt the attitude of “invitation” to participate over “selling” a prospect on a membership transaction.

Prospective Audience Acquisition Best Practices • The more recent the customer participation with you, the better. Most initial membership programs begin with personalized contact within existing customer relationships. Then testing segments and rolling out with success to non-customers with similar characteristics.

• Consider how you usually communicate with your audience and how your audience communicates back to you.

• Consider your primary source of web traffic.

• Survey buyer attendees in advance of events to get a handle on their needs and to help prepare sponsors for their one-to-one meetings.

Member Acquisition Best Practices

• Actions to entice members should be made as easy as possible to maximize conversion. For example, it is generally better to have the prospect “turn on” or “validate” a basic pre-populated profile whenever possible rather than asking them to complete a fresh form. You can continue to collect more information as part of their member activities including use of surveys, following comments, etc.

• Formal invitations to prospects for membership will include the announcement of the new community website, the types of content that can be accessed in the membership, and the opportunity to network and learn from peers through the membership directory and the discussion groups. This invitation will drive people to the member landing page to join.

• Begin with your best performing names and import their records into the basic membership. Follow with an email inviting them to “unlock” their new benefits and offer a premium content item as a reward. Use this opportunity to ask 2-3 important demographic questions to help you plan content and experiences that the audience needs most.

• A second, ongoing approach is to drive website visitors, podcast subscribers, event prospects, newsletter readers and others to specific content (webinars, articles, etc.) and require a free membership before consuming said content. The same approach can be implemented for all social media postings.

(Cont. in the next page)

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Member Acquisition

• Nurture Email Audiences. Initial marketing would be targeted to invite existing participants, webinar attendees, event attendees, etc., into the membership.

• Engage Social Audiences. In addition to use of marketing lists, membership invitations can be sent through social media outlets (to get the social media ball rolling, a LinkedIn profile should be updated), as well as through message boards where you have a strong, trusted presence.

• LinkedIn Strategy. The choice to use LinkedIn should be deliberate and based on customer research. There is an opportunity to consider a free group as a collection point for new prospects.

CLI Recommends: Expand the brand name to reflect the primary community and to allow more flexibility and simplified messaging in product development and line extensions. (for example, consider adding 365 or Community or Membership to your brand name).

Focus the membership benefits on giving the ability to network with their peers, keep up to date on vendor offerings in a live, interactive environment, and learn and grow their skill sets.

Track and analyze the known interests and behaviors of prospects based on previous experience with shows and online events.

Select up to three business results that membership can help drive.

Identify the emotional pain points buyers are experiencing to appeal to that need. Specific content targeted to practical and emotional needs helps solidify the membership community’s place in the new member’s daily/weekly workflow.

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Member Engagement

Content Strategies

Valuable, unique content is central to attracting and retaining members in a paid community. If you already produce content for current customers, the paid community model will require you to determine what content will be offered to all customers and what content will be available at each subsequent membership level, just as you’ve considered on the previous page how to differentiate your events from your community.

You might wish to offer the following content resources as part of the new community offering in various membership levels, some of which may need to be enhanced in breadth, depth, or frequency: • • • • •

Newsletters—daily Research/Reports Live Events Podcasts Custom Media

You might also consider…

• Fully researched, detailed Buyer / Company Profiles.

• Directories of above information.

• Member toolkits for target topics (this could be sponsored content.)

• Create different content channels within the community to focus on specific areas, helps people spend time in their areas of interest, can also be a sponsorship opportunity where they sponsor the ‘channel’ or similar (e.g. Bloomberg for Finance).

• Expand content assets to attract a global audience by sourcing or repurposing content from target expansion regions, engage key influencers and thought leaders from those markets, and create regional sections of the community.

• • • •

Blogs White papers Webinars Website

• Create content offerings and membership community structure that enhances the positioning of suppliers as the Subject Matter Experts (SMEs), which they often are, leading the way as part of the shared cause of making the world carbon neutral.

• Market intelligence and insight such as deal tracker information or sector statistics • Extract valuable content that may be ‘buried’ in other assets.

Ensuring your community is built with full metrics and measurement capabilities will ensure you’re able to keep track of which content has been accessed by which member, which will give you invaluable insights into which topics and needs to focus on.

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Member Engagement

Member Engagement Best Practices Here’s some ideas to help you spark and grow member engagement: Create a weekly “In Brief” newsletter that sums up the best stories, podcast links, and other content and includes room for news announcements such as new promotions and hires.

Create a home for audience/members that is the first place they go each morning for the latest news and info on the industry, as well as the latest in-depth content and community connections with a robust curated news roundup.

Monthly “Ask the Expert” video calls, where members submit questions and have them answered by an industry expert. Lively ‘Ask the Expert’ sessions can migrate into a special-purpose discussion group where the conversation can continue for our members’ and experts’ benefit. These are included for paid members and might be by invitation only for free members.

Periodic “Case Studies” to show how peers are navigating the challenges of your sector. Case studies can be collected into reports which can become content for the paid membership and premiums for joining a paid membership. Case studies often attract discussion in groups and the respondent cohort may even be attracted to forming a new discussion group to continue the conversation.

Weekly polls posted on site to be used to generate interest and input/feedback for the team. Results of polls and in-depth surveys are always shared first with the community and then released to wider resources for coverage. Weekly polls can become the basis for periodic trend indexes to show change in the marketplace over time.

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Member Engagement

Professional Development Content and Certification Programs Professional development is the heart of developing value for a successful paid membership level. Developing an educational component will support many of the key benefits of hosting a member community and serve to cultivate additional ongoing engagement for a subset of community members.

Certification programs offer significant value to the community by educating and then recognizing that new expertise and providing the certifying entity with a revenue opportunity. Course participants will proudly display earned badges within the community and in wider social media, in performance evaluations, on resumes, and in recruitment advertising.

Successful professional content offerings find strength when based on clear needs analysis and feedback from target “students”.

Professional Development Content Best Practices Important criteria to assess for potential professional development/ certification content includes answering the following questions with market research and analysis:

4. Would peers be willing to contribute best practices to others?

For example, how willing do the customers seem to be in sharing in discussion groups, newsletters, or webinars?

1. Does the community have an educational home? Is there a one-stop authoritative source or organization that covers education in a way that is meaningful and supportive of individual career success?

5. Would someone pay for this education? Is it an end user who will pay or is it content that owners’ might use to speed onboarding of new employees, such as health department regulations and practices or customer service?

2. Is the educational programming that exists today unbiased?

3. Is there an existing collection of best practices or are best practices typically held by individual businesses?

6. Will delivering an educational curriculum meet the expressed needs of the individual employee, business owner or vendor team?

New educational programs can be developed specifically or achieved through re-selling partner offerings or even developing the courses in collaboration with other partners, as necessary.

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Member Engagement

Shared Activities, Events & Networking One of the most important characteristics of successful memberships, is the degree to which members feel a strong sense of “belonging” and hold the Brand and their fellow members in high regard. In a remote work environment, one of the most often cited weaknesses of virtual communications is the loss of the random or 1:1 “hallway” conversations. Strong membership communities offer their participants a variety of ways to engage with one another. The best offer education and some fun!

You may wish to offer some or all of the following within your community: Networking A key value driver for online communities is the ability to connect people around common missions, ideas, and projects. Buyers in this market at all levels, feed off each other and look for peerto-peer information exchange. Communities and events play a critical role in enabling these peer-to-peer connections, so we highly recommend that networking be a pillar of the community— whether online or physical.

Robust member profiles where members can learn about each other and what expertise they are willing to share, along with platform capability to message or connect and to generate conversations, be it in the community through messaging or outside via phone or video conferencing.

However, this should likely be enabled only for buyer-to-buyer connections and you will need to adapt a different approach to meter how suppliers insert themselves in the conversation.

One proven tactic is to enable buyers to connect with suppliers/ consultants/finance and other vendors by accessing a Vendor Directory with robust profiles and in the future, even a member rating or comment section.

Buyer Profiles This feature is essential to inspiring connection by providing ways community members can get to ‘know’ each other. This has potential to also be a revenue opportunity as vendors will want access to this information. However, it is especially important to structure any information gathering and any offering so that members never feel like ‘prey’. If that impression is given, it can lead to a precipitous decline in community trust and engagement.

Discussion Forums Forums are a popular online peer-to-peer Q&A and engagement method that takes on more importance in a community.

Because the participants in the forum are part of the community ecosystem and not outside actors, members are more likely to seek connection. Topics can be seeded and managed by the community manager and other ‘ambassadors’ to ensure that the discussions are relevant and stay fresh. It is important to note that forums can grow stale quickly without regular posts and they require moderation to ensure people are following engagement rules and not posting anything offensive.

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Member Engagement

Sponsored Webinars with Member Chat Capability These could be live or pre-recorded, but live webinars have the advantage of a moderated chat function, which improves engagement and attention. The chat provides a place for members to ask questions live without having to speak on camera. And with moderation, the community manager can provide useful links to member content that supports the topic. The chat is also a great source of ongoing market research.

Community Roundtables This audience engagement offering enables small group discussions by limiting the audience so that everyone has a chance to speak and ask questions of each other. This format benefits from a moderator to keep the conversation moving and ensure everyone has a chance to participate. A key topic is identified and then some seed questions developed by the moderator. Attendees are prepped ahead of time to encourage participation.

Ask the Expert Live (Virtual) Q&As This popular activity can provide for a lively and engaging discussion of hot topics, the types of issues that are more complicated and better understood with an expert-led Q&A and discussion. The expert is usually someone who is known for his/ her expertise in a certain area and can draw an audience to hear what he/she has to say. We recommend at least monthly events in the beginning, perhaps moving to bi-weekly frequency as the community and capabilities increase. The ATEs—or AMA (ask me anything)—can potentially be sponsored if done in a way that is clearly content and expert first.

Partnering/1-on-1 Meetings Partnering is slightly different in this context than networking, as it implies a more specific business purpose beyond peerto-peer info exchange and insight. This might be where a large power user is looking for a supplier, and perhaps some financing options, and can bring the group together to forge a solution. We recommend that this avenue be explored for the vendor to buyer connections. There would be the ability for the buyer to accept or reject a partnering discussion request, to initiate them on their own, and to bring in other parties. Once the connection is made and agreement reached, the meeting will occur virtually or IRL outside of the community.

Live (Virtual) Panel Discussions Like ATEs/AMAs with perhaps a broader topic, one that benefits from different opinions and points of view. This is another opportunity for sponsorship as the sponsor could serve as the moderators and/or panelists if their background brings expertise to the discussion.

Internal and third-party recruiters will pay to generate a quick understanding of the market and a list of top potential candidates.

However, there are inherent issues that must be considered before moving ahead and we strongly recommend this be a feature that is discussed and validated with top member candidates. Job boards can elicit bad feelings as a company is paying for a license to a community where recruiters are actively trying to move them from their current employer.

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Member Engagement

Supplier Directory and References A robust supplier directory provides significant value to the Buyer community as a centralized source of information about Suppliers and Vendors. A well-researched directory can save Buyer members time and often serves as “worth the price of admission.” Listing in the directory could be free for a name mention and then paid for larger and larger space in the directory.

It is important for credibility, that the basic listing be as complete as possible. Enabling this online could offer the chance to have community Buyers review the different Suppliers and/or pose questions directly to them.

Councils or Workgroups Small groups that meet regularly to provide feedback and insight and discuss topics of significance. These findings can then be shared with the broader community and even pushed forward as industry initiatives. Another avenue to bring various community members together and drive discussions forward.

Recruiters/Job Boards Many member communities choose to offer discreet job boards and recruiter access. We suggest this feature be pursued with caution and perhaps delayed until there is a robust and active community. There is no question that internal and third-party recruiters will pay to generate a quick understanding of the market and a list of top potential candidates. However, there are inherent issues that must be considered before moving ahead and we strongly recommend this be a feature that is discussed and validated with top member candidates.

Job boards can elicit bad feelings as a company is paying for a license to a community where recruiters are actively trying to move them from their current employer.

Events With a community there is a slight shift to where the event becomes more reflective of the community itself—thus providing exposure to the community, special features or VIP events for members, and aligning with the community brand. Your success with educational content and oneto-one meetings will be amplified in the community.

Leveraging event content for community members is highly recommended.

Virtual events that add peer-to-peer connections, buyerto buyer-meetings and decision support around vendors and strategies can also be leveraged and amplified as key features in a new community. Certainly, the regular event features of Keynotes, sessions, networking, certification, board meetings, roundtables, issue/platform votes, etc. would continue, but should now be approached with the question, ‘How can we leverage what we’re doing live/ virtually in our community and vice versa?’

It may be worth considering a model that includes an event registration (or more) to community members, but now attaches a fee to those not part of the community. It represents a shift from the hosted buyer model currently in place and requires customer feedback to inform this decision, both on a macro and micro level, but is worth consideration.

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Membership Community Structure

Membership Offerings

It is important to identify what content and features will be available outside the Member gate and free to all who land on the website. You may want to consider having several tiers of membership in your community—for example a free tier which provides a degree of access to content and a premium tier which includes access to everything. Some organizations add a third, VIP or Pro tier, giving access to smaller workshop-based sessions or 1-on-1 coaching etc.

Examples of what might be included in a free membership tier: • Daily news briefs (just the facts).

• Summary of any research or proprietary materials.

• Podcast links.

• Content published from initial launch. Each month after launch, 1-2 months of content comes off the public site and goes into the memberexclusive archive along with all prior content.

• Webinars might also be available at a free level, particularly if they are being sponsored. There may be an opportunity to create focused, hot topic paid webinars where non-members will pay a fee to attend; Basic members attend free and a VIP or Pro member can access and share with their teams.

• White Papers, if sponsored. You may separately wish to create nonsponsored research-based content for paid members

Examples of what might be included in a paid membership tier: • Peer Directory.

• Detailed directory listing to enable P2P connections through the system.

• Discussion Forums.

• Custom Roundtable Discussions.

• Peer Connections.

• Buyer Members connect with peers through Member Directory.

• Multi-party Partnering.

• • • • • • • • •

Potential for limited sponsor-connections Market Intelligence/Insight: News Feeds with insight/summaries.

White Papers.

Sponsored research.

SME talks.

Ask the Expert.

Ability to search archives.

Trends webinars.

• Deal Tracker or Market Insight Reports • Certification Programs.

• Job Board access (with caution as mentioned earlier) • Access to select live and virtual events without additional fee or at a discounted fee.

• Financial Advisor, Legal, HR or Recruiter Consultancy Access.

• Tool Kit. • Analytical tools and templates

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Member Engagement

Membership Structure Options You may also want to consider offering different packages for individuals and companies. For example, you might offer a Pro level membership which gives access to 5 employees—or a licence-level membership which gives access to as many employees as required at that company. Similarly, if you have a range of customer segments—for example, non-profits alongside commercial organizations, or students alongside professionals, you may create a pricing tier that reflects that.

Here’s an example of membership tiers in a successful and thriving community: Buyer - Basic Membership: • Enhanced directory profile based on event customer profile needs.

• Access to gated community news feed—includes early access to research, trend info, KPIs, best practices, searchable archive, deal tracker.

• Access to Member Directory and Supplier Directory (basic and enhanced listings).

• Ability to ask for introductions.

• Ask the Expert forums.

• Discussion forum for buyers only.

• Free access to members-only online events and webinars (live and on demand).

• Discounted access to certain events and to certification programs and badges.

• Job Board access to view and post (if offered).

Buyer - Pro Level Membership: • All benefits of Basic Membership, plus a Certification Program and Certification Badge to display i in external social media profiles.

• Automatic annual (or periodic) certification renewal for all who participate in at least 3 events/year. (Most professional certification programs offer recertification on 1–3-year time periods based on the frequency of change in the profession.)

• 15% discount on Certification for the team.

• Networking with your peers • Attend all live and virtual events for free.

• Early access to market data and research findings.

• Hosted peer roundtables.

• Toolkit access.

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22

Member Engagement

Membership Structure Options Buyer - Team and Corporate Memberships: • Offer a team license of 5 users (Pro level only).

• Offer an unlimited ‘Corporate’ license for as many users as they would like (Pro level only).

• This offering would ensure greater engagement in the community as the teams that work together on issues within the company would have access to the same resources.

• Could also explore a ‘team community’ function where team members could gather or post or share information just among their team.

Buyer/Vendor Certification Only: • Per person, no discounts.

• Once certified, badge awarded, listing in member directory but cannot contact others.

• Basic member weekly news digest and invitations to events but must pay to attend.

• Annual fee to recertify.

Supplier/Partner/Vendor Associate Membership: • To include this group in the community in a way that successfully integrates them without scaring off buyers or creating a predatory environment, careful consideration must be given to what these members can and cannot access.

• No direct buyer contacts through peer-to-peer connections.

• Limited access to the Forums.

• Ability to sponsor certain areas of the site, events, special offerings, etc.

• Pro level with certification access as applicable.

• Create supplier specific roundtables, Q&As, and other value add features just for them.

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23

Member Engagement

Membership Structure Options Buyer - ‘Founding’ Companies: • Opportunity to perhaps create a set number of these packages for your most loyal. customers. All access and unlimited members for these customers.

• Would need to be Pro level memberships with some additional benefits.

• Possible Sponsor benefits such as VIPs at events, special meeting rooms both virtually and live, logo presence, recognition as Founding members with community leadership designation, perhaps other benefits only available to this group.

CLI recommends: • Seek feedback from the Board and key customers to fine-tune needs, features, offerings, etc.

• Membership should be attractively priced and consistent with the industry comparators.

• Paid Membership should be priced based on the opportunity represented by current marketing list universe as a balance between the volumes of prospects/price. For example, in a high-volume potential market, a lower price will help attract the maximum number of paid members. The tighter the market, the higher the price.

• Ensure the community is built with doorways into the community for today’s sponsors. Sponsors bring more than financial support to the table. Sponsors bring R&D, insights, and new product and service developments that are educational for members.

• Marketing Tip: Listen for key industry words used in interviews that could become “names” for these levels. Use of familiar language supports the primary brand, attracts attention, and shows the prospective member that “you know me.” into reports which can become content for the paid membership and premiums for joining a paid membership. Case studies often attract discussion in groups and the respondent cohort may even be attracted to forming a new discussion group to continue the conversation.

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Offering Vendors Access to the Community

Access to a paid membership community by what that community considers ‘vendors’ can lead to a richer experience for all members if done correctly. Sponsors often bring more than financial support to the table, including R&D, insights, expertise, and new product and service developments that are educational for members. Look to elevate sponsors to be Subject Matter Experts where possible.

The caveat is that sponsor offerings and interactions must be content and value add focused and more subtle than traditional events or webinar lead gen situations. Suppliers, consultants, and other service groups can add great value to communities as they help drive the market forward and the buyer community wants to hear from them.

If you determine that vendors should be part of the paid community as members, there still exists additional sponsor revenue opportunities. Ideas include: • • • • • • • •

Supplier Directory The purchase of bulk paid memberships for clients and prospective clients A ‘Lead Sponsor’ offering for each content channel Ability to lead discussion forums Be featured on panels and as thought leaders, Expert Q&As, etc.

Offer community polls and focus groups as research ops for sponsors Create sponsorship offerings in the e-newsletter Enable co-branded white paper opportunities and webinars beyond those outside the gate.

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Technology Platform

There has been an explosion of new technologies in community management in the last 12 months, and you’ll find a vendor directory on the CLI website which showcases the wealth of innovation in this area.

Detailed platform evaluation and analysis is beyond the scope of this playbook, but we will be covering Platform evaluation and comparisons in detail in the CLI Community on a regular basis – and we already have a number of short platform reviews which summarize the capabilities, opportunity for customization, ease of use for the organization and for its members, and cost effectiveness. If you’re a member of CLI, you can also access a copy of our Platform RFP Template, in the Tools & Resources section.

To help you get an overall grip on tech platforms available, it’s worth understanding the 5 key platform types available to you, before you start your RFP.

1

2

Software As A Service Platforms These are platforms that have been specifically built for community management and are generally available on a per user or license basis. Examples include Circle, Tribe, Vanilla Forums, Mighty Networks and Disciple. They’re intuitive to use and don’t require any technical know-how – however, they’re built more to serve your community than to build it, so you need to have a clear strategy about how your audience finds and joins your community.

Messaging Or Chat Software Increasingly, brands, events, and products are building communities 4 on the back of apps primarily designed as messaging tools – such as Slack, Whatsapp or Telegram. Typically, these systems aren’t sufficient to support a growing community, but they might offer a good springboard for providing the forum/networking/ messaging elements of a community that’s just started

3

Social Platforms Social platforms like linkedin, facegroup and meetup are home to many communities, in the form of dedicated groups. Some might argue that a linkedin or facebook group isn’t, in essence, a community – and yet some of the most interactive, vibrant and engaging groups take place in these platforms. A key disadvantage is that you have no control or ownership over these 3rd party apps, and are therefore at the mercy of changes they might make as well as having no or limited access to data on your participants in these groups. Again, these platforms can serve as a springboard, or as a funnel to a membership community.

(Cont. in the next page)

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Technology Platform

4

5

Open Source Software If you’re looking for a truly bespoke community, you can build on a platform that enables you to add multiple plug-ins to create all the functions you require – many communities are built on the likes of wordpress and bbpress or memberbuddy for example. An advantage is that you can add multiple plugins to achieve pretty much any functionality and integrations you want – however, you will require a technical team to build and manage such a system and keep on top of updates etc.

Virtual Event Platforms If your community is borne from a live or virtual event, you might also consider using an event platform to host it – increasingly, virtual event platform providers are adding more year-round community based capabilities to their feature-set. Using a virtual event platform in conjunction with your virtual events enables you to keep everyone in one place, rather than having a separate “home” they need to switch to – however, you would need to carefully manage the branding and marketing messages so that it doesn’t feel like it’s just about the event, and users don’t realise there’s a year-round experience within the platform.

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27

The Scoreboard: Measuring Success

Successful membership communities generate seven important benefits for event and media brands. These benefits can be measured with Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) established for the community, including:

1

Improving the industry’s professional knowledge.

5

Simplifying vendor referrals for members.

2

Building advocacy within and outside of the community.

6

3

Offering problem solving and the empathy of peers.

Providing opportunities for co-creation and innovation through collective content repurposed for the community, including case studies, trend reports, and panel discussions among members.

4

Professional capability development through formal (seminars and workshops) and informal (peer-to-peer) interactions.

7

Offering informal and/or formal socialization between members.

mentoring

and

Top Tip: The FeverBee Community Management Training Program has some really invaluable insights on how to measure and benchmark your community performance in a data-driven way. You can sign up for this course on the CLI website.

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28

Community Game Plan

We suggest you create your own Community Game Plan which outlines the key deliverables and timeline for your team to successfully launch a new Membership Community. We’ve created a 90 Day Launch Checklist which outlines, by task, all the things you need to achieve before launch. We’ve also created a Launch Plan Timeline – which shows you what the key deliverables look like, plotted over a 3-4 month period. These resources are freely available for you to access in the Community, under the Tools section.

Here’s a sample of what your Game Plan might include. Product development priorities can be identified following discussion with the Advisory Board and customers. Once launched, communities and member needs often dictate the order and speed of functionality rollout, but this might help prompt you and help shape your planning:

2021 01.

Launch Basic Membership with robust directory.

02.

Launch Supplier directory.

03.

Build Certification to launch 3 mos. later.

04.

With Cert., launch Professional Membership tier.

05.

Launch discussion forums.

06.

Begin offering “tools” such as Ecosystem Map. 07.

Launch feature that elevates suppliers as Subject Matter Experts.

2022 01.

Power up 1:1 connection and multi-party partnering via the membership site (e.g., Buyer peers, Supplier to finance, municipalities).

02.

Continue to build and launch a Certification Program in the first half.

03.

Build professional Membership and custom roundtable experiences (hybrid).

04.

Return to f2f schedule with special benefits for Pro Members 05.

Create a new f2f event for a part of the community that’s engaging highly.

06.

Tool kit items.

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29

Community Game Plan

2023 01.

Expand sophistication of networks and content.

02.

Technical training via strategic partnerships 03.

Launch Certified program for expanded partner networks.

04.

Build out global content to draw international members.

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Staffing Resources

To support the launch and growth of a robust Membership community, you need to allocate an appropriate amount of resource. If you’re already generating content, taking payments, selling sponsorship etc., you may find that some of your existing team are able to undertake some of the activities. But, for launch at least you will certainly need additional support to get everything set up and build the momentum needed for success.

The Community Leaders Institute can support your team with anything from project management to certification strategy or content outlines, or you can use in-house staff, new recruits or contractors.

These are the roles you may need, to run a successful community: 1

2

3

Project Lead — Person that brings together the resources, drives the project timeline and deliverables, and leads the communication of status to leadership.

Community Manager — Lead community management and engagement, create partnerships, deliver networking, educational and content experiences for members and followers, and industry members at large.

Content Director — Sources and produces content, works with CM to determine the best outlet for that content.

In event companies, this often fits into the Conference Production Team.

4

5

6

Education Manager — Supports the certification programs, defines learning needs and objectives, develops course agendas, seeks out experts to deliver the content, etc.

Member Marketing — New member lead gen and direct conversions, member communication and nurturing, supplier member lead gen and nurturing, sponsor — Memberships for individual, team, or corporate licenses for end users; future Certification sales.

Sponsorship Sales — Supplier/Vendor directory sales of enhanced listings, sponsor programs

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31

Tools and Resources section

We hope you’ve found this playbook useful in setting and shaping your strategy and plans toward Community Building. You’ll find a host of other FREE tools which you can access as a Community Leaders Institute Member, in the Tools section.

If you have any questions about this playbook or would like to connect with us or have us connect you with Technology Providers or Community Consultants that can help you in your efforts, please email amy@communityleadersinstitute.com.

“A Community is a place where you feel a sense of belonging in your profession, your passion, or even with a product. Although marketing was already accelerating toward the community model, the pandemic acted like a slingshot into the future.

If you are not incorporating the community model into your business plan, you can be sure your competition is.”

– RD WHITNE Y CEO & Founder

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Thank you to our Contributors

RD W hit ney CEO & Founder 365 Media

LAURYN FRANZONI Chief Community Officer 365 Media

ALAN RAMS D E L L Client Director 365 Media

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KA RY N G IL B L E RT Event & Community Director 365 Media