Why CEO participation makes your community perform
You’ve made the decision and taken the plunge, you’ve invested in a good quality online platform for your organisation’s members. There’s some dedicated junior resource on your team to manage the community, and active users are climbing every day. As CEO, your work here is done! Or is it?
The 2014 State of Community Management report published by The Community Roundtable revealed some interesting insights into the importance of executive participation in online communities. Do you want your community to return real value for stakeholders? However well the system has been adopted by the member base, you can improve the value and the interactions simply by your own engagement in the community.
Storming, Norming and Performing Online
Group development theory is well known, tried and tested in the real world, and online communities also follow the Tuckman route of Forming, Storming, Norming and Performing.
Forming
When you first start your online community, its behaviour will be quite conservative. Content will be formal and structured, and individuals will be familiarising themselves with the platform and the information they can access.
Storming
As the group matures, and your analytics show a solid growth in active users, there is also a shift in the way the community behaves. It starts to develop as a group, and will go through a difficult phase as members test the boundaries of what is and is not acceptable. This is where the owner organisation has to be ready for change. It’s no use imposing strict controls and trying to keep a lid on group development – to perform, your online community has to pass this stage and set its own norms within your flexible framework.
Norming
This is where the newly settled dynamics of the group open up communication in a way which is rarely seen offline. Peer to peer networking and collaboration increase – which is obviously the goal of the investment in the first place – and a group culture emerges. However, if you want your community to really perform, this is where management participation has to start. The Community Roundtable identified the best performing networks in their sample – the ‘best in class’ – and the characteristics of those communities against the norm.
In best in class communities, 58% have CEO participation vs. average CEO participation rates of 36%. Getting executives comfortable in participating in the community is a critical success factor.
Achieving Management Participation
A community has to have leaders and stand-out members whether it’s online or out there in the real world. As the CEO, you’ve made the decision to invest because you think an online community will enhance your organisation’s offering. Now it’s time to make sure the members know you are right behind them – and impress the stakeholders with your foresight in making the bold decision in the first place!
Of course, every senior manager has numerous competing priorities and responsibilities, and participating in the online community generally isn’t one of the top ones. So let’s look at the original goals of setting up the community, and how they align with the executive’s own goals and motivations. For example:
Executive target: increase membership. Community success adds value to membership and thus achieves a goal.
Executive target: increase revenue. When you have a well-used, performing group online, there may be opportunities to levy subscriptions for the value members receive, and other sources such as advertising.
Executive target: demonstrate collaboration to secure a funding round. If you can show that member businesses are represented by senior decision makers, the chances of business coming from your community are increased.
Executive target: respond to the needs of members. Your online community is the best source of real information about what your members want.
There’s every chance that your own goals can be realised by participation, so dive in and become a part of your community today!