Best Of

When it comes to building a thriving community, it’s easy to get caught up in the numbers—total members, likes, followers. But the true magic happens in the quality of connection, not the quantity.

Ask yourself: Are you creating a space where people feel seen, heard, and valued?

Are you starting conversations that matter—not just broadcasting updates?

Communities grow when members feel like they belong. So this week’s tip is simple but powerful:

Focus less on how many people are in your community, and more on how engaged they are.

Invite participation. Respond meaningfully. Create moments that turn passive members into passionate advocates.

In general, community groups can be invaluable in user research, providing rich insights and facilitating a deeper understanding of user needs and behaviors. They offer access to diverse perspectives, help identify potential issues, and can be used for various research methods such as focus groups, surveys, and ethnographic interviews.

Here's how community groups can be leveraged for user research:

1. Access to Diverse Perspectives

Understanding User Needs:
Community groups offer a platform to connect with individuals who may not be easily accessible through traditional research methods.

Identifying Pain Points:
By engaging with different groups, researchers can uncover unique challenges and frustrations users experience when interacting with a product or service.

Exploring Diverse Needs:
Community groups can help identify the needs of various user segments, including those who may be marginalized or underserved.

💡 For example:

Create individual groups for different user personas of your product and conduct user research with them separately. This will give you the opportunity to:

1. Validate your user personas (do they really think differently?), and
2. Focus on creating targeted marketing and/or (up)selling strategies for each persona.
   

2. Utilizing Various Research Methods

Focus Groups:
Focus groups conducted within community groups allow for in-depth exploration of user experiences and opinions in a facilitated discussion setting.

Surveys:
Surveys can be used to gather quantitative data from a broader range of participants within the community.

Ethnographic Interviews:
Ethnographic interviews conducted within community groups allow for a deeper understanding of user behavior and context by observing users in their natural environment.

Usability Testing:
Community members can be invited to participate in usability testing, providing valuable feedback on the usability of a product or service.

Brainstorming and Co-Design Sessions:
Community groups can be leveraged for brainstorming and co-design sessions, where participants collaborate to generate new ideas and solutions.

💡 For example:

Creating groups based on certain demographics or geographic areas can help you gather insights specific to a target market. You can also create events for these users—e.g., Beta product testers in Canada only—to test the feasibility of a new product or feature within that demographic.

3. Benefits of Using Community Groups

Rapid Insights:
Community groups can provide quick, actionable insights into user needs and behaviors.

Reduced Costs:
Using community groups can be a more cost-effective way to conduct user research, as it leverages existing networks and communities.

Stronger User-Centered Design:
Insights from community groups can inform user-centered design processes, resulting in products and services that better meet user needs.

Improved Product Development:
Feedback from community groups can help identify areas for improvement, ensuring that products are more usable and appealing to users.

💡 For example:

You can post announcements in groups, and users subscribed to notifications will receive updates—e.g., if there's a new feature to test or a survey you'd like them to complete.

We'd love to hear how you and your team are utilizing community groups for user-centered initiatives!

Hey there Community Gurus 🔮

If you're interested in sharing your insights in experience on how the community industry is evolving, CMX is hosting an industry report survey that you can participate in.

Check it out here!

Good day Community, and thank you @Kirstie Macfarlane.
Normally I am asking questions, today I am sharing :-)

As Community Managers, we build trust, strengthen brand loyalty, educate clients, reduce formal tickets, and minimize churn. How do we achieve these goals, prove community value, and its impact on the organization? The answers lie in data. Dashboards are the ultimate tools to demonstrate community health, uncover member insights, and identify growth opportunities. In this blog, I’ll share three dashboards that highlight community health metrics, measure content popularity, and identify potential advocates.

1. Community Health Dashboard

Understanding your community's health is essential to proving its value. Month-over-month growth in these metrics demonstrates that your community and engagement are growing. Tracking Accepted Answer Views highlights how the community serves as a self-sustaining knowledge base, reducing the need for formal support tickets while improving the customer experience. By visualizing this data, you can provide leadership with a clear picture of how the community drives value and supports broader business objectives.

2. Content Popularity Dashboard

Too often, brands create content based on assumptions about what their audience wants. I want to identify which topics resonate most with community members. By analyzing blog views and engagement rates, you can work with your content creators to help them understand content your customers value (and what they don’t). For instance, if you notice a spike in interest around a particular topic, you can collaborate with internal experts to create more of what your audience is asking for. This data-driven approach ensures that your content strategy aligns with your members’ needs, fostering trust and long-term loyalty.

3. Potential Advocates Dashboard

Every vibrant community depends on its advocates: those passionate, knowledgeable members who go above and beyond to contribute. This dashboard highlights key behaviors such as:

• Visits by Customers
• Searches by Customers
• Questions asked by Customers
• Comments provided by Customers vs Employees
• Questions Answered by Customers vs Employees
• Customers with the Most Accepted Answers

Identifying these contributors allows you to engage with them on a deeper level. Reach out, thank them for their efforts, and make them feel valued. Their participation strengthens the community while providing valuable insights into how customers use and perceive your product. As the movie Apollo 13 taught me, customers care about what your product was designed to do (internal knowledge) AND what it can do (external knowledge). By nurturing these advocates and encouraging their contributions, you create a powerful blend of internal expertise and external experience that benefits the entire community.

Let’s Collaborate

I hope these dashboards inspire you to think about how data can transform your approach to community management. I’d love to hear about the dashboards you’ve created and the insights they’ve uncovered. What metrics do you prioritize? How do you present your findings to stakeholders?

If you have questions about why I’ve chosen these dashboards or want to collaborate on new ideas, let’s have a conversation. Together, we can continue to unlock the full potential of our communities.

Cheers,

Toby

Hi everyone!
I wanted to share a bit about my journey customising our community on Higher Logic Vanilla without developer resources in case it's interesting and why I believe it’s something anyone can try.

Some context

Over the years, I’ve been part of small community teams that didn’t always have the luxury of in-house developers. Like many of you, we had to wear multiple hats and get creative with the resources we had.

I took some basic styling and coding courses and got familiar with the Higher Logic Vanilla platform, but I still wouldn’t call myself a coding expert at all. That said, having a foundational understanding together with the right tools can go a long way!

How AI has changed the game for me

Recently, AI has opened up lots of doors for me. With a combination of tools like Copilot, our company's private ChatGPT and OpenAI’s ChatGPT, I’ve been able to build customisations I wouldn’t have been able to before, or that would have taken me a lot longer to achieve.

Here’s how I usually approach a customisation:

1. Describe the desired outcome
   I explain what I want to build or change, sometimes including screenshots or examples from other sites if available.
2. Set the context
   I clarify where the code will be placed (usually via a custom HTML widget) and specify the structure: HTML, CSS, and JavaScript in separate blocks.
3. Inspect and explain
   If I’m modifying something that already exists, I inspect the existing element (right click and inspect) and share the relevant code with the AI to provide more context.
4. Iterate with visual feedback
   If the initial result isn’t quite right, I take a screenshot of the outcome vs. what I intended and share that with the AI. It’s usually enough to get it to refine the code correctly, but sometimes I would also have to write the changes I'd like in a structured way.

What’s worked best and what to watch out for

One of the key things I’ve learned is to avoid injecting code via the JavaScript tab in the Style Guide where possible. This method is more likely to conflict with other existing styling, or break when there's a new release.

Before custom layouts where available, custom HTML widgets were only available on the home page, which meant we had to inject code directly via the style guide for changes anywhere else. It required more complex code and troubleshooting and it wasn't stable long term.

Now that we have custom layouts I highly recommend using custom HTML widgets instead.

💡If you do need to use the Style Guide, this article is helpful for understanding the risks: How Can I Customize My Style Guide (Vanilla Knowledge Base)

Also, always test in a staging environment first - it saves a lot of headaches!

Examples of what I've been able to do

Our community isn't live yet, so screenshots it's the best I can do for now - but it hopefully helps get an idea of what you can do with some customisation.

CTA tiles on the Home page: they zoom in when hovering over, plus I added an "employee only" tag for those only visible to employees.

Fully customised page for guests via custom HTML:

Fancier CTA widgets: customised gradient background colour, buttons change colour when hovering over, employee only label, etc.

A workaround to the "moderation messages" in custom layouts:

Highlight in profile fields: both from the profile picture and form the editing profile menu. The options are highlighted when hovering over

Happy to chat more!

I’m by no means a developer, but with the help of AI I’ve been able to deliver real enhancements to our community.

These are just some examples of what can be achieved, but there's a lot more that can be done and I'll be exploring next :) If you’re curious about how I tackled a specific customisation or want help getting started, feel free to drop me a message. I’m more than happy to share what I’ve learned 🤗