Engaging executives in community

JayNathan

Hi all, one perennial challenge we grapple with is how to engage executives in community. Online community spaces and content tend to be really well geared for product users, but we are looking for new ways to engage the leaders of those teams (our “economic buyers,” if you will..). These folks usually split their focus across a number of areas, many of which don’t directly involve our products and services.

Wondering what types of programs others are running to effectively engage executives in meaningful activities and dialogue?

Would love to hear from and learn from you.

Photo by David Iskander on Unsplash

Heather Wendt

Hi @JayNathan - we had executive-level members engaged heavily within my last association role on the community. We provided:

1) a separate space for leaders where membership in the group was vetted and on an approval basis. This provided a safe place to talk about issues that they did not want their staff to be involved with due to either the sensitive nature of the conversation or limiting responses to those who have experience in the topic. It also allowed them to focus on issues that were relevent to them and avoid the noisy chatter of topics that were not applicable in the larger groups.

2) a specific (even more highly limited in audience) topic community for leaders to discuss legal issues, and had our legal team involved in the community so the leaders could talk amongst each other and get advice and guidance from the folks who lived in that world. Both were highly active and a major reason our customers renewed their membership with us. Our legal team went through some community moderation training so they understood how to successfully support the conversations using best practices.

A couple of things to note:

• if your group is going to be a vetted group, triple check that the information being shared is locked down solely to members. If there is even a single instance where the info gets out there via search, etc., you will lose the trust of your group members and few will be willing to step into that space again
• Find a few leaders and work with them to design this space based on actual needs. This helps to make sure you are giving them a space that will be valuable and has the added benefit of building advocates who will help you make this successful
• Seed questions should come from the group leaders, not the community manager. My role was to help them understand what makes a community group successful, develop seed questions with them that will be successful at getting conversations going, and otherwise be a resource to the group leaders. They need to be willing to step into that role, but they shouldn't step in alone and should have guidance on those best practices.

Looking forward to hearing how others have engaged executives in their communities!

JayNathan

Super helpful, @Heather Wendt!