#TipTuesday - Encouraging Internal Stakeholder Engagement

Heather Wendt · 2025-01-14T23:14:18+00:00

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Well, it is a bit late, but it is still Tuesday!

Today I wanted to talk a bit about how to encourage internal stakeholders to engage with your customer community.

Create a staff-only leaderboard - showcase those staff members who are impacting the value of your community through a board that focuses on employee roles. Set view permissions to staff roles only.
1. Include shoutouts to top staff contributors in team meetings and town halls
2. Send a personal message to those on the leaderboard thanking them for their contributions and sharing any anecdotes about the impact
3. Send a note to their supervisor with a highlight of their impact
Create a Can you help? section for unanswered questions visible to staff only
1. Make it easier for your internal teams to see questions that need a bit of attention
2. Be sure to include a subtitle that makes it clear it is not a public facing widget
3. Use the Question widget
Use Vanilla's new 'Escalation Rules' (Community Management Dashboard) to automate notifications about unanswered questions
1. There are a number of trigger options focused on posts (sentiment, points, reports, activity, votes)
2. Actions can be focused on integrations or can be sent to individuals (notifications should be set to email for any team members who are going to be a part of the process - support, product, CSM, etc.) by assigning a moderator

Communities provide more value when you include other team members, but make it easy and purposeful to maximize their impact.

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Comments

KrisKing

Great post Heather, I love the fact that posts with no activity or comments can now be escalated or placed in collections for internal intervention, as we do with this community.

It's going to simplify the lives of many community managers and ensure everyone is heard.

annaleesasahara

@Heather Wendt I love the idea of the Staff Leaderboard! Can you share more information on how to set this up?

Heather Wendt

Definitely @annaleesasahara!!

If you are already using the new layout editor, it is really easy.

Once you have identified the page you would like it to live on, edit the layout editor for that page and add the leaderboard widget

Give it a custom name (like Staff Leaders, or Internal Community Superstars), maybe a sub-title that says VISIBLE TO INTERNAL TEAMS ONLY or something to make sure everyone understands who can see it, determine whether you want it to be based on all points or just post and comments or even just answers. I would select either monthly refresh or weekly. All time is just too hard to get movement for new employees and becomes frustrating.

The final step is telling the widget who to include and exclude. Select your internal role (if you don't have one yet, you can create a role and make it based on the email address) for who to include. You can then do the exclusions. You shouldn't actually need to add this, but sometimes is it just better to do some overkill and avoid issues. I would exclude the super admins since the goal is to get those who are not already engaging to get started.

This should be it! A great way to help create that sense of accomplishment and make it easier for you to see who to call out as a rock star! Let me know if you run into any issues…happy to help!

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