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#TipTuesday: Turn Your Most Helpful Members Into Recognized Community Leaders
Every community has a handful of members who consistently step up by answering questions, sharing knowledge, welcoming newcomers, and modeling the behaviors you want others to follow. A powerful way to strengthen your community is to formally recognize these standout contributors as leaders. ❓️Why this matters Elevating…
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Public vs Private Communities 🔐
Most communities I’ve worked with have had some sections of the communities available to the public (i.e., guest users aka anyone not logged in to the community), and some sections that are member-only or only visible to specific roles. It can generate some buzz to have exclusive content, but it can also be a bit of a…
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#TipTuesday: A Warm Spot in a Frosty Season: How Heat Maps Help Your Landing Page Shine
When you build a landing page for your community, you’re making your best guess about what members need most, kind of like bundling up before stepping outside. You think you know what will keep everyone warm and engaged, but you won’t really know until you see how people move through the space. That’s where heat maps bring…
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🎉 SF Bay Area folks — let’s meet IRL!
Hello friends! If you're in the SF Bay Area and looking for fun community goodness, come join us at the December Community Manager Connect Meetup. We'll be hanging out, talking shop (and not talking shop), swapping ideas, sharing wins, and generally enjoying the fact that community people are the best people to spend time…
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How do you manage dozens of product forums, groups, teams, and initiatives?
I work at an awesome company that wants to scale community across all of our products which means a lot of forums, groups, internal teams, and opportunities. In prep for my 2026 strategy, I'd love to hear how other companies successfully managed this type of scale. I'm looking for ideas on doing this across 50+ products.…
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📣 Season of Sharing starting next week!
Hey Vanilla friends! As we head into the final month of the year, we’re excited to celebrate with a little extra cheer — and a lot of extra knowledge. This December, we’re launching our Season of Sharing, a month-long initiative to help you get even more value, ideas, and best practices from your community platform. ⭐ What…
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November Success Community Roundup 🦃 🍽️ 🥧 🍁
Hey Success Community! 👋 Happy turkey week to those who celebrate! Let's take a look at what's been happening in the Success Community this month: 🍦 Vanilla Updates 📣 Season of Sharing starting next week! Excited for Super Forum? We Are Too! 🧭 Community Strategy 🎯 Understanding User Visits & Content Engagement in Your…
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Retrieving group member request comments
Is there a way to review what a community group member wrote in their initial request to join the group? One of our group members wants to access some of the comments from folks requesting to join to understand their knowledge base of the group topic. Is this possible? If so, who can retrieve this information and how?…
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#TipTuesday: Want better headlines? Borrow your community’s language.
If you ever feel stuck writing copy, one of the easiest ways to get moving again is to look at the exact words your customers use. Your community is full of them. It’s basically a running transcript of how people describe their problems, frustrations, goals, and wins in their own voices. So whether this is a reminder for…
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Connecting your Community Forum with Reddit
Hi Community Managers, We’re currently exploring the idea of connecting our forum with Reddit. If you’ve implemented this in your community, I’d love to hear which automation tools you’ve used (like for content sharing or monitoring conversations). Which tools have worked well for you?
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💡 #TipTuesday: Engage in one click with Reactions
Reactions turn quiet readers into active participants with one click to say “this helped,” “insightful,” or “🎉 awesome!” Without even typing a reply, members can elevate the best content, guide others to answers, and fuel your engagement flywheel. Why use Reactions Think of Reactions as your community’s high‑five. They…
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#TipTuesday You will read this first.
In today's #TipTuesday I would like to focus our attention on something no one is talking about these days: AI. Wait, what? You have heard about it? I've been designing and building web-based software for a long time. As in, there was only one "CSI" when I started. A long time ago. I'm talking "Gladiator", "Cast Away",…
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Ideation Setups - Best Practice Examples
Hi! Our ideation space needs a refresh and I would love to see how you've set-up your ideation space. This is one of the most active areas of our Community and I'm keen to improve the user experience. Please share links to your ideation space or any best practice examples/tips you might have for me. I would do the same and…
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Excited for Super Forum? We Are Too!
Hey Vanilla Friends! Big news - Super Forum 2026 is coming and you're all invited! Vanilla was really missed at last year's conference, so we want to make sure as many people join us as possible in 2026. But First .. We Need You to Register for HUG To get the full Super Forum experience, you’ll need an account in the…
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👻October Success Community Roundup 🦇
Hey Success Community! 👋 It's time for another Community Roundup! 👀Product Highlights 🚨New Feature Alert: Toggle Blocks🔍️ Use Quick Links menu to supercharge your community navigation 📄Customize Your Email Templates 📧 📈 Community Strategy 💥 Strategic Guide: GEO & SEO Framework Community Journey Playbook ☢️ #TipTuesday Use…
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Tip Tuesday: 📌 Pin It to Win It - Making the Most of Announcements
You’ve just wrapped up a massive update. You’ve written the perfect discussion post: crisp, clear, and maybe even a little witty. You hit “Publish” and sit back, imagining the flood of likes, comments, and GIFs of confetti that are sure to follow. Then you log back in the next morning and… it’s gone. Well, not gone gone.…
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How Are You Safeguarding Your Community's Content in the Age of AI?
With the rise of AI tools that can scrape, summarize, and repurpose public content, protecting the value and integrity of our community conversations has become more important than ever. In a recent post, I shared a few practical steps we can take to reduce the risk of our content being lifted without credit or context:…
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What part of your community are you most focused on right now?
At Higher Logic, we just introduced the COMPASE Framework—a model to help community teams align strategy with impact across seven functions: Connection 🤝 Operations 🛠 Marketing 📣 Product Feedback 💬 Acquisition 📈 Strategy & Retention 📊 Education 📚 🔍 Which of these are you currently prioritizing—and why? Are you doubling…
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Can your content be summarized away?
This line stopped me in my tracks. If AI is getting better at summarizing everything, maybe our job is to create content it can’t flatten into bullet points. Think about it—what kind of content resists being distilled into a one-liner? ✨ Personal stories that add depth and relatability ✨ Emotionally resonant perspectives…
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September Success Community Roundup ✏️ 📚 🍂
Hey Success Community! 👋 Welcome to Gilmore Girls season, aka fall, aka the best season of all. Let's take a look at what's been happening in the Success Community this month: 🧭 Community Strategy 🎯 Gamification Analytics - What are you tracking? 🥇 Reporting Community Activity by Company (Email Domain) 🏢📊 ⭐️ #TipTuesday…
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Tip Tuesday: Creating Banners with Canva
One of the simplest ways to bring a brand’s look and feel into your community is with custom banners. If design isn’t your day job, don’t worry. Tools like Canva (or alternatives like Pixlr) make it easy to create clean, professional visuals in just a few minutes. Here are some quick tips for getting started: Start with…
