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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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Want AI to Quote You? Make Your Content the Source
We’re all watching how AI summarization is reshaping content discovery. Tools are now pulling answers from across the web in seconds, but here’s the big question: How do you become the source that AI summarizes, quotes, or links to? Lately, I’ve been experimenting with ways to position content for higher visibility…not…
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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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AIgents: What They Are, and Why Community Pros Should Care
As I dig deeper into the impact of AI summaries on community engagement and site traffic, I’ve been exploring a term that’s quickly gaining traction: AIgents (AI agents). These tools don’t just surface information—they act on behalf of users. Think: summarizing content, answering questions, and recommending next steps...…
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Search Is Shifting. Are You Seeing the Drop Too?
I've noticed a significant decrease in page views across several communities, and I’m not the only one. The reason? AI-powered search. Traditionally, search worked like this: You type in a question Get a list of links Click into one Explore until you find your answer Each of those clicks = traffic to your community. But…
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How Are You Building Connection or Operations — or Seeing the Power of Both?
We often talk about Connection and Operations as separate functions in the COMPASE framework. But the truth is—they’re deeply linked. Communities built for connection help members feel safe, welcome, and engaged. Communities built for operations give members tools and spaces to solve problems together. When you build a…
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How do you manage interval vs external announcements in your community?
I'm curious to hear how you all manage announcements that are specific to your users vs announcements that are open to the public? Here is our use case: We have one category that we've used mainly for announcements. Members are not able to post there except our staff, mods, and admins. Now that we are working towards…
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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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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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How do you promote your important announcements on Community?
Hi there! I'm looking to learn from fellow community managers: What are your best practices for making important announcements stand out in your community? Whether it's product updates, policy changes, or promoting biggest event of the year, how do you ensure your members see and engage with the announcement? (Aiming to be…
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Customer Journey Wins and Struggles
Building a strategy help encourage your members to move from content consumer to super user is a great investment of time. But some of the methods we use work better than others. I would love to hear some of the things you are doing to nurture your users successfully, or if there are certain points in the process that you…
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How are you aligning community with the customer lifecycle?
Aligning your customer journey and your community can be a powerful strategy. One that moves from reactive to proactive engagement planning. Looking at 4 key stages where this alignment has the strongest impact are: Engage (your welcome to the space) Nurture (opportunities that encourage deeper participating) Advocate…
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Mapping Your Community to the Stages of the Engagement Journey
Mapping Vanilla platform suggestions and features to each stage of the engagement journey—Engage, Nurture, Advocate, Feedback & Growth—can be accomplished as follows: Engage Welcoming customers into a space where they see immediate value and connection. Onboarding Automations: Use onboarding messages and automated…
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How are you helping your customers move into peer leader status?
We all know that communities are primarily made up of Information Consumers (I prefer this to lurkers…creepy!! 🧟) — this isn't a surprise. But have you thought about the fact that every Super User in our community likely started out here? So what made 1 person begin engaging and so many others stay in this unengaged state?…
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How are you ensuring you are meeting actual customer needs?
Hey all! Have been doing some thinking about the importance of understanding your customer journey from both an organizational and community standpoint, and this means first knowing the real needs of your audience. And that starts with talking to them…so here is my question…HOW are you talking to your members? A survey?…
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What has been the biggest impact of having a Super User program?
Hi all! Super User programs are one of those areas that we should all be looking at, but seem to fall towards the bottom half of our to-do list. For those that have at least started a program, what is the biggest impact you are seeing? For those that haven't, what would you hope to see with a program in place? Would love…
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Content Calendars
Having a goal without a plan decreases your chances of meeting that goal. A content calendar is a tool that helps build: Consistency Diversity in post authors Rituals A strong content topic and type library If you are leveraging a content calendar, what is the most critical part of it for you? If you are not, what is…
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Starting a Community / Community Launch Best Practices
Hello everyone! I'm currently in the pilot phase of my community, with plans of publicly launching in early June. 😁 Could you please help answer a few questions and provide any best practices you have regarding having a successful community launch? When marketing your community launch, did you host an event? How did you…
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Member Journey - lots of member types
Hello Vanilla Friends! First time posting, long time in the community world. Currently building with @pbradley (hoping this is the right Paul, lol) at Kaplan and something interesting around this community is that is serves many different types of members. As I am doing a site audit, it's become apparent we will need to do…
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#TipTuesday: Creating a Valuable Office Hours Experience
Today’s Tip Tuesday is all about creating value for your audience through Office Hours. Office Hours are a great way to bring your members together to: Network with each other Learn product or industry best practices Share wins or roadblocks with peers Done well, these can become a valuable addition to your event content…
