Meet the panel

Transcript

Suzi

Hi, everyone. Okay. Let’s go ahead and start with introductions. My name is Suzi Nelson, and I’m a Senior Community strategist here at Hivebrite. And I am joined today by Marjorie Anderson. She is the Director of Community at Exos and the Founder and Principal Strategist of Community by Association. She is a seasoned community professional with over 10 years of experience strategizing for and building complex global Community platforms. Thanks for joining us today, Marjorie.

Marjorie

Thanks for having me.

Marjorie

We are also joined today by Jeremie. He is a leader in the corporate tech and social impact sectors with organizations such as Amplitude, Accela, the Peace Corps, FeverBee, IDEO, and now Dovetail, bringing expertise in managing and evaluating communities, engaging members, and demonstrating impact. Thank you for joining us today. Jeremy. We’re so happy that you’re here.

Jeremie

Thanks for having me. I’m very excited for the conversation today.

Suzi

Yeah, me too. Thank you just so much to you both for being clear with us, to our audience. Please be aware that you can ask questions throughout this webinar using the Q and A box and we will do our best to answer them at the end.

Suzi

We would also love just to hear more about the communities that you manage, your goals, and your challenges. So let us know in the chat and we’ll be taking a look at those. All right now that all those intros are out of the way, we can get this discussion started. The first question that I have for you both is what have you noticed trending lately in the Community space? And Marjorie, I will kick it over to you first.

Marjorie

Thanks, Suzy. This is an interesting question. I think that everyone in the world is talking about AI again. But I think that more so we should be really having a conversation about online trust and safety as a result of the re-emergence of AI. And I say re-emergence because this is not the first time we’ve had this conversation, right? And so a few years ago AI cropped up and everybody was very excited about it, all these plans and then it kind of fizzled out and now it’s back. But, you know, folks like Patrick O’Keefe, and Vanessa Pake have been talking about online trust and safety for an incredibly long time and this time it’s really no different especially with the capabilities that AI tools now have. It’s a much different time and so managers really need to be diligent about the way that they moderate spaces. They need to be intentional about their terms of use and guidelines and the enforcement of those things to keep their community members safe, and to keep the spaces in which they are building in… protected and as much of a way as possible. These tools are only gonna get more advanced. And if we don’t put some attention to the way that we are protecting the members who are coming together in our online spaces, it could be pretty detrimental. So for me, I think what we need to be trending towards, and looking at is what does that online trust and safety look like? What are the precautions that we need to take if we haven’t taken them already? What are the things that we need to pay attention to? And then how does that show up in the way that we manage our communities?

Suzi

I love that angle or that perspective of how the emergence of AI as like a growing trend just in, across all industries, but especially in community impacts, safety and authenticity within these groups that we manage. So, thank you for sharing that, Jeremy. What have you noticed trending lately?

Jeremie

Yeah, first of big plus one and everything that Marjorie just explained. I think it’s so important to anchor all of our work in trust and safety in terms of AI tools and technology. I think a lot of solutions I’ve seen are around curating small groups, one to one discussions, also summarizing and content creation. I think overall as a trend, I’m seeing smaller and more private communities flourish. People are looking for those authentic, you know, small group, safe spaces to grow. I think as a whole though doubling down on what Marjorie said, you know, moderation assistance, authoring, people will need to have the option to either opt in or opt out of any of these technologies. And I mean, one example I can think of that I’ve started being more proactive about is online note takers, sometimes people join a call, they have their note taker enabled. That’s kind of running some tech, on the conversation and really getting explicit in form consent from every participant ahead of time, making sure that folks privacy is respected. That goes a long way, in building communities that are… values aligned and kind of promote psychological safety, comfort, and the right to choose.

Suzi

That’s a really good point. You know, if you’re using AI in your communities, you know, in terms of note taking, or for whatever taking that extra step for consent and opt in, I think even if it’s not included in your AI tool, which it should be. But if it’s not taking that extra step to really form that safety net, I think it will be an important part of our roles as community builders for that, you know, you mentioned psychological safety. And I also see that trend in the small groups. I think people are really searching for… that human connection that is harder to achieve at scale. So, I see that too. So excellent points. Thank you both. I’m gonna move on to the next question as we are, you know, talking about this concept of AI as a trending topic in the community space, what strategies do you guys recommend for communities using AI? And Jeremie? I’ll let you answer this one first.

Jeremie

Yeah. And I’ve been looking into this leading up to this event. I find myself sometimes just with a lack of clarity on what the definition of AI is and in different contexts and different conversations, it means different things. So, I borrowed this from Brian Oblinger, a consultant in the space, you know, generally AI is a broad term for any computer or technology that can mimic human thought, intelligence, or behaviors. Then there’s that is distinct. But, you know, within that bucket is machine learning systems that use algorithms to mimic the way human brain, the human brain learns. Then within that bucket, there’s generative AI patterns and data sets that output new results like texts, images, audio. And then within that, a solution in the category of AI is chat GPT which gained a lot of popularity recently. And I think brought AI to the front of all of our consciousness is a product where you can chat and interface and ask questions with a large language model. So, I think in terms of strategies, I would very much take cues from your community, understand within your space, what is the appetite for these technologies? Remaining human centered, I think will help you and whatever organization you are building community within or whatever initiative you’re putting forth in kind of a community centered way, it will help you stand out. And, you know, if you can prove that humans are involved, it really will encourage again a lot of the great generate or like outcomes that community can deliver in the context of a business or any initiative. At the risk of rambling. I think the big takeaway for me when it comes to… using AI today is just if you’re in doubt, talk to your customer, talk to the community members that you’re serving, hop on a call, understand their contexts, their life, and really those one to one relationships can be kind of, a source of inspiration on how to move forward. But I’ll hand it off to you Marjorie.

Marjorie

Great. Yeah, I 100 percent agree with the things that Jeremie said and I think to the point of the fact that there are there’s different ways to define AI because of that, when you’re thinking about community strategy, you need to think about things like content. You need to think about things like the credibility of the space that you’re curating with your members. What do I mean by that? So you can use AI for a plethora of things. And one of those things is generating content. And so when you think about, especially if you’re running a community of practice, if you think about the way that people contribute in those spaces, whether that is through providing thought leadership, whether that is through coming up with a blog post or a quick video snippet of information to share with others within that space, there’s something to be said about the fact that someone can just generate that content through an AI model. And if you find yourself in a position where people are generating this information without there being any sort of fact checking or anything like that from their perspective to make it sound credible, whether it’s true any of that, then from a community perspective, then that space starts to lose credibility and it’s hard then to recognize when you have actual experts in the space versus whether you have people who are really smart at using tools to generate content to make them sound like they know what they’re talking about. And there’s no shade to using those sorts of tools to help you generate that content. If you’re going in and you’re making the necessary updates and augmenting it, you know, it’s just like if you were to go and open up an encyclopedia and copy down the information that you needed. And, yes, I’m aging myself by saying encyclopedia. I don’t know if some of you even know what encyclopedia is. But, you know, if you open up… an encyclopedia and get that information, you still have to augment that and put it in your own words to show learning, right? And so, when you’re thinking about content strategies, what does peer review look like? What does checking for plagiarism look like? What does validating the content look like on your end? And so, there needs to be controls in place for that when when you’re allowing those sorts of tools to be utilized within your community. And whether or not you’re allowing them because some folks will use that, you know, outside of the community space. So just things to be very aware of misuse of that, those sorts of tools can very quickly erode the credibility in a space and you don’t want to be on the receiving end of that.

Suzi

Thank you for sharing that. I’m seeing lots of agreement popping up in the chat with, this perspective. It reminds me Marjorie of, you know, whenever social media communities, you know, whenever this industry first started taking off at scale which in my opinion was probably about eight to 10 years ago. You know, there was a whole discussion around should we allow… let’s say staff like employers at the company create fake accounts within the community to drive like pseudo engagement in the group to kind of get things going? And, you know, there’s parallels there because that was a big discussion. You know, is that right? Is that ethical? And is that, does that even help or harm your community? And I would like to think that the general consensus is that is harmful because, you know, it really impacts long term, your credibility and your authenticity. It’s it’s much better to be a human and honest. And, you know, I just see parallels that with like using AI, to spin up content and, you know, it’s like a content farm almost in some cases. So really resonating with that general advice to, you know, take a look at your moderation and your enforcement strategies and see how, you know, this coming wave of AI tools can impact the safety and credibility and authenticity of your Community. And to go back to Jeremy’s point, you know, it’s always been our role as Community leaders to be the human in the room, right? Like to provide, you know, that human perspective to marketing strategies, or support strategies, or sales strategies, or ux or whatever you niche that you’re in for that Community program, you know, your job is to kind of be the voice of that Community internally and you know, externally as well. So, you know, being the human in the room has always been our job. And now it’s getting more important. And I think, you know, just to echo what you’re saying, AI has an amazing ability, to help automate some things, help make some processes better and smoother and free up our time to be more human. But it also carries, you know, some pretty significant trade offs, that we all need to be aware of as Community builders. So thank you both for sharing that. Okay. So there has been talk about the role of AI and in communities for a while. Now, what’s different about this wave of AI and how it can be used? Marjorie, I’m going to send it over to you first.

Marjorie

Yeah. At the risk of sounding like a broken record, I think when we first started talking about AI in the community space and how it can be utilized, it was much more around efficiency, right? Support communities were like, oh bots, we can have bot to answer questions that might help lighten load. And then if they need additional help, then, you know, we can usher them to a human. You know, how do we create automations within our processes to just make things run a little bit more smoothly? And I think that heavier conversation the first time that I like picked up on the fact that this was a major conversation in the community space. This time around it is for lack of a better word, a lot more stealthy. We’re not just talking about automating systems. We’re talking about things like generating images that look like they were taken from someone’s camera. We’re talking about all of these other ways that AI is being used to generate. It’s all experience it’s not just create efficiencies in the way that we do our work. And so if we go back to, and think about again online trust and safety and making sure that we are being really diligent about what that looks like in our community spaces, like there is a much more of a risk of harm and miss and dis information in these spaces. I mean, we see it all the time in social media. We see, you know, all of these photos generated, of celebrities, in positions that they were never in, right? But we wouldn’t know that because you know, the quality of the things that are generated is so, so superior to maybe what we would have seen a few years ago. And by a few years ago, I’m saying maybe 10 years ago, so… it can be a little bit more insidious now if it falls into the wrong hands and it can be incredibly high, helpful but we’ve got to really be careful with how we’re using it in that way. So I just think that it’s just, it’s more, there’s more of a risk of again misinformation and dis information, deep fakes, all of that stuff utilized in community spaces. We just have to be really diligent about and really careful about putting the wrong hands that can really cause a lot of harm.

Suzi

I really like your point of, you know, the conversation move from efficiency to generation. This, this automatic generation of content. I was recently reading an opinion article and I won’t go into the details but about AI and the quote that I took away, it was talking about AI generated images and they said we’re entering into a phase now where seeing is no longer believing. So, you know, that’s something that you have to like start teaching and building into your community culture as well. Like this exists. It’s out there. You know, it’s more. You know, I see it as, you know, a comms move too to help educate your community on what’s coming and what is happening as well. So thank you for sharing that, Jeremie. I’m gonna kick it over to you. Same question.

Jeremie

Yeah, I, again plus one to Marjorie. I think I’m continuing to wrap around my head what AI encompasses learning about the technology and also the various applications. I’m also familiar with the use case in the customer support context of like user forums, matching folks with answers, and increasing that efficiency. I think the difference with this wave is there’s almost this rush to invest in AI. It’s kind of like all this resource and budget has been freed up for like an AI strategy and it’s what do we do with this AI budget now? And I think seeing through the hype, there’s a lot of opportunity because the technology is more democratized. And again, someone like me can think about how I want to apply, how I want to engage and explore automation and generation and be freed from what previously was very manual to ultimately I think improve the quality of the experiences that I deliver. So it’s this double edged sort of wanting to engage, wanting to embrace but also doing it in a way where I’m continuing to advocate for the voice of the community. Has the company is making decisions or as the industry as a whole, the technology industry is making decisions. I think there are a lot of initiatives to make sure AI is aligned to human values and… we’re all grappling with these thorny questions of, what value should those be, and who gets to decide. So those are the questions I’m grappling with and in terms of how AI will continue to impact my work, it is gonna be about keeping an open mind, learning, and staying customer center. And yeah, kind of what riding the wave of, you know, I’ve been through many of these waves in the tech industry in silicon valley. So I’m cautiously optimistic.

Suzi

You mentioned silicon valley and, you know, we’ve seen these ways before in the tech industry. You know, I was just thinking about when social media first took off… as a marketing channel. Like it’s a scaled marketing channel and a scaled way to communicate. There was, the exact same conversations happened. It was, how do we use this tool to like meet our goals and not cause harm and make the world a better place? And you see it even now the conversation of social media, in general, it has the capacity to cause immense harm and also amazing things for the world. So it’s just a tool, right? So, I think, the theme that I’m hearing from both of you is now this very powerful tool is in the hands of everyone and I think that… you know, we talked about, you know, it’s very democratized like everyone has access to these now and they can use it however they want. And there’s great things about that and there’s like very scary things about that. So, thank you both for sharing its really just got my wheels turning on this topic. My next question, as we continue this conversation about AI… might be a little bit of a scary one, but I’m really interested to hear your take. How do you see AI impacting your role in terms of job security? How big of a threat is this as more and more things become automated? How big of a threat is this to the job security and future of community management as an industry? So, Jeremie, I’m gonna kick that over to you first. Yes.

Jeremie

Yeah, I’m generally an optimist. So I would say for myself and my career and my job security… Again, I’m kind of cognizant of the different hype cycles we go through with new technologies as they’re more widely adopted and democratized, I think there’s a lot of opportunity again as folks familiarize themselves with artificial intelligence technology, it won’t be the end of, you know, the desire to connect and build community. There might be a dip where the experiences as these, you know, were humans. We’re rolling these things out. There might be a dip in quality. Folks will make errors. Again as people apply these tools. There will be like an adjustment period where things stabilized. I think the ability to automate answering questions is a win. I think what will change is how we measure impact. A lot of the work is about translating and that unique venn diagram where your members gain value, your organization gains value and the community can grow and thrive. So it’ll be less about like visits, views, and growing in the traditional sense. It’s also about tying the work back to business impact and just continue to have those conversations wherever you may be building community to set expectations. And I’m kind of excited because we’re thinking about what is it that makes us uniquely human? I think verified human connection is becoming more important than ever. So I really wanna be a part of that and see so many inspiring applications of these technologies. So again, I’ll hand it off to Marjorie because I think we’re on the same page.

Marjorie

Yeah, we definitely are on the same page. I don’t necessarily see AI as a threat. I think that there are some things that we as practitioners can use it for to create efficiencies in our work, speaking of efficiencies. Right? We just had that conversation a little earlier, right? And so, I think what community managers get caught up in, a lot of times is I have to create these posts. I have to do this like content generation stuff for my community. And I think that AI can help with that. And then what that helps community managers do is skill up so that you have a seat at the table to have strategic conversations across your organization? How do you have the time to do that when you are deep and down in the work of creating content, making sure questions are answered, all of those things. And yes, there are also things that you can do from a human perspective, right? Have volunteer moderators and those sorts of things. One of the things that I always say is that executives expect us to learn the language of business to be able to communicate community value, but also executives need to understand the language of community to understand its value. This will be a time for community managers to step up and start that education across their organizations. Long gone are the days where we’re looking for directors or our directors’ directors, or our VPS, to have those conversations. You are doing the work, you understand the value of it. You have an opportunity to be the mouthpiece of your program and to help connect those dots. And so, if I were looking at it as a practitioner, I would say, how can I utilize this time to think differently and to up skill? So that when I am having these conversations not just with my boss but maybe with my boss’s, boss, or with some other stakeholder that needs to really understand the work that I’m doing, I have the capacity to do that, use this as an opportunity to create that capacity for yourself which then creates additional opportunities for you and helps create solid foundations for your program business wide, which then helps them survive and thrive.

Suzi

Preach, I love it so much. I didn’t know if you saw me like aggressively nodding to everything that you just said. I think, when I have these conversations with community managers, especially those who are a little bit more newer in their careers, you know, when we talk about this conversation of AI, I’m like if you are only doing tactical work, creating the post, doing the moderation, things that could eventually be automated to a large degree. You know, you’re in the wrong meetings. If that’s all that you’re doing. And so my general advice to community managers is get good at strategy, wrap your brain around it, get in the right meetings. Don’t just don’t just be the person that executes the idea, be the person in the room that’s deciding the overall strategy that is being the voice of the community when those decisions are being made. So that way you can, you know, like you were mentioning, you know, upskilling yourself and making sure that, you know, I don’t want to use the word like left behind when AI comes. But, you know, if all a copywriter and all you do is write copy and that’s it, you might be in trouble in like three to five years. But if you’re a copywriter who like strategizes, you know, what the messaging is and, you know, catering to your unique audience segments and really getting into the strategy side of the work here. I see that being a lot more security in that. And that has always been the case. I just think now it’s more highlighted. So community managers start becoming community strategist. Don’t just be like the tactical person, be the ideal person, too. Okay. So one way to do that is to be able to… you know, to talk about to talk about data. So, in a way that, you know, your stakeholders care about. So what’s the right way to collect and utilize data for your community’s needs Marjorie. Since you ended the last one, I’ll throw it to you, to kick off the is, the first answer here?

Marjorie

Great. Thanks, Suzi. So I always am hyper aware of the fact that there’s a ton of data that can be pulled out of communities about users, about their behaviors, about the things that they like, their preferences, all that stuff, and everybody wants it. And so lots of times when community programs are set up, everyone’s like knocking on, banging down the door like give me all of your community data. And I’m like wait, slow down there. First of all, I think people really need to be clear on the community’s purpose, why does this community exist? And so what do I need to know about its existence and whether or not it’s actually doing the thing we needed to do? And how do I collect that? So while you can get all of the things, all of the things are not necessarily necessary. And I think that there’s a level of a privacy in that data that needs to be considered when you’re thinking about what to collect to federate it and make it available to possibly other parts of the business. A good example of that type of data is voice of the customer data, right? So lots of times in communities while they may not be asking for something specific in a customer service call or customer support ticket or in a survey, they will 100 percent, if the community is built, well, voice their opinion in the forums, they will 100 percent say exactly what’s on their mind and the way that they want to say it in the community space, because that’s a safe space for them to have those conversations. And so that’s important for product teams to know that’s important for like we work in association volunteer and chapter… departments to know it’s good for customer support to know if someone’s having a hard time getting through or they had a bad experience, right? All of those things. So voice of customer data is really good to get from there. But again, really thinking about what is the purpose of the community? What do I want to learn in terms of why this community exists and whether or not the things that we thought would happen will actually happen? How are we measuring the effectiveness of this community, right? So those are questions that you should be asking. Again you could get all the data from all of the things, but that’s not helping anybody if you don’t understand why you need that data, what is going to be used for, and how it might help benefit the community. So when you’re thinking about those things for me, I think those are that’s the really right way to approach data collection in your communities. And what do you actually need do? You need a user’s birth date in your community. Probably not if so, why, right? So, don’t ask for data that you don’t need especially when it comes to user data. And so that’s my two cents on that. I’ll go ahead and hand it over to Jeremie.

Jeremie

Amazing. I feel like I’m taking some notes myself of like, I think those… highlights for me are just… this idea that kind of as community builders, community managers, we’re kind of on the front lines and, you know, doing the work and that need to step back and… translate that work into the language of business is something that I’ve done more or less effectively in my career. And I think, you know, reviewing earnings reports, asking about board meetings, like what matters to the business and… how do you translate that to your stakeholders internally? And I think as community builders were expert translators… and doing that more… aligns with collecting and utilizing community data. And this is not like an intentional plug. I mean, I genuinely use Dovetail to process qualitative and quantitative data to develop a community driven… Insight and report that I can share with my stakeholders. I think it’s easy to get lost in the sauce with all the different conversations you’re having, all the different initiatives you’re running. And as much as possible when I’ve been in those more strategic conversations, it’s breaking down the work into the tactical. So here’s xyz thing that I’m doing daily, weekly, monthly to keep this running, leveling that up to… outcomes for the community. What are those key metrics that show that the community is moving in a direction that’s desired? And then the last piece which isn’t always easy is tying that back to business impact and those top level goals that the CEO is speaking about the boards interested in. Are you able to tie back those tactics to the strategy? And yeah, using Dovetail, I kind of bring in all of my different sources of data and I’m able to analyze, synthesize, summarise, and share. And then that lives on kind of in a repository for different stakeholders to consume. Another resource. I would plug is this concept of a community driven impact score. I think the challenge with community work is that it’s never like a direct or it can be, but it’s often difficult to show that direct tie to ROI and revenue. So this idea of like activities that you put together tactics that you deploy having an impact… on the business that’s tangible is something that’s really important to investigate. And I, I’ve been using this concept of a community driven impact sport score to survey and align my work with that metric.

Suzi

Please write a blog post on this.

Jeremie

I need to find more time to write.

Suzi

Yeah, seriously. You say, hey… I mean, the big thread that I’m hearing through both of these which just, I completely agree with is knowing the why, not just your operational metrics of like making the community work and healthy but also those business metrics of, you know, how does this ladder back up to something that your stakeholders care about? And, you know, I think that, we have all been in this industry for a really long time between the three of us. But for people who might be newer… I also wanted to touch on this idea of engagement and really encourage you not to measure your community success strictly by engagement. Engagement for engagement’ sake serves no one. I have seen thriving community programs where everyone is happy, highly engaged, get completely cut and get it because they could not at the end of the day ladder it back up to an ROI. So this conversation, I just wanted to just touch on how important that is especially if you’re newer to this industry and newer to community building in general it’s, very, easy to only report on those engagement metrics. But, you know, six months a year from now, your boss one of these days is gonna be like, why are we spending so much time and money on this thing? And you’re gonna have to have an answer? So, you know, I just wanted to like frame this up with why it is so important to know the why and when we’re talking about what data we present to our stakeholders, why should they care if a community is engaged and really putting the narrative around that? That is kind of, you know, you mentioned Jeremy that we were, you know, master translators… like tap into that and become the storyteller that explains the impact on the business of all of this data. So, thank you both for sharing that. I just wanted to add just a little bit extra because I’m thinking about my newbies to this industry and how easy it is to fall into that and not take it seriously this idea of ROI and impact. So thank you both. Okay. As online communities continue to grow, what best practices can community managers implement to ensure this safe and inclusive environment we’ve been talking about for all of their participants. Jeremie, since you answered the last one last, I’m gonna let you answer this one first.

Jeremie

I would say, a big item on my to do list as AI continues to be democratized and applied is to revisit my code of conduct and clearly state what the stance is on the use of these technologies. I think as knowledge workers, there’s also a lot of… thinking that needs to go into how do you define your values, the trust and ethical decision making in the context of the program that is run, which has always been a part of the work, you know, building out the code of conduct, you know, running a value storming exercise, with your members, making sure that it’s a safe space committed to a career development growth or whatever other impact your members are gaining or value that your members are gaining because it is different for every individual who’s participating. And I think, you know, in a world where we’re again re thinking what it means to be human in the workplace, I think it’s very important to think back to what unique value do humans provide in knowledge work? So discussions, the ability to prioritize the ability to present and tell a story. I think you mentioned storytelling earlier, engage in engagement, decision making, connection, inspiring each other, those intangibles and intrinsic motivators, I think are things that I want to investigate as… yeah, I ensure that there’s a safe and inclusive environment, in the programs that I run.

Suzi

Marjorie, what do you think?

Marjorie

For me, I think if we’re thinking about safe and inclusive environment, it is really important that when we are doing things like enforcing community guidelines and policies, it’s gotta be equitable. I mean, everyone from the new person in your community to the senior level person who has been contributing for 20 years, they don’t get a pass, right? If, if something’s happening and they violated community guidelines or policies, you 100 percent have to apply those equitably, you have to moderate intentionally. So that doesn’t mean that if you’ve got moderation here, success in your technology that you can just set it and forget it. You need to go back and check that, sometimes things get caught that are not meant to be moderated or not spam, or it’s not, you know, bad actors and sometimes things don’t get caught. So you have to keep an eye on what’s happening in your community. You have to make sure your community members feel seen and heard, are their questions getting answered? If they file a complaint, are you having conversations with them to really understand what that’s about? Are they being on-boarded in an intentional way? Nothing feels worse than entering into a community space and not having formal onboarding, or at least they’re welcome for that. For that matter. Allowing space for diversity of thought and discourse that’s free of vitriol, people can have differing opinions. And sometimes it helps to uncover something really amazing between the people who are engaging in a community space. So allowing space for those things to happen is really important. What we don’t want to do is sanitize the community experience so much that it feels weird to be in that space. We don’t want to create echo chambers. We want to create diversity of thought. We want to create opportunities for growth, that we want to do it in a way that makes people feel like, you know, what if I’ve got a difference of opinion, I can voice that. If something is happening that I need to report, I feel safe going to community personnel and letting them know or a volunteer moderator and letting them know. If I make a mistake or if you know, senior person, an community makes a mistake, we’re both gonna have the same consequences. But at the end of the day, I think the most important thing above all else is to be present and an advocate for your community members, when it’s appropriate, they need to know someone is there helping them navigate that space. And while they may not want, you know, to, you know, tell them where the forums are, or say, hey here’s, a webinar, you might enjoy what they do need us to know that someone’s there to advocate on their behalf should things kind of go a little haywire. So be present, apply your moderation practices equitively and just make it a safe space, make it make people feel like they have found their place. Otherwise they’ll find somewhere else to go or create themselves. And at the end of the day… that’s a huge detriment to your community. And it happens silently and it happens quickly.

Suzi

It does, you know, one of the things, that you mentioned that really resonated me was like, you know, making it fair and equitable, and no one gets, no one gets a free pass. I was also thinking my gosh, that should apply to your internal team as well, like if your internal team has influence in what’s happening in your community. And like different elements also being the person that makes sure that they’re behaving in a safe way as well. Because, you know, sometimes people very high up on the food chain can show up in your community and start, you know, messing around with things, and being the person that, you know, speaks up, and make sure that you know, everybody is treated the same way. You can really go a long way also to building that trust and safety and authenticity. So just, I’ve been in that before. I’m sure both of you at some point in your careers have been in those types of situations before. So it’s something that does happen and, you know, it’s also, a very unique chance, to show… you know, the trust and safety that you’re installing in your community. Okay. I’m gonna switch gears a little bit and this will be the last question. Maybe we’ll have a few minutes for some Q and A. With the increasing influence, let’s talk gen Z for a minute. With the increasing influence of gen Z  in online spaces, what are the key characteristics and preferences community managers should be aware of to effectively engage and cater to this emerging demographic? Marjorie. I’m gonna kick it over to you first.

Marjorie

I love this question because all of my nieces are gen Z and they’re very vocal and they’re like auntie these are the things you should consider as part of your job. I’m like, thanks, appreciate that. But I think they’re really looking for smaller more curated community experiences. You know, long gone are the days where, you know, you just have one big large community and I don’t think not long gone are the days they still exist. But I think that, for this particular generation, they want smaller more curated community experiences where they can have conversations with people who share a similar thought or who share similar values, things that are important to them coupled with in real life moments of connection, right? Yes, online is amazing. But these people are amazing that I’ve met and I want opportunities to get together with them and to shake their hands or, you know, hug them or just to see them face to face. Especially for this particular generation. A good portion of their interaction was cut short during their developmental time because of the pandemic, right? And so, so there’s that. And when we’re thinking about content, make the content bite size, right? No more, you know, 12 page blog post to a quick snippet of what you want to talk about and cool. And then like make a video that’s no longer than five minutes long, right? Keep their attention, use memes, those sorts of things. I mean, I’m not gen Z and I’m a huge fan of memes. I’m pretty fluent in it. So, but then also when you’re thinking about events, maybe tying those events to social goods, things that matter in the world that they wanna leave their mark on. So really thinking a little bit differently like, yeah, there’s business value in the thing that you do. But at the end of the day, like what’s the greater good? And how do we keep people involved and keep them excited? Especially this generation about staying connected to those sorts of experiences.

Suzi

Jeremie, what do you think?

Jeremie

Amazing. Yeah. I also have a few Gen z-ers in my life and… I think with every generation,  like every kind of assumption in generality, like you’ll find the opposite. But I spent the better half of last year attending a lot of brand marketing conferences which was very interesting. And a big takeaway was this concept of authenticity. I think gen Z is very skilled at spotting, you know, the sponsored post, those corporate shill moments where you’re you know, you’re… creating content because of an affiliation with a brand or a company. It, it doesn’t work, I would say, and that piece of authenticity, it’s like thinking about how you could enable your workforce and your team to authentically post talk, engage with your brand, your company, your initiative where it’ll come off as authentic. And again, there’s so much to unpack there. And I think ultimately with gen z, it’s about, you know, getting the right business in the right way and leading with, you know, is your business not just too big to fail? Is it too principal to fail? Too eco friendly to fail? Like who are you standing with? And do you have a clear stance is gonna be a big part of reaching the next generation?

Suzi

Clarity of stance. I love it. There’s. A blog post for you.

Okay, guys. Excellent. Thank you both. This has been very great and enlightening. And I greatly enjoyed this conversation. We’re gonna take the last 10 minutes and answer as many questions as we can from the Q and A. So let me see what we’ve got here. Okay. First question, how to keep the community? How do we keep the community proactively engaged… Marjorie, do you have any thoughts here?

Marjorie

Yeah. I think when we think about keeping folks engaged, we think about some sort of magic formula that we’re supposed to come up with that says if you do this then they will automatically do this, in some cases that’s true. But I think it’s really important that you provide different ways for people to contribute and engage in your community so that you meet them where they are. Someone might come into the community who feels a little hesitant about contributing. But if you as a community manager know that this particular person because you on-boarded them appropriately has levels of expertise that might be valuable to the community, you might say, hey, I’m not quite sure how we get an answer to this question, if you provide me a response, I’m happy to display it and tag you in it, right? Ease them into it or, you know, if someone’s really eager to provide content, give them the the avenue to do that. So, you know, figuring out different ways for people to contribute and participate and engage based off of what their motivations are. You heard Jeremie talk a little bit earlier about intrinsic motivators for participation in engagement. If you’re tuned to what that is holistically for your community and the personas and the demographics that live within that space, then you can create opportunities for those things to happen. And then it becomes a virtuous cycle on its own. You’ve given people a menu, a smartest board if you will, of ways to contribute and participate and all they have to do is pick what works for them. So don’t be too prescriptive about how that can look but give them the opportunity to A, maybe have some input into it, and then B do what works for them.

Suzi

That’s great.

Jeremie

Yeah. I would just say a metaphor that comes to mind that… someone shared with me a couple of years ago is, you know, when you plan a party, you don’t have a strict agenda of like, hey, first you’re gonna go to the disco dance party, then you’re gonna do bingo, then it’s dinner,then, you can have a loose guideline but you provide different activities at the party and people choose their own adventure. I feel like a lot of engagement is about being able to kind of engineer and architect those spaces where you create enough room for people to find their own way, but also have that guidance. And again, when you’re feeling stuck, I think my best piece of advice is just hop on a call with a member and have conversations, and engage.

Suzi

You never estimate the value of just hopping on a call. Seriously? Okay. I’m really excited about this next question and I’m gonna read it slowly because it’s kind of long. How can you preserve the genuine character and individual voices in a digital community that’s built on authentic connections between, you know, individuals offering advice and experience and those seeking it while also overseeing this integration of AI. So, how do you strike that balance? And I think that is a really good question to ask and an important question to ask and probably kind of sort of complicated to answer. But wanted to just throw that out there… Jeremie. Do you have any initial thoughts here?

Jeremie

Yeah, I think I’ll just echo what was shared previously by Marjorie and myself is investing in and really thinking internally and having those conversations again, the code of conduct aspect, the values, the drivers of the business and having clarity on those things. I always say clarity is kindness. So as you approach your community, I think Brené Brown said that.

Suzi

I was about to say, I heard the voice and spirit of Brené.

Jeremie

Yes… but I, I’ve held on to that because I think if you’re able to approach your community who’s involved and engaged in all these great ways that they’ve opted into and feel bought into, you can guide that journey for them and also ideally grow, you know, with them in your career and trajectory to embrace these new technologies and do it in a way that’s transparent and authentic. So I always see it as an opportunity to have these conversations… and… Grow together, Marjorie.

Suzi

I know you have thoughts on this.

Jeremie

Yeah.

Marjorie

My thoughts always go back to prioritizing people at the end of the day. That is what this work is about whether you are building community as part of a larger business model, whether you are creating solo communities, these spaces are not about… the business. These spaces are about the people who engage there and what they are coming there to do and to get out of it. And so always, in my mind and in my heart, it will always be about priority, the people and their experiences and how they want those experiences to materialize within that space. Everything else is a supplement. Everything else is a supplement. So you have to 100 percent prioritize people. And then the rest will be icing on the cake. But if you don’t put them at the forefront, none of the rest of it matters. It doesn’t matter if you have the best AI out there and all the tools that make things super wonderful and super cool. Looking. If the people aren’t there, you don’t have community, you just have a platform with some really neat features.

Suzi

I love that. The analogy that I always like to use is, so I grew up in Texas where there is a church on every corner. And so the analogy that I use is, you know, if you have a church the people go to and the building burns down, does the church still exist or not? And, you know, of course, everyone would say yes, of course, because it’s of the people, it’s not a building that it’s in. And I use the same terms with community and like platforms are just the house. It’s just the building that people are in. But it’s really about the connections and the relationships that people are building with each other. That is the community. So, so really love that people first priority that really resonated with me. Thank you. Okay. Next question from Kathy, what are the top metrics you feel every community should be tracking in the AI era… Marjorie, any initial thoughts here? 

Marjorie

I always, top metrics questions are always tricky to me, right? Because I think that there are so many other factors that go into it. But I think when you’re thinking about AI, specifically, one of the things that I would look at is how it might affect… how it might affect sentiment within the community, how it might affect the way people engage with one another, right? So, we talked a little bit about engagement metrics, and I’m not necessarily talking about… are people clicking on this article? Are they sharing it? Are they viewing the webinar? Are they talking to one another and what you can’t see what they’re saying? But are they still having conversations with one another? Is that interaction still happening is the reason that you brought them together still still materializing in that space? If it’s not, then you need to take a look at whether or not you’re using those tools in the right way. But I think for me that would be the first thing that comes to mind. I think there’s probably some other stuff, but how is it affecting the interactions within that space? Not not so much, necessarily, you know, do they find this really cool? Did this boost our engagement? Are they connecting with one another in different ways? And, and how does that show up? Does that mean that you need to change your community strategy? Those sorts of things, stuff that’s my two cents for what it’s worth.

Suzi

Love it, Jeremie. Do you have a couple of cents to throw in? Yes.

Jeremie

Yeah. I would say keeping a pulse on the Community is critical. Doing regular quarterly surveys where you’re making sure that those intangibles are accounted for and what doesn’t get measured doesn’t get impacted in most contexts. So if you are prioritizing trust and safety, making sure you’re asking, do you feel safe and do you trust us? So those types of qualitative touch points at least quarterly, it would be super important. I think… trying to, you know, a big part of the programs I’ve run is about hosting events… getting leaders on-boarded and ramped. So I’m tracking a lot of that and back to Marjorie’s point. I think not just… I think a lot of what I’m prioritizing as well is… the engagement metrics around threaded conversations as well as our conversations happening in public forms are people feeling confident and you know, safe enough to post in those one to many contexts. How many DMs are happening? If that’s something you can track? I think trying to also gut check any stories that you’re telling with your data with both the quantitative and the qualitative is gonna be huge especially as again, as a through line in this conversation, we’re re thinking what it means to be human in the age of artificial intelligence.

Suzi

Amazing. I have one last really quick, very important question that I saw pop in and we’ll chat and this is for Marjorie specifically, what is your favorite meme?

Marjorie

Gosh. There are so many, there’s one that anytime that either I am over something or somebody says something to me and I’m like really that says just too much but it will always be pun dog. I use pun dog for everything. Anytime I say something that’s corny. I send pun dog and my family’s like this conversation is over, but it’s hilarious to me. I think it’s incredibly funny, but those are my go tos right now.

Suzi

I love sending a meme and then laughing at my own joke. It’s like my favorite thing ever. Well,  looking at the clock now, we are sadly out of time. Thank you very much for all the questions from our audience and the really active chat, you guys were here for it. And of course, thank you for being with us here today, Marjorie, Jeremie, once again, thank you for sharing your insights and expertise with us to our audience.

We will be sharing a recording of this webinar via e-mail, if you have any questions, please just hit reply on that e-mail and let us know. Also a survey link has been dropped into the chat, so we would really really appreciate it if you could just take a minute to give us your feedback on today’s webinar, it just helps us, you know, keep giving you, continuing to give you really great content. So many thanks again to Marjorie, to Jeremy,  and to everyone on the call, we really appreciate it. And I hope everyone has just a wonderful day and continue doing great work building community. 

Marjorie

Thanks everyone. 

Jeremie

Bye bye. Thank you.