The Community Corner with Beth McIntyre Bevy

This is a special episode of the Community Corner podcast as it's the last one for a while for its host, Beth McIntyre.
Over the last year and a half, Beth has spoken with almost seventy community professionals from all different kinds of businesses, managing various communities and community programs. In her last episode, Beth reflects on what she has learned from them.

First of all, there is no one size fits all. One of the biggest challenges we hear from community professionals is the inability to prove the business value or the ROI. There is no one magic metric that will quantify the value of every community. You should ask what value your community is driving. Once you know that, you will be able to work backward and determine the “how”.
Secondly, imposter syndrome will tear you down. Every community leader or manager has a different background. They learn from their life experiences rather than being educated by a degree in community management. As a result, there is a shared feeling among people in the industry that they make it up along the way. Beth describes her mission to end the imposter syndrome in the community industry.

Thirdly, community-led is the future of business. The industry is at a point where community has become a buzzword. Beth shares her thoughts on how community professionals can build sustainable communities that will last and outlast community management teams.

In this episode of The Community Corner, Sheldon Maye joins Beth McIntyre to discuss the strategies and processes for building employee resource groups (ERG). He also shares how he ensures a successful ERG at Accenture and some of the metrics he tracks to prove their value.

ERGs are basically clubs that support employees' professional development and career growth. Sheldon talks about the right time and approach for starting an ERG. He also reveals how they implemented a new scorecard to measure ERG success and the metrics that they’re tracking.

Lastly, Sheldon gives tips and advice for launching and growing an ERG.

Startup Grind is the world's largest startup community of startups, founders, innovators, and creators, with over 600 chapters in 125 countries worldwide, which brings like-minded yet diverse individuals together to connect, learn, teach, help, build, and belong. Phin leads the community and partner success teams.

The advantage of operating in the startup world is seeing the different trends as they develop. One of these trends that Startup Grind has been focusing on more recently is Web 3.

The goal of community managers is building relationships person by person, city by city, product by product, and so on. Keep in mind the numbers, but focus on the relationships you can build.

Managing the community at scale requires you to have community operations, systems, and processes to ensure that you can keep a consistent brand experience.

Zoom is a communications platform that started with video as its foundation. It's known for being intuitive, user-friendly, scalable, and reliable. They launched the Zoom community in August 2021. As the Senior Manager for Global Community, Alexis has the role of strategizing, building, deploying, and growing the community for all zoom users across the globe.
Launching the Zoom community included a specific role specialization approach, where someone on the team manages gamification, other user roles, design, analytics, content strategy, etc. They also focus on a consistent user and customer experience.

Success metrics can be found differently depending on the purpose of your community, your target goals, and capturing the ROI. The Zoom community aims to deliver a happy experience to customers and provide them with a platform to collaborate and share success stories.

When launching a community, strategize and prioritize, think long-term versus short-term, and focus on the end-user experience.

Andreia Tulcidás joins us today to talk about building an advocate program within a community. She takes us through the steps she took to launch the OutSystems' user groups, how they've become an integral part of their community, and how they work together with their leaders to incentivize and reward.

OutSystems is a modern application platform that enables organizations to tackle any critical application.
Building a champion program from the ground up requires understanding the purpose of the program and the people you want to bring value to and finding ways to collaborate and incentivize.

Today, we’re joined by Howard Gray, Founder of Wavetable. He discusses engagement, creating engaging experiences for audiences and community members, and how to inspire them through edutainment and personal stories.

Wavetable is a production studio that integrates a variety of creative experts and educators of learning and live entertainment. The company focuses on learning, discovery, and community-based projects. Wavetable helps brands, influencers, and IP owners uniquely leverage their connection to their fans and followers by developing live, community-driven learning experiences.

Edutainment is a portmanteau of the word education and entertainment. The word describes educational resources and methods that also have an entertaining aspect. Recent trends like gamification, Web 3.0, and community may positively impact the spread of edutainment.

Keeping your work engaging requires you to use different formats and modes for your activities and to switch between them regularly.

To connect with members and their stories without getting too personal, you have to create conditions where people feel that they can enroll in the activity and conversation. Also, find common ground and use inclusive language for the other person.