I created this presentation to highlight some of the milestones in my career as an online community builder over the past 15 years. I hope it can also help other community managers and executives tasked with building and/or growing an online community. This talk includes * Tips for building and growing a new community from scratch * Tips for resurrecting a floundering community * How to connect Support to your community via Slack and other social tools * The perks of a social listening program * How to turn social rants into customer service tickets * The importance of gamification * And much more! My name is Tom Diederich and this presentation is a timeline of sorts highlighting my experiences in the field of online community management, which started in 2005 when I joined an internal team at Intuit that created one of the world’s first online customer communities – a forums-based question-and-answer space for TurboTax customers. The following year, I took everything I learned in that project and joined Symantec -- then the third-largest software company in the world -- where I assembled a nimble team of three and together we designed, launched and managed the organization’s first social media presence and online community in 2006. Yes, I am proud to say that I was Symantec's first community manager and first social media strategist. I’ve been building and managing large corporate communities ever since. I hope this deck helps you in your work with online communities. Please feel free to contact if you'd like to ask any questions, etc.

1. Hello!

2. How to build & grow a new community
1) Start small: Focus on a specific goal (such as creating a
peer-to-peer support forum).
2) Design with potential members in mind: Consider your
potential members’ motivations and interests as you
build spaces for interaction.
3) Prevent anonymity: Require people to register and
log-in before participating in the conversation. Make
registering fast & easy.
4) First impressions are important: Seed the community
with members, groups, activities, and content before
launching.
5) Get early buy-in from internal influencers: Recruit a
business sponsor who can maneuver within the
organization, maintain key relationships, and secure
resources.
6) Incorporate gamification to incentivize activity. The
concept of gamification essentially boils down to
rewarding contribution to your community.
7) An experienced community manager: Look for
someone with a strong background in community
facilitation or management.
8) Plan for growth: Identify the mechanisms (in both
process and technology) that will enable the community
to expand smoothly.
9) Evolve organically: Leave room for unintended positive
developments, such as member groups that emerge
from the ground up.
10) Make it easy to register: Make the commitment small
-- don’t ask for too much personal information up-front.
11) Community guidelines and rules of engagement:
Create a set of guidelines and rules that customers must
observe, such as be respectful
12) Build a robust superuser program: Identify and enlist
brand advocates as part of your social media strategy

3. Build on a solid foundation
Executive buy-in. Make sure that you have the support of the
right internal stakeholders. A community is not an island. It
not only touches customer support, marketing and product
innovation, it reaches across all lines of the business. You
need cross-functional buy-in — everyone needs to have a
little stake in the game.
Clear success metrics that are aligned with business
objectives. Communities need to either accelerate a business
process or make something possible that wasn’t easily
possible in the past. When launching a community, you can
ensure a positive outcome by aligning it around one or two
meaningful business needs with very clear measures and
metrics for success. Once you’ve hit those objectives and
developed best practices around those requirements, you can
then scale to address other business needs.
A platform that integrates with other channel management
tools. If Customer Service is one of your objectives, focus on
delivering a seamless cross-channel experience. You need a
platform that can support your customers and that plays in a
friendly way with other enterprise infrastructures.
A cross-functional team. The size and makeup of your team
will depend on how much you want to do in your community.
Most community teams start with a relatively small team and
then the team will scale as the community expands its
functionality. For example, team expertise may include
customer support, product managers, R&D, a content
manager, analysts, etc.
As with any customer-centric initiative, launching an online community requires vision, planning, goals, resources and strategy. The
following are a few key elements to create a strong foundation for long-term success:

4. Additional
considerations
Be prepared to encounter negative
feedback
Build a process to respond to negative
feedback
Use customer feedback (the good,
bad & ugly) to transform the
customer experience
Define the metrics for data
supporting the business case
Construct a comprehensive crisis
communication plan with PR (just in
case!)

5. GridGain support
forums (2019)
• Launched June
2019 (Higher Logic)
• Gamification
rewards
engagement
• Nucleus for
downloads; release
notes & news
• Slack, email
integration makes
participation easy
• Event registration
simplified (SSO)
• Forums-focused
search to find
answers fast
• Hub for meetup
news & discussions
• Intuitive dropdown
navigation
• Connections
option for
networking

6. Case study (2008):
Cadence Design Systems
• Created community from scratch in 2008 on Telligent
platform. Customers told us they wanted a mailing
list/forums & blog only. We simplified our plans as a
result.
• Promotion of your new community is key. At Cadence,
we put the community front and center on
cadence.com! Yes, directly on the homepage.
• I promoted the new community at local user group
meetings, other events, newsletter blasts, a PR
campaign, blog posts and social media campaigns.
• I looked at blogs in a new way: treating them like a
newspaper with an editorial calendar and “sections”
(categories).
• Blogger Bootcamp: I created a workshop to turn
engineers into content creators. About 1 in 10 become
regular contributors.
• I invited existing customers who had volunteered for
user experience studies to join an early pilot program.
They seeded the forums with answers to commonly
asked support questions and more.

7. How to grow an
existing community
Planting the seeds = Promotion!!!
ü Measured
ü Prioritized
ü Effective

8. Starting from
scratch – almost
• Symantec inherited forums-based community from
Veritas acquisition in 2003. Built on Jive platform.
• The Veritas Architect Network (VAN) experienced 3 years
of autopilot mode until I joined in 2006 -- yet customers
kept it breathing: Namely three “super-users”
(customers) who answered 90% of all customer inquiries.
• Aside from the forums, all other areas of the legacy VAN
community were obsolete. They needed a fresh start. In
late 2006 I turned to the three super-users and we forged
an alliance. Together, we drafted the core elements for
the new community.
• Build or buy? SaaS was the answer. Compared several
platforms but it came down to Lithium, Jive or Telligent.
Lithium best fit our needs.
• My team at Symantec then took that blueprint drafted
with the super-users and in early 2007 we launched….
Case study (2007):
Symantec

9. The Symantec Technology Network (STN)
Tech news
Articles and white papers
written for our IT customers
and prospective customers.
Tech videos
Landing page includes an
embedded video player for product
demos, tech talk & coverage from
Vision and other industry events.
Expert blogs
An informal vehicle for talking
directly to customers and
partners on topics and issues
that matter to them.
Forums
Q&A and threaded discussion
on topics related to Symantec’s
products. Email enabled.

10. Ways to promote
your community
Website
(1st priority)
Email
(2nd priority)
Social web
(3rd priority)
Event/other
(4th priority)
SEO mojo: Public
communities get
70-80% of traffic
from search

11. “Draft” off events
& issues
• Capitalize on the momentum from
events like product launches,
conferences, webinars, meetups
(etc.) and issues (bugs) to drive
conversations to the community.

12. More community
growth secrets!
• Registration: Make it easy &
unitary (you become a
community member when you
become a customer)
• Engagement: Calls to action;
notification; recognition
• Superusers: Identify; invite;
engage; reward

13. Listen, triage, engage & analyze…
CUSTOMERS USUALLY DON'T SHARE
EVERY ISSUE WITH CUSTOMER
SERVICE. THEY VENT ON SOCIAL
MEDIA. MANAGE BRAND RISK AND
BOOST NET PROMOTER SCORES
RESOLVE CUSTOMERS’ NEEDS
QUICKLY, EASILY, AND PERSONALLY BY
BEING INSTANTLY ACCESSIBLE IN THEIR
CHANNEL OF CHOICE. DECREASE
CHURN BY ENGAGING MORE
CUSTOMERS.
INTEGRATED LISTENING:
OPPORTUNITY TO ENGAGE ON ALL
PUBLIC DIGITAL CONVERSATIONS. USE
AI BASED TRIAGING: EVERY MESSAGE
IS READ BY AI MODEL, FILTERING SPAM
& NOISE FROM THE INBOX OF
COMMUNITY MANAGER
…across all social & messaging channels

14. Engage with
customers where
they engage with
your brand
• Customers like Jerry don’t always
contact Support. They vent on
your social media pages.
• Often in a “thread-jacking” style
post (an off-topic post)
• Turn their rants into Support
tickets and delight them with a
quick resolution.
• Requires investment in advanced
social listening & engagement
tools. ROI will eventually offset
these costs.

15. USAA turn social
rants into customer
service tickets
• Created a social media management support strategy to
drive support savings.
• Integrated platform data into their Client Relationship
Manager (CRM) to create a cross-channel, 360-degree
customer view for seamless service.
• Customized the platform with features that improved
customer experience, including real-time member name
to social handle match and advanced agent routing
• Drove support savings by removing 25+ manual
processes including manual internal social customer care
documentation.

16. Tom’s project/program
management process
1) Project Initiation Phase – a project is formally started,
named and defined at a broad level during this phase.
2) Project Planning Phase – a project management plan
is developed comprehensively of individual plans for –
cost, scope, duration, quality, communication, risk and
resources.
3) Project Execution Phase – a project deliverable is
developed and completed, adhering to a mapped-out
plan.
4) Project Monitoring and Control Phase – occurring at
the same time as the execution phase, this one mostly
deals with measuring the project performance and
progression in accordance to the project plan.
5) Project Closure Phase – A project is formally closed.

17. Nuts & bolts
I ask myself 5 questions before every project:
1) How do I visualize the end-goal? I visualize in
a concrete way what the end-goal looks like
and what it will mean for my organization.
2) Does the team share the same vision? I
make sure we are all on the same page.
3) Am I set to embrace change? Things happen.
Go with the flow but steer the ship. Make
the tough decisions and follow through.
4) Am I communicating with the team and
stakeholders? Craft a communications plan
to regularly share progress, challenges, daily
activities and achievements.
5) How is execution supported internally?
Project management tools such as Wrike,
Jira, etc. help to ensure that nothing gets
dropped and the plan stays on course.

18. Examples @social

19. More examples
@social….

20. …and a few more @social

21. Thank you!
Let’s connect
• Email: tdieds@me.com
• Twitter: https://twitter.com/Dieds
• Facebook: www.facebook.com/Dieds
• LinkedIn: www.linkedin.com/in/tomdiederich