Jennifer Riggins

In Community (or any role really), it’s important to do a review/audit/hygiene check on the basics of your programs. 🤔 Do you need all of the integrations or apps you have today? Can you clean it up or switch tools and make things more efficient? 🤔 Do workflows work according to plan regularly or do you need to update them? 🤔 Is everything for your programs on-brand, per se, especially if your Community has a different brand than your company? 🤔 Are there opportunities to work cross-functionally that add value to other teams to gain additional support for your work? 🤔 Are the various areas of your program DEIBA-minded to create a positive experience for all people? 🤔 Is your documentation up to snuff, allowing you and others on your team to actually take PTO and be 100% unplugged? 🤔 Have you celebrated a win from your work internally to market your program and success/learnings in your company? All of these are free to do and help you get in a good operating cadence to build a strong foundation for your Community program ⭐️

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Are we in a ‘’community recession’’? 🤔 📉 The state of the community industry is one of my favorite topics. I’m talking to community pro’s almost daily and currently, my vibe-o-meter indicates ‘’low’’ 🪫 Richard Millington was pointing this out recently too (https://lnkd.in/ezxDb2Ww). From his POV, recent layoffs, budget cuts and restructuring among community ranks seem to affect the more senior community roles. He’s also seeing less community consultants out there. Another signal I picked up on was the pivot made by Commsor 🦕 at the beginning of the year. I went down a rabbit hole of their content about all things ‘’community-led’’, it’s awesome and so well thought out (shout out Mac Reddin 🦕). A year ago they started framing things into more of a GTM/‘’go-to-network’’ lens. I think they’re on the something, exploring the intersection of partnerships program, ecosystem-led strategies and nearbound marketing. To my sense though, this ‘’valley of tears’’ (not sure who called it like that but it stuck, for better or worse lol) is merely a phase. We’re still recovering from the pandemic fueled, web3 and metaverse-driven hype around online communities. This isn’t unique to community either. There is a similar conversation going on in the sustainability world. John Elkington coined the term ‘’sustainability recession’’ to label the current backlash around ESG following years of greenwashing and virtue signalling. Article in comments. What I see though are reasons to be optimistic: ➡ The same way the best startups are born in bear markets, I believe the current fire will forge a solid next generation of communities and builders and elevate the field to its A-game ➡ The body of knowledge that was built up during the pandemic made the the field grow leaps and bound. Books, podcasts, community-focused funds, conferences, associations. The maturity of the conversations around community as a business playbook have grown so much and set a new watermark. ➡ The challenges we face, from the ‘’loneliness crisis’’ to the climate crisis, aren’t going away. To solve them, the key is more connection, concerted action and mission-driven collaboration. Literal movements that capture the hearts and minds and bring people together. ➡ This goes back to the golden rule though: community pros need to be absolutely RAZOR SHARP in communicating and proving their business value and ‘’community-influenced’’ ROI. Results results results. I truly believe there is MASSIVE potential for businesses in better orchestrating their ecosystems and harnessing the trust and goodwill around their brands with community-led playbooks. My thoughts on this are evolving, but I do feel optimistic about the future of community. Curious to hear what other practitioners are seeing.

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PSA: microlearning is *not* just making stuff shorter. If you're just cutting videos down into smaller segments, or making a 20-minute SCORM file, or sending people to a third-party app or system they don't regularly use, you will unfortunately fail at getting the outcomes you want and will frustrate your audience in the process. Effective microlearning is about intentionality — it's about: (a) being hyper-intentional about what we *actually* want people to understand and what actions we need them to take, not just giving them tons of info (b) making the user experience of learning far more human-centered, and building learning into tools people already use (Slack, Teams, SMS, etc.) (c) supporting people with just the right amount of knowledge in critical moments of need + supporting moments of practice and nudges to action Remember: 95% of an employee's time is spent in messaging tools, video-conferencing tools, and core systems of work (i.e. word processors, coding environments, etc.) If you send people outside of those systems, it doesn't matter how short the content is: you won't get much engagement or long-term impact.

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I have been doing some really interesting work in the online community space & revisited my "10% Rule of Community Engagement" I came up with in the 2000s while working as a full time community manager. My theory was the amount of people who engage with online communities is a fraction of those who visit them. Engagement increases in (very rough) 10% sections of total visitors. I spent 2009-2013 working in the local government space & noticed a similar pattern for engagements with local councils. To summarise roughly 0.1% (or 1 in 1,000) are "Very Engaged" & often dominate discourse in online communities & local government. For added fun 10% of that 0.1% are "Constantly Engaged" & that's where things can get really crazy. A friend who works in local government recently mentioned they'd worked out that "X" number of people were dominating council engagement - it didn't surprise me that X times 1,000 was almost the population of that council. So, anecdotally, my 10% Rule still holds water. If you've made it this far, yes I'm involved in building an online community right now - for a topic that's close to my heart (which isn't mountain biking).

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