Even though community management is just a small part of my responsibilities as Communications & PR manager for a small staff association (SFPE, the Society of Fire Protection Engineers), if you read this blog you know I’ve always been and will probably always be passionate about community management. Especially in the context of associations, I think online community is hugely important in terms of member engagement and retention, and that a private online community is proving to be effective in terms of member retention. (Note to readers and to self: I need to do an update of that post based on MGI’s 2015 Membership Marketing Benchmark Report and the 2015 Community Benchmarking Report). So I was thrilled when Higher Logic asked if I’d be willing to live blog their annual user conference, the Higher Logic Super Forum. Not only do I have many great friends at Higher Logic (shoutout to one of my favorite friends Lauren Wolfe) but I’ve attended several times in the past and it’s always a great event.
Yesterday was the first of the two-day conference (you can follow along on Twitter by watching #HLSF15) and I was really impressed to see a dramatic shift from previous years away from straight tactics to the importance of community management. The opening keynote, Vanessa DiMauro, CEO of Leader Networks, was amazing and a rare keynote that actually focused on community management as it relates specifically to associations. There were sessions on the evolution of community management, the psychology of online community participation by community management guru Rich Millington (you can view his presentation here) and, perhaps best of all for me, my pals from The Community Roundtable are here and I finally got to meet Hillary Boucher IRL and she is even more awesome in person.
I’ll be posting a few more times over the next week or two about other insights from the Super Forum, but in the meantime, follow #HLSF15 on Twitter to see what others are tweeting about during the conference. Lots of great tweets from an engaged audience and lots of excitement about community management–yay!
Shared value is what the org and members create together that they could not create alone. – @rhappe #HLSF15
— Hillary Boucher (@hillaryboucher) October 22, 2015
Evolution of cmty: share out loud -comfort, ask out loud-trust, validate out loud-connection, solve out loud-partnership @rhappe #HLSF15 — Laura Brook (@LauraLBrook) October 22, 2015
Be patient with your community. Once there is a level of comfort they’ll trust it enough to share and ask. #HLSF15
— Kait Solomon (@KaitlinSolomon3) October 22, 2015
Define the behaviors that generate value for YOUR community. #HLSF15 @rhappe pic.twitter.com/cZPfsDLiXE — Janna Crabb (@jcrabb) October 22, 2015
And saving the best for last:
THAT ORANGE JACKET DOE… #HLSF15 @rwenger pic.twitter.com/Coy12jTX7o
— Brent Wood McConnell (@BrentWood50) October 21, 2015
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