Involving Stakeholders in Your Online Community

There are many types of organizations that use online communities. Regardless of whether your online presence supports a small company, large corporation, non-profit, or association, your constituency will reflect the purposes and goals for which the community exists. Some vibrant communities consist only of enthusiastic customers, while others will require the involvement of individuals in all levels of the organization’s hierarchy in order to be successful. Still other communities will have stakeholders both inside and outside the organization. How do you decide who to invite to the party and how to engage them?

First identify all potential stakeholders and investigate their motivations. While it’s easy to understand why the customers or fans devoted to a particular brand might join a community in order to keep up with the latest trends or get support for a product, for example, it’s not correct to assume that your employees, executives or sales force will be as enthusiastic about participating online. As a community manager, your job is to identify and attract those crucial to the community's growth and sustainability.

“An online community is in some ways a community within a community...” according to Joe Rominiecki, Senior Editor for Associations Now, an online trade publication. As Rominiecki explains, your organization is already a community with it’s own leadership structure and internal rules. Being intentional about how you structure your online community governance within the larger organization will go a long way toward ensuring that your community is active and successful and attracts the necessary participants.

Take a moment to first divide your potential stakeholders list into groups internal and external to your organization, including:

Internal

• General employees/staff
• Departments or teams (e.g. sales, marketing, legal, production, R&D, etc.)
• Management, executives, board members
• Online community staff or volunteers

External

• Customers or clients
• Prospective customers
• Volunteers
• Fans
• External partners (e.g. associations, advocacy groups, government agencies, publications, etc.)

When looking at internal stakeholders, you’ll want to develop a strategy for each group. For many online communities, buy-in from the top is a crucial aspect of success, and the logical place to start. Indeed, according to the Community Roundtable’s SOCM 2015 report, “Over 80% of best-in-class communities have their budgets approved by C or VP- level executives, suggesting alignment with strategic corporate objectives.”  Convincing top-brass to fund your community may not be sufficient. Research shows that getting the CEO involved in the conversation can actually raise member engagement because members of the community want to feel they are being heard by management. This is particularly true for in-house communities, but can also apply to communities external to a company, such as fan or product support communities. 

Make it easy for busy CEOs and board members to participate by providing them with a content calendar and a simple system for scheduling their content. Or consider scheduling 15-minute meetings to interview high-ranking managers on hot topics and issues of interest to your members. Keep it short, timely, and avoid posting content that is canned, full of jargon or out-of-sync with the conversation. Most important, make yourself available to coach your organization’s executives on how best to participate online.

Ditto for department heads and team leaders who are often over-worked and feel the squeeze from top and bottom. Make the case for their participation by showing ROI of their time spent online. Provide a well-organized and structured platform for showcasing their expertise, touting their achievements or promoting their ideas.

Employees, especially post-recession, might be particularly hard to win-over when it comes to asking, inviting or even requiring participation in online communities. In the next post we’ll look at specific ways to encourage involvement.

And finally, don’t forget to involve the members themselves in the running of the community. Tap active members to post content, moderate discussions, recruit new members or plan live events. Partner members with employers or staff on projects designed to foster a sense of community on both sides of the fence.