Hello and welcome to Bad Community Advice. This is a show with terrible tips and toxic takeaways. My name is Seth Resler. I am your host and I'm really excited about the conversation that we're gonna have to today because we, today we're gonna talk about where community management should reside within an organization. Where does it fit in the org chart? 'cause there's all kinds of different places that you see it. Sometimes it's in marketing or in sales, or in customer support. We'll talk about the pros and cons of each of those as you're starting to think about launching a community. Where do you wanna put it? Where does it really fit in? My guest is the head of Marketing and Community at Gradual. He's also the author of a new book. It is called The Community Code. He spent his career building community programs and companies like Asana and Evernote, and he now focuses on community integrated go-to market strategies. Along the way. He's gotten plenty of advice that sounded right at the time, but it really didn't hold up in practice. So we're great to have him here. Please welcome Joshua Zerkel. Hi Josh. How are you?
Hi, Seth. Thanks for having me. Oh, thanks. Congratulations on the book. I mean, this is a, is this your first, this is a, a, a big deal to write a book. Yeah. This is my first book about community building, so I am excited to put it out there and very, very happy to see the response people have had to it.
It's fantastic. I, I really enjoyed it. So, uh, I I'm so glad that you, you put it together. Uh, and I'm thrilled about the conversation that we're gonna have today. 'cause we're gonna talk about this really important question. We haven't covered it on the podcast before, which is, where does community management, you know, if you've got somebody with a job title, like community manager or the person who is essentially in charge of running the community. And if you're lucky enough, if you're a big enough organization to have a team that's doing that, uh, where do they actually fit in the organization? But before we get to that, um, couple of things. First of all, I do wanna point out that
this podcast, the audience is really
content creators for the most part. It is podcasters, you know, YouTubers, email newsletter writers, and you historically have worked with larger organizations, enterprise organizations. Sometimes that's different, but there's also a lot of principles that apply. But tell me a little bit about your history and how you got involved in community. Yeah, I've been in the community space for longer than I care to admit, close to 20 years now. And I have, as you mentioned, historically worked with organizations that are of size. So places like Asana, Evernote, and so on. Uh, and now I lead community and marketing at another organization that focuses on enterprise communities. But you're right in that the, the concepts, the concepts are essentially the same because at the end of the day, when you're working in building community, you're working with and for people. And the main difference between building an enterprise community and a community of, of
people who are in your creator economy
is just the size and the scale of it. But the concepts of how you engage people, the types of activities you'll do with them, and the processes for running a community are more similar than different. And whether I've worked for B2C or B2B companies, I still treat the people who are part of the community program as people. It's the same thing. Just the activities that we do in the ways that we engage them might, might
vary a little bit. So
I'm hoping that for those of you that are listening to this podcast, there's still things that you can take away from some of the lessons that I'm hoping to share with you. Yeah.
Can you talk a little bit about, uh, Evernote and how you wound up working there? Because you were running an Evernote community before you were actually working for Evernote, right? How did that work? Y
yeah, my journey to Evernote was pretty interesting. So in a prior life I was a productivity consultant, which meant essentially that I was helping people understand how to use technology in their day-to-day work and in their day-to-day lives. And as part of that, one of the tools that I had in my tool bag was Evernote. I was a huge fan. I ended up teaching a bunch of classes on how to use it. I wrote two books on how to put it to work. And because I'm in San Francisco and the company, Evernote was based in Redwood City just down the peninsula, I ended up getting to know the people at the company really well.
And at some point they said, you know, the thing that you're doing out there in the world, building this community and teaching people how to use this tool, please come do that for us officially. And so that led me to join Evernote officially, where I, I ended up building and leading the community program there, which at the time we had 200 million registered users globally. The community size, scale and level of engagement was just off the charts. And so I took those lessons that I learned from being someone in the community myself to what I wanted to build for the members of our own community officially when I led the program there.
So I had a pretty interesting journey from being outside of the, the company and building the community on my own towards officially leading it and building it on behalf of the company itself.
Yeah, I,
I think there's an important lesson in that, in that, um, so often if you are a business and you're looking to recruit people who know your product, know your service, are passionate about it, or really into it, there's a good chance that they may already be in your community. And that's a great place to look for candidates to hire, right? That's right. That you won't find people who are more excited about your product than the people who are part of your community. Those are people who love it, who want to learn how to use it, who are excited about what you have to offer and want to talk about it with other people. And each of those ingredients is essential towards building a really truly healthy and engaged community. And if you look, you'll probably find those people, if you're building something or putting information out there or have created a product or service, ideally you have people who are really passionate about it. Those are the people that you want to recruit into your community because those are the ones who will help engage the other members who are there as part of it as well. Yeah. We should also point out that your biggest critics may be in there as well. And I know sometimes people are afraid to start a community 'cause they're like, I don't want people to complain. Um, but the people who complain are the people who care, right?
The people who dive in and say, I hate when Marvel does this, are Marvel's biggest fans, right? That's right. I mean, has that been your experience as well? Absolutely. You, you don't get one without the other. I if people care, they care in both directions. They care when they love something and they care when they don't. And the truth is, if people are saying things that are hard for you to hear, it's probably important that you listen because not necessarily that you need to do exactly what they're saying or change the things that they're not happy about, but their feedback is such because it means something to them. And if you want people to be excited about what you're building, if you want them to care enough to put down their money towards whatever it is that you're building, you need to understand that in the community space, you're gonna get the unvarnished truth. You're gonna hear what people are really excited about, what they love, what they're passionate about, and you're gonna hear what's not resonating.
And it's important that you be able to listen to both. And sometimes the hard truths tell us things that we need to hear. Oftentimes when we're inside of a company,
we get really excited about, we're building, we're inside of our own echo chamber listening to other members of our team, we're hearing from leadership mandates that they may have that are their own ideas, but maybe they may not reflect what customers actually want. And so when we're in that echo chamber, we often lose sight of what it is that the people who are actually trying to serve want and what they need. And in the community, you get that direct feedback, that intimate, here's what it really means, here's the words I'm actually using, here's what customers are actually saying. And that's what you get when you have a community. We get both the really positive and you get sometimes the harder to hear,
and you need to be able to accept and listen to both.
Hmm.
Um, so let's talk about the organization that you're with now. Tell us about Gradual, what do they do and what are you doing there?
Yeah, so Gradual is a community management and engagement platform. So I, it's, I designed for enterprise customers. So we have really large customers using it, like OpenAI, for instance, to engage their own communities. So for me, this is the first time that I've actually been at a community vendor. I've usually been on the other side where I'm the one purchasing tools like these. And actually before I joined Gradual to lead their marketing and their community programs. I was actually a customer when I was working at a company called Hagen, building out their community program. And so for me, it's an interesting full circle experience where typically I'm the buyer, uh, this time I'm the vendor, but I get to inform the vendor about what community builders actually need, the types of things that are important for us in our work ways that we want to engage our customers. So it's really interesting for me to do this work and as part of it, I get to consult with our customers on their own community programs and advise them on how to be successful. Yeah.
You mentioned open ai. I mean, I think one of the things that's been interesting is that these AI companies look like they are taking the concept of community very seriously. Uh, have you found that in, in your experience? I have, yeah. Both in, in the work that I'm doing at gradually in my own conversations with people running communities at each of these companies, every single AI company that I've spoken with takes community really seriously. One, as a place for customer feedback and, and ideas, but two, also to counterbalance the narrative that AI is dehumanizing. I I'm looking at this more now as an AI plus community rather than AI or community because there's a place for people to actually connect and share ideas. AI is still really new to most of us, and anyone who tells you they know everything about AI is probably a liar. And so what I think is more interesting is where people are building communities for ai, about where they're sharing ideas for how to put AI to use ways that they're pairing it with other existing processes, systems and tools in their work and how they're finding real value. And this is human to human connection that is supporting one another using tools that I think on the face of it could look at as being dehumanizing or cold. But what I'm seeing more and more is AI companies are putting community at the center of their go-to market motions.
Yeah.
Alright. One last question before we get to your terrible advice, uh, and that is this. Um, I know that you went to CMX for the first time you spoke, uh, I did. And I kind of wanna tell people who are not familiar with CMX the conference, what happens there, and tell me about your experience going for the first time.
Yeah, it's ironic because I, I have known CMX for many, many years and it's based here in the Bay Area. I just had never had a chance to attend. And so I, I recently spoke, I gave a keynote about, um,
how, uh, basically we in the community world have said community led growth is a thing that's happening. And my whole perspective is not only did it really not exactly happen, but it's probably not the right framing for where we want to go moving forward. And so my experience there was,
uh, enthusiastically super positive. I
was there and met so many of my peers. CMX is a group for community professionals. And so this was an experience where I got to really share ideas with people in the room who already understand the work that I do, and were able to speak the same language together. And so for me it was overwhelmingly positive. CMX has been very supportive of my book launch and I'm very, very appreciative of them and all that they're doing for the community industry.
All right. Uh, well, CMX is all about, um, gathering community managers. Um, let's talk to organizations that, um, maybe thinking about launching a community and don't have one yet and, and are wondering where it fits in their org chart. And that leads directly into your bad advice. That bad advice is treat community like a marketing channel.
And when I asked you for your bad advice, you actually sent over two pieces of bad advice. The other one is, it's okay if community does its own thing, but I think what we're getting at here is exactly this question of where does it fit into the org chart. Uh, and you spend quite a bit of time talking about this in the book and, and you go through some of the different places where it appears in the org chart and you talk about the strengths and the weaknesses of having it in each of those departments. So I wanna start by going through those and let's, let's actually start with marketing. Um, yeah. If you were to take a com, uh, you know, a, a community, either a community manager or if you've got a team for it, what are the advantages and disadvantages of putting that in the marketing department?
Yeah, there, there, so community can and does sit in many different places within an or currently each one has its own pros and cons. Uh, the most common place I see communities sit currently is within marketing. And the pros of having it within marketing is that typically you're closer to the channels, the the places that you need in order to reach people. Marketing typically owns things like the website, the blog, social media, email and so on. And they have access to resources like design and content creation. These are all things that you need when you're building a community. Sitting within marketing usually gives you closer access, if not direct access to each of those tools and channels in those places that content gets created.
The downside is that most marketing is one direction. You send something out, like let's say an email or a pay digital ad, and then someone on the recipient side does something, they click or they read something.
But this is not what community actually does. A marketing channel is something that you broadcast through, but community is a system where customers create value for each other through relationships. And the company provides the space, the platform, the opportunities and the engagement activities to help make that channel that happen. And so
when community sits within marketing, they often end up treating community like yet another marketing channel to broadcast messages through. And so typically they optimize for things like posts or campaigns or community events or impressions. All of these things are part of a community program typically, but these are not endpoints unto themselves because none of these things build relationships. They just put messages in front of people.
And that's typically what marketing's job is, is to put messages in front of people. And so the result if you put community within marketing and treat it like a marketing channel, is that you often have a, a busy community with lots of messages and lots of activity, but it doesn't actually change customer's behavior in any meaningful way.
And so you often end up looking at metrics like, how many views were there on a post, or how many events did we have and how many people attended? Not,
did we deepen the, uh, relationships with these customers? Did there have any specific outcomes on their accounts? Were people engaging and utilizing our tool or platform more as a result of them seeing these marketing messages? Typically, you don't connect the dots in that way. So, uh,
when I think about the example at Asana, the most valuable outcomes weren't things that corporate marketing pushed out. The most valuable things in our community came from ambassadors, creating content on their own or answering each other's questions. Peer education that was happening, uh, people hosting their own local events and meetups, customer generated content, these are not things that marketing typically is responsible for. So
if I think about it,
marketing channels, distributed information community really is about building and distributing trust and relationships. So when you think about putting community within marketing, know that there are these trade offs involved. Yeah, and to be clear, I mean, community can have huge benefits for the marketing department. I mean absolutely, like you said, it, it can create essentially evangelists for your product, people who will spread the word. It absolutely can for you. Uh, but part of it is that community has value beyond just the marketing department, right? Yeah. I i I think that the challenge with marketers is that they're used to these one directional types of activities, and those are not wrong. They're a piece of the puzzle. But the, the critical part is if you're working and you're sitting within a marketing org, is to help the other people who are part of marketing understand that if I'm a community leader, if I do my job well, I send out a message to the community and they respond back. And then the conversation continues as opposed to if I'm a marketer and I send out a marketing message,
um, they receive it and then they click or they do something else, but they're not typically engaging in a person to person sort of way. And so these things can sit in parallel and can work and should work alongside each other. And there's a tremendous amount of value that community can offer to marketing. Everything from being able to test marketing messages, to seeing how new campaigns land, to getting early input on
designs and campaigns that are before they even go out into the world. And of course all the evangelism and amplification that happens because of community, but marketers need to understand how community works in order to really leverage community in a way that's effective for this as its own specific type of motion. Yeah.
And that leads to this idea that
often the skills to be a great marketer are not exactly the same skills that you need to be a great community manager. I, I often see in smaller organizations people wanna conflate the role of social media manager with community manager and social media is not exclusively, but a lot of it is just about creating content, right? Yes. And, and that's the skill and that's the thing you need to be really good at. And I almost think of a community manager as more like a party host who just makes everybody feel welcome in the room. And that's a different skillset, right?
It's, it's funny because they're, they're related, they're so close together, but they're not exactly the same. The, the role of social media is typically to engage people at huge scale, to create content and conversations that engage people very publicly in most cases in a way that's engaging and shareable. Whereas in the community space, you're looking to create engagement and often via conversations, but at a different scale, at a different level of depth because you're not looking for like surface level engagement, you're really looking for people to engage in a way that makes them feel that there's a trustworthy organization, uh, and relationships that are within it for this specific community, that there's ways for them to engage aside from social media that may feel more relevant for them, whether that's at events or informed discussions or by sharing content. So these things are related and they can and probably should work together, but they're not exactly the same. It's related, but different skillsets. Yeah.
Alright. So with marketing, we're talking about, uh, engaging people before they're a customer. Let's talk about another place that community could sit within an organization. And this deals primarily with people after they become a customer. Uh, you actually in the book, uh, draw distinctions between customer support and customer success and customer experience. And that was the first time I went with this guy, works for bigger organizations than the ones that I've,
I've never had the luxury of splitting those hairs, um, because quite often, frankly, I'm working with organizations where the CEO and the janitor are the same.
Yeah. You know, the same position. But let's kind of roll those up into one ball and, and talk about customer support or customer success. What are the advantages and disadvantages of having the community manager or the community team reside in that organ that sure. Part of the organization? Sure. The po the post-sale, post-conversion world. Yeah. So in, in larger organizations, often these functions are split out, but for simplicity sake, let's just talk about them as one. So basically, if, if community sits in this post signup, post-conversion post-sale world, there are some definite benefits there. Typically, people come to a community because they're excited about the product or the service. When you sit community in the post-conversion world, then typically there's a, a great depth of knowledge about the product, about the service that you can speak to within the community to answer people's questions in a great deal of depth with a fine grain level of detail, so that people feel like their questions are really being addressed. You can engage them in new ways to use the product or service that they might not have thought of because you sit in the world where that product expertise really exists.
And so you end up with a, a community that's really focused around getting people to get higher leverage, higher use out of the thing that they're signing up to the community for. So that can be of real value to the people who are part of the community. However, when you sit community in this space, it often is closely tied to product metrics or usage metrics, and you lose all of that access and the, the reach of a marketing centric community. So while you may be focused on the depth and the engagement and the retention of customers, you may miss out on all the things that are about
spreading the word about the product. You might miss out on all the channels that you have access to. When you're part of an a marketing organization, you may miss out on the ability to put people who are in the community and really active in part of marketing campaigns because you're distanced from that organization. So this is another place where there's trade offs to be made where you may decide that what your business needs right now is to really focus on getting people to use the product more effectively and retaining it better, or using your service in greater depth. And maybe you make a trade off that actually
the advocacy, the awareness building, the ability to really leverage marketing surfaces is less of a priority at this point in time. And so that's where you decide, you know, maybe this is where the place that community should, should live is for the time being.
And so this is where there's definite trade offs because people who live in the, the post sale, post-conversion world, they're not thinking with the marketing hat, they're not trying to spread messages, they're trying to keep the customers who are under the umbrella already. And so this is where like things really vary from department to department about what the priorities are and, and what community is really designed to drive.
Yeah. Uh, my sense is that with a lot of software as a service companies, this is where you see community live or, or at least you know, originally that that's kind of where it grew out of that, that people, you know, the way I describe it is once upon a time, if you wanted help with something, you had to submit a ticket. And these companies sort of realized that they were answering the same questions over and over again. They said, what? We just threw these people in a group and let 'em answer each other's questions. And that That's right. Community often grew out of that, and then they discovered all these other benefits to community that maybe they didn't expect. Is that is, that's exactly it. Historically, in, in SaaS companies community has been an offshoot of support where by that definition community's main function was deflecting support tickets. So by sending people to community, typically in the, the guise of the community forum, which is where you can ask and answer questions in a threaded conversation,
by doing so, we can have fewer support tickets come in. And so think of it as support at scale.
And I think along the way people realize like, hey, actually we have this group of people, they're in this forum, but we can do a lot more with them and offer them a lot more value. And the, the true meaning of community sprung out of that. Um, in many organizations, community is still looked at as an offshoot of support.
That is a function that community can definitely serve. But to me that's extremely reductive as to what's possible with it. And somewhat ironically,
community is typically the people who are the most excited customers that you'll have.
Treating them as an offshoot of support seems like maybe you should think a little bit bigger than that because these are people excited. Let's see what we can do with them and how we can celebrate them. Typically, if, if placed within a support organization, the people who are within support are focused on clearing out tickets, they're not focused on how do we make the most value for these customers? How do we create a space that creates value for them and for the business? And how do we make this as big and as impactful for the business as possible? Because they're, they're often in a space where they're just trying to clear out the queue. And that's so, so small an idea of what community is possible and what what can come from a really effective community.
Yeah. When you say that it's reductive, I mean, what I take from that is
there's a difference between a crowdsource knowledge base and, and what we actually mean when we say community. I mean, it's great if my inkjet printer breaks and I just need a to go look up how to fix it. But that's right. That's not the same as there being a group of people and, and having a sense of belonging and connection to those other people. It's totally different, totally different. It's, it can be the same people, but how you direct them as a community builder, the types of things you offer them in terms of ways they can participate and the things that they can do in the community and the ways they can share ideas with one another that will really affect whether it feels like a real community or more transactional. I have a question. I go to the forum, I get my question answered, and I'm out.
That's the old way of looking at community. And I think more modern community builders, more savvy organizations understand that when you have a group of passionate customers, there's a lot that you can offer them. And, and there's a lot that they'll be willing to do for you if you set up the community in the right way.
Yeah.
Um,
okay, great. That's fantastic. So we've talked about before the sale, we've talked about after the sale. Let's talk about the sale. Uh, does community ever live in the sales department? And if so, what are the pros and cons of that?
Yeah, it absolutely can. It doesn't usually, at least not historically, but there are some organizations where they place community either directly within a sales organization or revenue organization, or sometimes within revenue marketing, which is like the precursor to sales type of marketing.
Um, the pros of it is that, hey, where the money is is typically in sales and you have more resources to do things with community when you have more money available to spend on the program. Because typically programs that are designed directly to affect revenue have money to run the programs, which is a very nice place to be.
The downside is that community is typically not a short term transactional type of process. Like, like any relationship, it takes time. And so I've often found when community sits within a sales org, it's usually directly tied to things like
pipeline or revenue goals.
It can work, but it is tough because there usually isn't a straight line between someone did this thing in community and then there's a direct pipeline influence after it. Usually it's pipeline influence, but over time. And so someone may attend multiple community events or attend a community webinar as well as go into a community forum and access resources from the community, multiple touch points that lead to pu pipeline influence. And so this is not a straight line where it's the same as you host a, uh, executive dinner briefing and then there's pipeline that comes right out of it. Community is more of a cumulative effect that takes time. And so it's totally fine if a community sits within a revenue organization with the understanding that community building is a long-term play and not a short term one. Yeah. So this is something that I hear from community managers often, which is that it is difficult to show the ROI on community within their own organization and to kind of justify their existence and say, Hey, here's what we're doing and here's why that matters. And look, I I, you know, I come outta marketing, right? And there was a time when marketing was an art. It was Don Draper walking in with, Hey, here's the image and the slogan. And then the internet came along and everybody started to think of marketing as a science. Oh, how many clicks? What's the conversion rate? This, that, and that's right. And I think the effect of that is people now expect, oh, everything can be a science. We can assign numbers and data to everything, including community. And you know, as you say, it's, it's about relationships, it's about belonging. It's long term. It's, you know,
if you put community in the sales department, is it easier to demonstrate that ROII think it's equally easy with, regardless of which organization you're part of, but it all comes down to one being clear on what the goal, the business goal of community is, what specifically you're trying to drive, which typically should be the same as other goals that other parts of the business are trying to drive.
And then two, do you have access to the data and the dashboards that will help you show that you're actually driving towards those goals? Most of the time, most community programs that I talk to are missing both of these things. So one is they don't have a clear goal for what the community is supposed to be doing. So they end up anchoring on engagement metrics or what I call program health metrics. Things like how many people are part of the community, how many tools within the community are they're accessing, how many events have you hosted, and how many people have attended. You need to look at these things because they'll tell you whether the program itself is engaging to your members, but none of those things tell you whether they're making any impact on the business. And so you need the next level of metrics to be able to show things like ROI,
and that could be things like pipeline influence. If you're sitting within a revenue organization, it could be things like
amplification of existing marketing messages. There's many different ways that you would tie community metrics directly to things that other people in the business are already reporting on. So it doesn't feel like community is off doing its own thing. Instead, it feels like community is, is one of the elements leading up to these bigger goals. So I think it's equally easy regardless of what organization you're part of, as long as you, as you have clarity on the goals and you have access to the data that can show it. Yeah.
Uh, in your experience and with the organizations that you work with, I guess we should ask this, uh, is,
is community ever the product? Is it ever the thing that they are selling or is it usually in support of some other product or service that they offer?
In the organizations that I've been part of, community is part of the overall picture, but it's not the thing that they're selling. There are companies and typically it's more creator owned communities that the, the community is the product. But for me, the organizations that I've been part of community is in support of the, the larger business, the larger product that's being offered or the service that's being offered.
Okay.
Let's talk about one more place the community could live and then we'll talk about where you actually think it should live. Uh, but that, that is with product, um mm-hmm.
What,
you know, does that mean and what does it look like when community's there? What are the advantages and disadvantages?
Yeah, so this is one that I'm seeing increasingly is having community directly be part of the product org. When it's part of product, obviously it's close to the product itself. So product teams typically value things from community, like customer feedback, what are people saying? How are product's landing? What people have trouble with, where things are missing. And so that feedback loop of
we have this product, we are making a new launch or we're making a change, what are people saying? What are they doing? How are they reacting? Having that be really close to product is great because then that can directly inform the roadmap.
The downside of this is that you're really disconnected from all of the marketing channels, anything related to revenue, anything related to like retention, et cetera. These are typically not the goals of a product org. And so while community can impact all of those other things, they're typically not the priority when community sits within product. And so
this becomes an, an effort for the community builder to help con connect and reconnect the dots to those other parts of the org because you may not have access to the channels that you need to really build the community the way that you want it to, or you may not have access to the data that you need to show communities impact on the business's top line or bottom line revenue. So there, there's definitely pros and cons to this. The nice thing is that
if a community being built around a product or service,
you're literally there if you're sitting as an org within the product org itself. So you have direct access to the people who are building the things that the community members are probably the most excited about. Uh, they are there typically because they care about the product or the service. And so the community members, knowing that they have closer access to the people behind the scenes that make the thing
is often very exciting for community members. Not that you can't pull that in, if you have community sit within a different spot, it's usually just more effortful. The other nice thing is that if community sits within product, the product team usually takes community pretty seriously, which is often a challenge when community sits within a different part of the org. So this is something that I'm seeing more and more is that community can sit within product, there's just additional bridge building that you need to do to the business side if you have your community sit within this spot.
Yeah.
So if I can kind of back up here and, and, and look at the larger picture, what I'm think I'm hearing you say is that
community has benefits for all of these departments because it can touch people at any stage in that customer journey.
And ultimately the advantage of having it live in any of those departments is that those people will be able to, you know, reap those benefits more. The disadvantages is that the other departments may not reap the benefits of community quite as much. And so what you ultimately say in the book is that you think that community should, uh, answer to the COO, right? I do. I do. Yeah. So community is one of the few functions within an organization that actually can benefit almost every other part of the organization. Marketing typically benefits marketing, sales benefits, sales, product benefits, like each of each vertical within an organization is its own silo. But because of the nature of how community works, it typically follows customers throughout their entire journey where they touch each one of these different silos. And so because of that, it's in a unique spot and it can have benefits both direct and indirect to each one of these different vertical silos. But
the challenge is that it can't
really benefit all of them at the same time in equal measure because there's only so much that a community program can do given usually it's relatively scant staffing. And so to me, where community can actually have the most benefit is when it reports directly to the head of business or sometimes the COO,
that person's job is typically to direct to the business as a whole. And because of that, they know
at any given time, here's where the business needs more focus, here's where it needs more assistance, here's where community can have the biggest benefit, whether it's in amplifying marketing messages or maybe it's
contributing to pipeline or maybe it's offering product feedback or maybe it's making sure that we focus on retention.
These things typically shift within any business at any given time. And because the head of business or COO is attuned to the entirety of the business, what it needs and where focus should go, it can then say, community, we're gonna deploy you for this time period to focus on this set of problems. It doesn't mean that you're not gonna still have the ancillary benefits to the other things that community can benefit and do, but this is where the focus is going to be for the time being for this quarter, this half this year, et cetera. So that we're putting community where it can have the most impact. And
when community sits within one of these vertical silos, the silo can't help but have its own best interests at heart. Even though the, the business as a whole may benefit from having community focus in other areas. When community sits within marketing, it's going to focus on marketing related goals. When it sits within sales, it's gonna focus on revenue goals because that organization is who is paying communities bills and that's where its focus is naturally going to be. And so if we want to think about community as this truly horizontal integrated go-to market motion, it really needs to sit with the, the person or the team that oversees the entirety of the go-to-market motion, not just one silo within it. And that's why I think community in the future will likely be its own department that focuses on the entirety of the business by reporting directly to the COO or head of business.
I wanna throw up a chart that you included in the book, 'cause I think it's really useful at illustrating this and as I'm throwing it up, I'll describe it for anybody who may be listening to this and not watching it. Um, this is the customer journey, starting with, from the moment a customer first becomes aware of the product or the business through the point where they, there's an actual conversion, there's a sale made, but then even continuing after that to the point where they become a customer, uh, and eventually, hopefully become an evangelist. I mean you call it advocacy here. Can you talk about this chart and why you think it's so important to the discussion that we're having?
Yeah, so in relation to the things that we're talking about, about community sitting within different parts of the org, each one of these boxes, these slices is typically has a team responsible for it. So awareness considerations, this is part of marketing sign up conversion. This is typically part of product onboarding, retention, expansion, advocacy, you know, these have actually multiple teams that work on these, everything from product to customer success support, et cetera.
And so community actually has a place for to play in each one of these. So whether it's awareness or consideration, you know, typically community members talk about a product or service, they're sharing it with people in their network when it comes to sign up and onboarding, typically community members are the ones who are part of the team responsible for using the product or service all the way through to
advocacy and beyond. You know, when you have excited community members, they're the ones spreading the word broadly in their own channels. And so
community is really in this unique spot where each one of those parts of the journey, we have a role to play because we're working directly with the customers who are most excited about our product throughout the entirety of their lifecycle.
And so I encourage community builders and even organizations of any size thinking about whether community's right for them to think about this journey and where community can make the biggest impact within the organization that they're in. Because community's the only team that really sees and has a part to play in the entire process. Most teams are focused on one piece,
sometimes to the exclusion of the others. They, I've actually been in organizations where
I work in a given team. I am only focused on this one piece. The other pieces, I don't know how they work, I don't care how they work, I'm focused on the goals that I need to hit for my piece. Community is not like that. It, the whole thing is part of our purview, but again, where we focus can be directed depending on what the biggest needs of the business are. But when we're limited to sitting within one org, typically it limits what we're able to do.
Yeah, yeah. That's so important because you're right, sometimes there are tensions between department. I look, I mean, I started my career in radio and the programming department and the sales department we're often at logger. You know, the sales department wants to run 60 commercials an hour and the programming department wants to run zero 'cause it will help
each of their metrics. You know, or I've been in organizations where, you know, marketing generates leads, uh, and then, you know, marketing's mad at sales 'cause they feel like we give them leads and, and they don't, you know, close enough set and sales is bad at marketing 'cause they're like these leads, you know, it's like, uh, Glen, Gary, Glen Ross, right? These leads are terrible. This is, this is the natural, uh, multi-departmental dynamic. Everyone is looking after their own interests and that's totally fine. Oftentimes it's how you get people who are really good at what they do.
And community is one of the bridges that can be built between all of these departments because at the end of the day,
it's one customer, one person going through that journey. And we in community often see the entirety of that journey 'cause we're working with that person throughout their entire lifecycle. But most organizations just aren't structured that way. They're strike, they're structuring vertical silos. And so it's natural that there's focus and attention from a person within a vertical or silo on the things that are most important to them, but the customer doesn't and shouldn't care about who's running, which silo. They care about being successful with your product or your service. And so oftentimes that's where community has a really important role to play, is reminding people internally of, you know, you're focused on your silo, but this person is focused on solving their problem. And we see them throughout that entirety of, of their entire life cycle with the company. And if we do our job as well on community, we're helping usher them through that. And that's where we really are unique in terms of how
the organization is structured and the things that we can do to help customers be successful. Yeah.
Alright. This is just a, a piece of what you touch on in the book. I mean, you then go on to, um, give like every great thought leader and author has an acronym and and you've got a great one. Yeah. It's growth. Yeah. Um, we're not gonna go through all of that. People can go read the book if they want to, uh, find out. But I do wanna touch on one thing because one of the things that comes through loud and clear is that, uh, and this is something we've talked about on this podcast before, that this is not about if you build it, they will come. So go hold yourself up in a, you know, in the overlook hotel for the winter and build your community and then throw the doors open and say, Hey everybody, we've got this thing.
You very much, uh, champion this idea of experimentation and learning from those experiments and growing. Can you talk a little bit about that?
Yeah. Community is definitely not a build it and they will come type of world. I think it's build it and, uh, do a lot of extra work and then they'll come. Um, most communities don't fail because of the thing they've built or the technology behind it. Um, they fail because no one is really given a reason to return. The platform isn't really the problem. It's really having a lack of purpose or not clear goals in what you're doing community for. Um, sometimes there's a lack of quality programming and there's a lack of integration into
how other teams could leverage community and how the community members themselves can get value. Nobody joins a community just because they want to join a community. They join because they want connection and often because they, they need help solving their problems. And when you structure community in a way
that is designed to first provide real value to the people who are participating, and then through that value
create value for the business, then everybody wins. And there's reasons for people to be there and there's reasons for the business to keep it around. And so rather than build it, and they will come and cross your fingers and hope for the best, really need to start from a place of what does the business need? How do I structure a program that will create value for the people who are part of it in service of that goal? And then how do I make sure I experiment along the way with tactics, techniques, uh, events, content, ways to engage that help continually drive towards that. The the thing about community that I think is often overlooked is
you can't just build it once. You're perpetually building and rebuilding it. And that's because the nature of people, the the ways that they want to engage and the tools we have at our disposal are constantly evolving. And so it's part of the community work to make sure that we're continually experimenting and trying new things and getting feedback from our members and understanding what the business needs and listening to our stakeholders in ways that inform the work that we're doing and continually try new things so that we're, we're reaching towards the goals that we we've set for ourselves. Yeah.
You talk about experimenting. Um,
can you talk about the role that events play in experimenting and learning from that, whether those are virtual events, things that happen online or whether they are in-person Events.
Events are a huge part of the world of community because it's where you can see immediate reactions from people as to
what's working, what isn't, what's landing, what messages are they're responding to.
And so I think events, it's, it's interesting, you know, I think
in the past few years, all of us have attended probably more virtual events than we can count. I don't know that anyone is looking for more virtual events, but people still attend them if there's value there. If they think the content is interesting, if they're answering a question that they have, if they get to hear from someone that they haven't heard from, be hope before, or get a message in a new way that they haven't thought about. And so whether it's in person or virtual, this is a great way to get people engaged, to find things that are resonating with them. And
in truth, community is about bringing people together and whether it's in person or virtual, this is a way to get people in the moment together in a way that feels really visceral
and especially in person. I've seen a huge uptick recently in the number of in-person events. People really are craving that connection. And when you can offer a space for them to do that, it creates a lot of value for them. It creates a memorable experience if you do it well, and it makes people want to come back and be part of the community, which then in turn creates more value for your organization. And so putting these pieces together is not as easy as it looks. Uh, events, if you've ever run one are not easy. They're easy and enjoyable if you attend them. If it looks simple, I mean, someone behind the scenes has done a ton of work to make it look that way,
but they can be really, really valuable both for experimentation and for engagement.
Yeah.
Um, I'm glad to hear you give event producers their, they're, they're due, uh, particularly in-person events, which are, they are a lot of work. Uh, I I've had to predict a few over the years and, uh, they're not easy, but, um, but they're magical when they come off. Um, yeah, e events, it, it's funny, like I've run and have attended so many events in my career, and oftentimes when I've run an event and one of my peers from a different stakeholder group attends, they're like, oh, this is so fun. You get to do this all the time. It's like, well, I do, but I put in so much work behind the scenes that you will never know about. My goal is that people who attend the event, it looks smooth, seamless, easy, effortless. And the only way to make that happen is by making sure that I put in a ton of work, me and my team beforehand to make sure everything runs smoothly. As an event leader, you're constantly thinking of every contingency, you know, all the things that went wrong behind the scenes that hopefully no one notices. And ideally people attend and have a fantastic time and you get the result that you need. But that is a ton of effort to make that happen. So event leaders out there, I see you.
Yes, definitely. Uh, alright, Josh, last question, and this is the last question that I ask everybody make a prediction.
Five years from now, what do you think we're gonna be talking about In the community space?
Yeah. Five years from now, if I had to make a prediction, I would say we will hopefully have answered some of the questions around how AI fits into the world of community. We don't know the answer right now. My prediction is that there's going to be a, a host of tools that will make some of the mechanical parts of running a community easier that AI will be able to help us with. And I'm looking forward to that because I think what will happen is that AI is going to make the, the routine parts of our work easier so that we can focus on building greater relationships with our, our people who are part of our community. What exactly that will look like, I don't know, but I'm hoping some of these things that we've talked about a little bit that are often challenging in the world of community, which is like, how do we look at data? How do we make sense of what's happening? How do we prove ROI, my hope is that all of the data's there, the tools that are coming will make that part of it easier so that we can make better sense of what's going on and, and create better experiences for our members. Yeah.
Uh, the way I think about it is I hope that AI can run the barbecue and the grill during my, you know, when, when folks come over to my house so that I can spend more time drinking beer and just chatting with people. Right. Exactly. Exactly. Like there are so many moving parts in the world of community, so many pieces that we have to pull levers for and push buttons for, and constantly monitor everything. If, if AI can help us with some of that, so we can focus on creating great conversations, host fantastic events, build real connections,
then we as builders can make sure that we're creating value for our members and for our businesses. If that can be made easier,
please do. Please help.
Yeah.
Well, Josh Zerkel, thank you so much. Um, the book is The Community Code. Um, congratulations again, and, and I I wanna say this, uh, you know, I run the Community Builders book club and we read a lot of books. I I think you've really added something to the conversation out there, so I Oh, I really appreciate that. Yeah, no, I mean, this is great. Congratulations, and thank you so much for coming on the podcast and sharing your terrible advice.
Seth, thank you so much and thanks everyone for watching and listening.
Uh oh.
