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Lauren Clevenger, Global Head of Seller Community at Square, joins Chris Detzel, Director of Customer Community and Engagement. We go into detail about how to work with the product teams.
We go in detail on how to work with the culture that you have and what if a new leader comes in?
Webinar Programs from community to talk about the releases
Ideation
Events
New Releases
New Features
Show Notes
In today's competitive market, fostering strong customer relationships is crucial for a company's success. One approach to achieving this is by building a community that collaborates with product teams to drive growth and innovation. Lauren Clevenger, Global Head of Seller Community at Square, and Chris Detzel, Director of Customer Community and Engagement, shared their insights in a Peers Over Beers conversation on how to work effectively with product teams to create a thriving community.
The Importance of Strong Relationships Between Community and Product Teams:
In a B2B context, establishing robust relationships between the community and product/engineering teams is vital. These connections facilitate the creation of content around product success, releases, and future requests. The speakers also addressed the challenges of implementing an ideas platform within a community, sharing their positive experience with a community event called Dinner Five, which fosters strong bonds between community leaders.
Integrating Community Engagement into Market Strategy:
Drawing from her experience managing community programs at Bigcommerce, Lauren emphasized the need to incorporate community engagement as part of a company's overall market strategy. Online community platforms provide a space for technical individuals to discuss product-related questions and receive support from product managers and engineers. Inviting community members to participate in product release events and hosting educational community shows about new features can drive engagement and create value.
Overcoming Challenges in Building Strong Relationships:
The speakers highlighted the necessity of making it easy for product and cross-functional teams to collaborate, stressing the need for enthusiasm and promotion by the product managers themselves. Sharing their experience in producing webinars for product releases, they discussed the tactical work involved, such as crafting titles, descriptions, and promotional content. To foster strong relationships, it's essential to understand the workflows and tools of product managers, reducing friction and offering support in content creation.
Creating Engaging Content to Drive Community Success:
Developing captivating content is crucial in attracting new members and improving SEO. Considering the community's needs and interests when creating content is key, as referenced in a talk by Bridget from Atlassian on content strategy for communities. Aligning new programs with existing community goals and exercising patience while building a community are also essential components of success.
A thriving community can help companies engage with their customers on a deeper level, driving success and fostering innovation. Collaborating with product teams, understanding their workflows, and creating engaging content are all necessary steps in building a community that benefits both its members and the company. While challenges may arise when working with product and leadership teams, adopting a collaborative approach with patience and persistence can lead to a successful community that contributes to the company's overall success.
Check out:
Fostering Thought Leadership: Enhancing Communities
YouTube Channel episode: Episode 113 - How Community Can work with Product Teams
Get to know Lauren Clevenger, Global Head of Seller Community at Square
Creators & Guests
Host
Chris Detzel
Chris is a versatile Digital Community Strategist with several years of experience. He has owned community vision, strategy, and execution. He is responsible for leading the development and execution of community engagement programs, creating compelling content for customer communities and acts as the voice of the customer. He believes that data should drive decisions as it is the key element of any long-term successful strategy.
Guest
Lauren Clevenger
Hi, I’m Lauren and I am passionate about building communities and lasting customer relationships. I have spent 10+ years strategically managing communities with a focus on programs to lower support costs, increase customer engagement, satisfaction, and retention. I take a data-driven approach and work cross-functionally to help companies engage and create champions within their community. I am currently the Global Head of Seller Community at Square. I am responsible for developing the vision, programs, and leading the team to deliver Square's global community strategy. My skills include customer and developer experience, social customer care, community monitoring, moderation, and engagement, content strategy and management, analytics, insights, and ROI, voice of customer programs (including NPS), contributor/advocate program management, virtual and in-person events, and people management.
What is Peers Over Beers - Community Experts Podcast?
B2B Community Strategist Chris Detzel is your host for this fun and straight shooting podcast for enterprise community leaders / managers and digital savvy professionals. With easy and natural inquisitive banter, your host will tackle hard issues facing community leaders and managers in their day-to-day struggles, and yes, sometimes over a beer. From starting new communities, digitally transforming enterprise culture, moderation, and globalization techniques are all up for discussion.
Make sure you Subscribe to the podcast on your favorite provider. Don't forget to review us!
Check out the Peers Over Beers YouTube page and don't forget to subscribe!
Chris Detzel: Welcome everyone to another. Peers over beers. I'm. Chris Detzel and I have a
Chris Detzel: That's your guest today.
laurenclevenger: Wow! I'm a a special guest,
Chris Detzel: a very special guest. You've never been on peers over beers.
laurenclevenger: I know how. Why has it taken so long? I'm offended. I'm sorry I just have to wait in line with Fine,
laurenclevenger: I didn't introduce you. You're supposed to introduce yourself. Sorry. Sorry. Let's assume no just kidding. I'm Lauren, I'm happy to be here, Lauren Clevenger, I am the global head of seller community at Square.
Chris Detzel: Awesome.
Chris Detzel: Well welcome to peers over. Beers really happy to have you. And you know, I think we
Chris Detzel: remember. But so this guy Jake, we know, is part of a he. He is kind of the owner and Ceo founder whatever of this thing called dinner five, right? So basically, he has five community
laurenclevenger: leaders um sometimes over to his house. They meet virtually, you know, he used to do this on-site thing. And I think we met. Did we meet also? Yeah, at his house? Yeah,
laurenclevenger: and I was. And and it was just five of us you know talking about community kind of stuff, and that was what two thousand and nineteen, eighteen or something with pre-pandemic pre-world. Changing. Um, yeah, I think that's where we met too, although I feel like I was familiar with your name in the space for a while, and you know,
laurenclevenger: knew of, maybe. But we got to meet at dinner five and
laurenclevenger: love Jake love this event in this program that he runs
laurenclevenger: I feel like It's truly one of the most special community events that I've ever been to
laurenclevenger: just the idea where it's five people, and you know, back then, we were eating in person. We were at Jake's house, having this amazing like foodie Heaven catered meal so creative, so cool.
laurenclevenger: And it was, you know It's like that magic of a super great dinner party, except it's
laurenclevenger: people that know exactly what it's like to be you and do your job. I'm sure your challenges and we're all doing the same thing. We're all kind of at the same level in our career in our programs, which is also huge.
laurenclevenger: Yeah, those are like magic conversations to me. And obviously you form good bonds where we had the one dinner together in two thousand and nineteen. Now we chat all the time over.
laurenclevenger: And yeah.
laurenclevenger: Now we're here. Piero, Here's over Beers.
laurenclevenger: Yeah, I just thought, you know you've never been on Pearson with over Beers and I that Oh, Lauren needs to be on. So
laurenclevenger: bring a beer. Oh, my gosh! You're the first person ever to bring a beer on. Really,
Chris Detzel: It's not for me, of course, you know. But but I know it's a little early, so I don't necessarily expect you to drink it, but feel free to open it up and drink it if you want.
laurenclevenger: I mean I haven't had
laurenclevenger: um. I haven't had lunch yet, so this would be my pre lunch that'd be great.
laurenclevenger: There is a light here
laurenclevenger: exactly.
laurenclevenger: I really love it.
I think I will, because I am thirsty. Is that weird?
laurenclevenger: No, no, this is peers over beers. So i'm doing it. Oh, home, take a second. There's over beers. What's my commercial for you?
Chris Detzel: Oh, this is great, you know. This could be a nice little clip that I can just cut out. Um. Well, today's topic, We're we're talking about it, and and and and I really like it. I don't know that we've had too many conversations on cheers over beers around how community works with the product teams.
laurenclevenger: Um! And I think it's so important. So i'd love to hear, and I've got all kinds of stories. But you know, since you are the special guest I would love to hear about, You know your past and and how you've worked, you know, with product teams, I know, you know. Think of ideation and things like that. But there's probably a lot more you can do with product teams with on community.
laurenclevenger: Yeah, I think it is a super important cross-functional relationship, especially if you're,
laurenclevenger: you know, in A. B two B community, especially if it's a support. You know primarily a support function. Community relationship with product is so huge and really tighter relationship that you have with product and engineering, I feel like the better value You'll be able to bring your community members through to your point. A whole host of things, you know whether that's
laurenclevenger: content geared around the you know, product success or product releases whether that's a future request platform, You know some kind of like ideas, space and your community which we could talk about forever because those are
Chris Detzel: yeah
laurenclevenger: tricky to do right, and I feel like everybody has a horror story about an idea site don wrong. There's so many great events and things that you can do to
laurenclevenger: crop up ah releases and be part of like a go-to-market strategy within your company. That is something that was super important to me when I was at Big Commerce, where I was there for six and a half years, managing our
laurenclevenger: customer and developer community programs. And we did a lot with product, and it was really really really great.
Chris Detzel: Yeah, I I want to kind of go deeper because I think it's important. And you know, on some of these podcasts, or you know things I hear people speaking about
laurenclevenger: kind of that. It's at a higher level, so i'll probably just dive in a little bit deeper on how we're doing it, and I would love to kind of get your response, and or maybe even other ideas. So today I I own two pieces of
Chris Detzel: what I call our community. So our online community, where mostly technical folks come in and talk about the product and need help with the product and just have questions. So
Chris Detzel: Um, that's one piece, And on that piece there's a lot of Pms. Product managers that know the product inside and out and engineering, and, like you said, You know engineers are really good to
Chris Detzel: kind of dive into. So that's one piece that I need their help on to answer product questions, and so I have a really good relationship with the Pm. Team, and they help go in. I have a slack channel that you know I kind of, hey? I have this question that somebody needs help, and somebody goes on to the main community and answers that sometimes
Chris Detzel: things like that. And then the other piece is on the community specifically is that the
Chris Detzel: whenever we have product releases, so we have them three times a year, we
Chris Detzel: and um. And so, whenever we have a release, I invite every single person, you know, on the community directly to that. Probably get over one hundred plus people on those uh release. Everybody's interested in what's coming out, you know, in the release. And so just giving the product team an avenue to do that. But then I think
Chris Detzel: to even go a little bit deeper is so. I have. These community shows that um are both, for you know, going deep into the product thinking about what's coming up in the product, or, you know, even thought leadership, type stuff. So I think that
Chris Detzel: you know, giving the product managers access to your customers, and even partners at a high, you know, at a you know kind of
laurenclevenger: more of a instead of one on one you have what forty, fifty, eighty people coming to these shows they do, scaling as much as possible, so giving them opportunity to talk about one piece of that
Chris Detzel: release. So if there's a new product where there's a feature in there that you can go deep for an hour long going and showing people how to use it. So you think about the adoption piece, and and and people understanding how to use it, and things like that. The last piece I own are what I call it's an Advisory board, but
Chris Detzel: we call it the Realtio Executive Council. So we have twenty of our
Chris Detzel: leaders on uh the Executive Council, but we also have um our Ceo. We have our chief product officer. Uh, you know our Cmo. And whoever else at that level uh wants to come is is but the key is having our Ceo on there. Um! She's kind of a thought leader in the space of master data management, but also our product person, and so like. We have one coming up on October six, and and we've got kind of this new thinking around our product
Chris Detzel: that we want to kind of release to the market. But what he's going to do is present that, and and we'll allow the executive folks to respond to it to give input. And those kinds of things. So when you think of those two levels on the technical level, but also the executive level,
laurenclevenger: the the things that i'm providing the product teams are uh technical kind of go deep into the product, you know. Adoption. Buy in whatever the two Um, i'm. I'm. Also giving them thought leadership opportunities. So let's say in space they want to.
Chris Detzel: Hey? Look, let's stop talking about the product and let's talk about the space of data. You know data governance data
laurenclevenger: quality, you know. Ah, master, data management is a practice, but not a you know whatever. And so can you talk about that? If so, let's talk about it and be the thought leaders in the space of all things. But then i'll also kind of go to market type stuff from the Executive. I sent a lot of stuff there. But no, that's that's all really cool, and I I haven't had a chance to have a
laurenclevenger: kind of like a cab program or an executive Council before. But I love that thought that you're doing things to kind of
laurenclevenger: do it at scale right like product manager, presenting about thing or speaking to a wide audience at you know, a time either, and asynchronously in, you know, an online community space or in a Webinar, live to attendees. But then you're also getting that
laurenclevenger: super high quality very distilled. These are the opinions of the thought leaders, the movers and Shakers, our most valuable customers. Let's take them right to the source.
laurenclevenger: Yes, our leadership. So I like that. You have both sides of that.
laurenclevenger: Um, I think that something that is who it's talking about, and I don't have all of the the magic answers here at all. But I think we're just so cool. I definitely don't. I have none of the magic answers. Just a lot of um, just a lot of attempts over the years. But I think it could be a struggle depending especially on the culture of where you work, you kind of just never know is how to make those inroads with products
laurenclevenger: and leadership to make these things happen. Sometimes I think you can go into a place, and they're like Yes, let's do it. And you know, like folks are really on board. It doesn't take much convincing,
laurenclevenger: and then sometimes you can go in somewhere, or maybe a new leader comes in, and they're like, Oh, we're very busy, or we have a lot of other feedback sources, so no thanks or get in line. Um, I feel like in my previous work history I've experienced both sides of that coin.
laurenclevenger: One of the great things when I started at Big Commerce long time ago was that immediately, when I came in literally, the first thing that I heard from our Ceo was him wanting to meet with me, to start a kind of like a Webinar program around our releases to connect
laurenclevenger: our product managers to our people. He was like, We need this in the community with such a breath of fresh air, and our Ceo was like, And I want to be on this Webinar every single month, and while I was at b-commerce,
laurenclevenger: you know, for six and a half years, I think I did like almost seventy of them every single month. It was a total beast to produce.
laurenclevenger: Yeah, So at times I feel like I was like grumbling.
laurenclevenger: I think you should have made it easier for yourself.
laurenclevenger: Oh, my gosh! What a concept!
laurenclevenger: I'll tell you! An easy way to kind of do it is, and none of it's easy, by the way. But
Chris Detzel: so let's say we had a product release, and on that product release we had three new features,
Chris Detzel: you know, and they're big, you know one could be data quality. One could be something around survivorship. The other one could be around, you know something else, right?
laurenclevenger: And I think to myself, that's three webinars. I can do right like on this one release. Talk about the release, because that only comes out three times a year. But then from there. I can build a whole web a whole, you know, three or four other webinars to play around each place, and then I would yeah reach out to that product manager and say, Hey,
Chris Detzel: this the show I call community shows because the shows are so popular. Now I think some of the Pms really want to get out there and actually do one. And so i'll reach out to the Pm. And I say, hey, look!
Chris Detzel: I want to do one on this data quality, and not every Pm. Is going to be excited, or every person is excited about the same thing you're excited about. But if you can kind of one, you know, and you've You've already done it, but you know. Get them kind of excited about promoting themselves, you know, promoting them as a speaker promoting their product, you know, and that kind of stuff
Chris Detzel: the key. But I had one almost every single week. Ah, since I started at Ralto. Ah, whether it's around product. You know the Pms. Or you know somebody else doing some shows. But
laurenclevenger: I the onus is on them in a lot of ways. Well, so I i'll produce it. I'll do it all, but they'll have to create a title in the description, and of course, all the other content. Right like right, but just give me the time on description. Let's pick a date boom it's out there, and now
laurenclevenger: they're on the hook, so i'll go Produce the card. I'll push it out into the invite onto the community. I'll I'll get all these people to come. But you know you're gonna have to build a powerpoint and all this stuff they know because they're the ones doing the demo doing whatever, and that's it, you know, I mean.
Chris Detzel: And so I've had one every, and it's. Look, you have to produce it. You have to push it out on me. When it's done you have to push it on, Youtube. You gotta put a card on it. You have to cut some things. You gotta do a bunch of stuff. I'm not saying, you know, but
laurenclevenger: it's not nowadays with all the tools, with Kantasia. You know some other tools that you might use somewhat easy at canva. It's still very tactical, and still probably takes an hour to per yeah thing. But I don't know that's very.
laurenclevenger: I think that what you highlighted it does come down to. You know, probably more than these two things. But these are two big things is one
laurenclevenger: one. You have to make it easy for whoever your partner is in product, or you know, like I mean, that just extends to like every cross-functional effort and community Ever, in my opinion, is like i'm always thinking in the back of my mind. You know. How can I make this as easy as possible for them while having a balance between like mean, obviously just like not doing the whole thing, or whatever like they,
laurenclevenger: They are the subject matter experts. They're bringing something to the table. But
laurenclevenger: I want to be their true partner. I want to understand their workflows, you know, like their tools, their things, so that I can make it instead easy for them to step in and like deliver something to the community.
laurenclevenger: I like that. But I think the second thing that you touched on is,
laurenclevenger: you know, really tying in to what is their intrinsic motivation to be a part of this, you know, like they are very product Managers are super busy people,
laurenclevenger: very it
laurenclevenger: on their plate, and oftentimes I think that some of these community things depending on the culture of your organization are kind of like nice to have, you know, like they can have so many demands coming
laurenclevenger: from so many different areas. So I think the more you can make it easy for them, the more you can tap into what's in it for you. That's like our community bread and butter, like the psychology of how do we get people to engage? It's the same thing when working cross functionally? So your point about?
laurenclevenger: Does this help them
laurenclevenger: improve their skills as a speaker like are we sharing this on social networks, and they're getting notoriety in their fields. We ran for many years at big commerce on the developer community side of things. A really great developer blog
laurenclevenger: posted on medium, and I would work with our product and our engineering team
laurenclevenger: to write content for that, and they really had free rain a lot of times. Besides the content breeds and editing, and all that stuff that I was doing that make it easy for them and help make them shine. They have a lot of creativity to
laurenclevenger: write about what they wanted to write about an engineering topic or a development topic, a framework that they were passionate about that related to big commerce in some kind of way, of course for our audience, but
laurenclevenger: that to them was the what's in it for them. They were getting an opportunity to build themselves as a thought leader in their space. I'm getting the benefit in our.
laurenclevenger: You know, community member users are getting the benefit of all of this amazing shared knowledge and conversation. So it's kind of figuring out what is it for them? And then really helping them succeed at that thing?
Chris Detzel: And I think you know, as you kind of think about content whether it's so. You know the beauty about some of these Webinars is that? And I tell these pms, hey? Look!
Chris Detzel: I'm going to get the Webinar out. You get some video. We can make quick hit videos if you wanted, you know. Push it out on social, and you know you seen some smart things, and I said, You know the other piece is, we can blog about
Chris Detzel: all this content you just gave, You know I could probably write two blogs around it, and what i'll do for you is is I'll get the blog written, you know. You go to upport, com or whatever, and get somebody to write it, and then you'll have to edit it so I can get you sixty, five to seventy ish of the way there, but you're gonna have to add some picks. And just,
laurenclevenger: you know, because this person is not going to know about master data management. It's very complex. So you know they're just going to do what you said, and you know the tone is going to have to come up to you, and you have to change some things, even. That's hard for people to do. Yeah, but it sure is a lot better than starting from nothing to write a blog. You know what I mean, like finding blogs are very difficult.
laurenclevenger: It's a specific skill set,
laurenclevenger: he said. You can get people there, you know. Ah! And help them to get fifty, eighty percent there um! And and just say, look, there's gonna be some time commitment. But I mean if I can get one or two blogs out on your behalf, and you're publishing everything else,
laurenclevenger: you know. So you do make. I love that piece because you have to make it easy as easy as possible for them. Still work, but no matter what there's work,
laurenclevenger: you're still asking for help. They're still doing work, but the most that you can reduce friction. You know the most that you can set them up for success, or, you know, like you're talking about. Maybe on the back end help them edit. You know we
laurenclevenger: sometimes what we would work with, either someone to someone in product of engineering Say, we might start. If they were interested, we might start them out with doing kind of like an interview style blog post in one of our community spaces.
laurenclevenger: Super easy right? Because then you can either just like straight up, record a conversation. Transcribe it, clean it up, or you can just send them a Google Doc, and be like, Answer these questions, and then I can take it back, clean it up. Boom. All of a sudden.
laurenclevenger: Anything published. Push A picture in there. Q. And A. With So and so exactly exactly
laurenclevenger: Yeah. An exciting moment for them still a content win for us in the community. So so on a side note. It's funny, because, as you're saying that
Chris Detzel: you know, I own this community called Dfw Running Group, and it's a Facebook community for all of Dallas for work, and there's four thousand people in that community, because, you know, I've always. I've cultivated it, and things, you know. Facebook's pretty easy to to kind of get people in.
laurenclevenger: I love you. You have like a side personal community that you manage to. That is like the true heart of the community, professional like you're doing it professionally and personally. Yeah, it not to you. Thanks. And so I created this website, and I thought,
Chris Detzel: you know
Chris Detzel: It's called Dfw Running group dot com that's that's all it is. And so I was like what is helpful to runners, and and and my thought was, People are wondering like are always one of the questions that they always have is, Where can I run. What group can I go run with, you know? Ah, and so there's literally. And I just came up with this the other day eighteen running groups in the Df. Was probably more. Ah, but I found eighteen running groups in the Dfw. Area, so I just created a block, and
laurenclevenger: and I asked a question right, you know, from the Dfw. Running group, I said. Hey, you know who's your favorite running group you know that you run with. So I came up with eighteen. There's more. I'm sure. I just put it in a book. Eighteen running groups within the Dfw. Metroplex right,
Chris Detzel: and I just put them all put it links in them a little blurb about it, you know. And so what i'm trying to do is is create the
laurenclevenger: content. Ah seo over time, you know, for people that are within ballots and all the things you know. Same Same concept, right like is if it's around your product, or if it's around the space, you know. The Pms. Can become leaders in that, and sometimes you can ask your community and then take that,
Chris Detzel: not to get off a little bit, but i'm getting off a little bit, but take that content, and push it out as a blog, or, you know, consolidate it and use it, you know. I mean, these are just basic
laurenclevenger: tips and tricks, you know, to but you got to take it. I mean,
laurenclevenger: that is something that is not always thought about, and it can be time consuming. So I think sometimes it can fall off. But the power of repurposing content is so huge. Yeah, and I think it's easy to,
laurenclevenger: you know. Kind of forget about it. But say you do that great Webinar with your product manager,
laurenclevenger: you know there's only a certain percentage of people that are going to be able to attend at that time, or that care, or have the time to watch the recap. Let's be honest, like even as a community person. I'm always like.
laurenclevenger: Is this going to be recorded? And then it's like, Oh, it's like past my brain. I have totally forgotten to come back to the recording. That just happens with everybody. So it is so important to remember
laurenclevenger: how you can repurpose content, how you can give it legs to, you know. Be extended, and be valuable past that moment. And then, remembering that, like not everybody learns or intakes information the same way. So
Chris Detzel: that blog post where you're doing a roundup later of a conversation that might be the thing that is so helpful to somebody else, or shows up in seo later, and is like that.
laurenclevenger: That's the piece I was going to bring up is, you know the other piece is, and I but I think you have to think about what is going to be helpful to the community, and and and also what's going to be searched out, you know, in the future right like if if it's
Chris Detzel: what somebody's going to type in, you know, A year from now or six months from now, something about you know
Chris Detzel: real Geo product release on. I don't know whatever data, quality or something like that, or data quality from Lto, or even just data, quality or whatever. And if i'm on the first page, they're gonna at least look at that like. Oh, what else is there, you know. Maybe they read it. Maybe they go, you know, if I embed that video into the pro to the blog, maybe they're gonna listen to the video, or if I can cut, which is a lot of time. And I've heard that video that says something about that specific piece of uh the blog,
Chris Detzel: you know, would be really great, But I think, but I think content if if all you could focus in on is content. Strategy is that it is engaging to your users. That is key. I think That is a huge big thing, an opportunity, especially if it's an open community, right like if it's closed.
laurenclevenger: I probably have a little bit more difficulties kind of thinking about a lot of content's important, but it's only important to this closed community. You know what I mean, so i'm probably going to butcher this, and I definitely don't have all of the details. But
laurenclevenger: long time ago I watched a Cmx video from like a previous Cmx summit that I did not attend.
laurenclevenger: I don't know a year. That's why I did not do my homework to bring this up beforehand, so I have to give better credit later. But It was
laurenclevenger: a woman in Bridget works at the Lavian, and at the time i'm not sure if she still does, but was running their content. Strategy for the Alaskan community, and gave this amazing talk around their content strategy so much so that I have referenced it for years. It is so great, but one of the things that she talked about in that presentation that really inspired me, and I kind of took that idea and ran with it, and kind of reshaped it to work for us. If that commerce was.
laurenclevenger: She had this whole section in that summit presentation, talking about how they work with product marketing managers for all of the different product lines at Atlassian and offer them.
laurenclevenger: I don't know if this was her words, or what I turned it into later, but kind of like a buffet of options around.
laurenclevenger: Product releases and product lines so literally in the presentation showed the trello award that they use when they're working with product marketing managers. I think we could extend this to product, managers, or whatever That's where i'm going with this. But it was this great way to show
laurenclevenger: the content that is available, and the opportunities that community can provide to support a product or to support a product release, so it could be like, hey? So
laurenclevenger: I don't know for teams supporting Jira, or whatever we could do an ama with you. We could feature you on the next town hall. That was our Webinar program of big commerce. We could write a blog post. We could
laurenclevenger: say, This is a new product. We could set up a whole group for a section of the community around this thing. So, but the idea was really like showing it out a buffet option, so that you always had a touch point in these conversations to articulate what is possible with community. We did this at big commerce, like, I said, very inspired by this presentation,
laurenclevenger: and we did the same thing where we had a trello board,
laurenclevenger: and I worked with our product leaders and our product marketing managers to develop kind of like a tiered system of how we looked at releases. This is a tier one release. It's like a big big deal like a big press gay all the way down to like. This is a tiny change log level fix, and our product like button moving here. And for each one of those categories for tears, I would say, here's my recommendations.
laurenclevenger: How we can bring this into the community I would recommend, for, you know, say it's a
laurenclevenger: tier two. Then we're going to bring it up in Town Hall. We want to feature. We want to have a whole section of you presenting it. We want to get a product blog written about it. We want to do an ama, whatever, but I think, like the opportunities there are in the list, and it will be really customized, based on your users, your product. You know your
laurenclevenger: your organization's interest, for how deep you want to go with this, as well as your own team's resources to produce these things. But that was a huge turning point for us at Big commerce was to really take control over the narrative of How can we help
laurenclevenger: you product
laurenclevenger: with these launches through content, through engagement, through events. Here's our buffet of options. Let's pick and choose that really like, inserted us in a very meaningful way into every go to market, which before, in the years before that was more, us just kind of like raising our hands and being like, what about community.
laurenclevenger: Don't forget about community or our product leaders, only thinking about the one thing
laurenclevenger: that town Hall event, or
laurenclevenger: like your community, show kind of thing you know, like they know they knew that that was the one thing. But we weren't ever expanding or thinking about how we can go beyond that. We can help amplify your message through the community and all these other I love that
Chris Detzel: It's a really good idea. When you say events, do you mean just like? Were they virtual, or are they on side, or you know what?
laurenclevenger: And you and how did that work?
laurenclevenger: And i'm saying events in kind of like the virtual webinar sphere at big commerce.
laurenclevenger: I don't know it could be more, you know, like your executive counsel. Maybe Maybe there's a once a year in-person event that
laurenclevenger: flies everybody to Hq. It aligns with the product management, you know, like planning cycle for the next roadmap, you know, like there are ways to take this kind of stuff in person as well
Chris Detzel: we did. We try to meet once a year Um! And
Chris Detzel: but I think that's a pretty good idea. It's another opportunity It doesn't have to be for every Council member, but it could be for those that are interested in, you know, even having more of a say in our product roadmap and and and how we plan for the year, you know.
laurenclevenger: Yeah,
laurenclevenger: And that goes back to that intrinsic motivation piece, you know, like i'm sure, that those individuals that are on your council. They are motivated by the idea of really being able to shape the future.
laurenclevenger: It's right of the platform, so tapping into that motivation That can be a really powerful thing that makes them very special. It helps the business, too,
Chris Detzel: and something they always talk about is, you know we need customers to tell us about this thing, or you know whatever. So there's a lot of things that you can launch. So just you you got me. Kind of thinking is we have this. Let's say we had. We don't today, but this once a year kind of product planning. And then i'm going to. I'm going to
laurenclevenger: push my ah product leader and get his thinking is Yeah, and we bring in these these real-time Executive Council members right like, you know, however, many, five, ten whatever, and they come in and help kind of guide us. We help kind of get, you know this is our thinking. What do you think? Blah blah blah, whatever and space to face thing?
Chris Detzel: Maybe it's a half day, or something like that. I don't know whatever it is. And then, as we kind of
laurenclevenger: start thinking about, hey? We've developed this thing. You know, these leaders aren't the ones going to be, you know, using the product on a daily basis. But, hey, you know, since you are a big part of this, we would like for your organization to really test this, you know, before we launch it before we kind of think about. You know what I mean, because it was your idea,
Chris Detzel: or whatever right. And so now you've got more engagement from not just the Executive Council, but also their organization, you know, with their technical folks and everything else, and It's not so hard to find people to, you know, especially for us. We're a small company, right, you know, and so we're always begging for,
laurenclevenger: you know shit to. Do you know our customers to do some shit, you know, and it's always It's not easy for us, and there's no real program to really do that so it could start with that Executive Council, you know. Stuff, and then kind of funnel down into their own organization.
Chris Detzel: And then, you know, plus marketing wants case studies, and all this other stuff. You know we don't have a. We have big customers that spend a lot of money with us, but we don't have just over an abundant amount of customers. Does that make sense? So So
Chris Detzel: you know it's it's like, Okay, Well, we have this program. That Executive Council does this for a product, but also the organization. Really, then we can funnel that, you know help. And then we can also start thinking about, you know, at the marketing level. You know. How do we market you? How do we get case studies? How do you always things that can be helpful for that. It's probably better way to do it today. It's interesting, anyway. Sorry
laurenclevenger: always there. I mean. I think that's like the thing about community, and it's probably the same for you. You know this is your
laurenclevenger: eleven or twelve for me, and there is literally never been a shortage of new things that you can do, or things that I haven't done yet that I want to achieve with a community program or ways to make something better like not never, ever ever
laurenclevenger: a dull moment or a satisfied moment where it's like.
laurenclevenger: We did it.
laurenclevenger: You know the community. That's the beauty of having a job
laurenclevenger: right? You know. It's. You hope that you know there's always for us. There's always something to do. It's not like, you know, and and a lot of times we can create our own paths, you know, for community patch right like, you know, since we own the community, we can guide and and tell you what. And so sometimes. It's hard, though, because we don't always know
Chris Detzel: you know it's like Well, what's next? You know, and I think every year of
laurenclevenger: something else to build. There's never But you're never satisfied with the things you've already built, so I hate to do a lot of stuff over here, but I also have to think about this stuff over here, right, you know. And yeah, Oh, my God, you know, like, Yeah, I want a a user group program. Yeah, I want you know, super user program. Yeah, what you can't do all these things until you know you have some people and and you've got a somewhat built up, up. You know, when you start a community for ground up, you
laurenclevenger: can't just all of a sudden have a superuser program. I don't think you know I can't.
laurenclevenger: Yeah. But you know a lot of those things already. Align right, like, you know, some of these things you already know what you're gonna have to go, do I'm not saying that a lot of this stuff is not going to steer away from building a super user program or whatever you call it, you know. Or yeah, those things are still going to be
laurenclevenger: part of community, you know, to some some degree, you know, champions, for I don't know whatever you call it is doesn't matter, but it's been really good.
laurenclevenger: Yeah, Appreciate it coming on
laurenclevenger: a great to chat.
laurenclevenger: Yeah. Well, that's really the first time we've had just a one on one chitchat like this, You know. I know this is nice.
Chris Detzel: We'll have to do it again if you're interested.
laurenclevenger: Yeah, I have to put you on the spot. Live! But it's not really. I'll come back
laurenclevenger: great. Well, thanks everyone for coming to another. Peers over beers or listening to us. We'll be both on video and audio, of course. I'm. Chris Dtzel and
Chris Detzel: Thanks, Lauren:
laurenclevenger: Thanks, Chris Bye,