So, you won the Khoros Best Community 2024 award on Wednesday the 11th of December. On Friday the 13th (!) your community was shut down and you and your team were let go. What happened? I won’t mention the company here. It is about what we learned as a group of community managers from this situation.

It seems like a plot to a thriller movie but it actually happened. I met Morgan Bowler-Brown, CSM® during our search to connect with Community Managers and hear their stories. Needless to say, he was not at his best at the time. We’ve all been through layoffs and you don’t get used to them. Yet what struck me was his passion for the community audience. He was planning to create an alternative place for them, out of his own pocket and time while trying to find a new job.

Lessons

Well, it is obvious that winning a vendor award does not guarantee that your company sees you as a success. It is good PR at best.

The second lesson is that while you can have an endless debate about community tactics, innovation roadmaps member activity, and great value for the members, the key ingredient to any community project that needs to be in place is “an agreed value exchange model with senior management”. It ties into the age-old ROI discussion. A community project takes a long time to mature. 5 to 10 years is quite common. Community teams are nomads. One year they are in Support, the next year in Marketing only to move to Customer Success again later. Communities are not well understood by a majority of senior management. Having that agreed ROI/Value model in place is imperative. The keyword here is: agreed! As long as senior management does not sign off on the logic you present, you have no real evidence of value. Even if the logic is staring you in the face with cold hard numbers. And you have that every time you have a new management reporting line.

Shock

So, I invited him to tell his story and then ask the crowd what he could do to sustain this community that he had come to love and appreciate.

He built the story like just another day in the office: “I have a great community. Here is what I have been doing. See all the results. Here is the award we won of which I am really proud! But….I got laid off two days later and the community was shut down” You could hear a pin drop for a few seconds as the shock went through the digital room.

A special breed

Everybody in that meeting realized how vulnerable a Community Manager really is and how much hard work, dedication, and perseverance is needed to succeed. A special breed that can beat the odds and do something amazing, knowing full well that one might not make it for whatever reason.

Community Mode

Now this is the part where a community manager also shines: The power of a community. Almost all immediately bounced back from that initial message, switched on community mode, and started discussing how Morgan could build up a community as a grassroots movement and how he could finance and sustain it. We all ended this meeting on a high note. A great lesson learned and a cheerful Morgan who got a ton of ideas to work on.

Join Us

There is a recording of this meeting if you are interested. For obvious reasons, we do not broadcast it. You too can be part of this group of community managers. It is a true community. You give and you get. All members gladly share their stories and also can ask the questions they are struggling with. Just go here and register. It’s once a month every last Thursday. 10x a year. Access is free.

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