July 8, 2023 • 21 mins
Susan Tenby
Global Director of Community at TechSoup where I oversee TechSoup’s Social Media, Community Forums and Events, Net Squared program, and will develop the overall Community Management strategy for TechSoup
Online Community, Social Media and Partnership Director of Caravan Studios, where I run all the social media channels, recruit volunteers, identify and engage influencers, curate relevant content, plan and participate in both online and on-the-ground monthly events, speak publicly on behalf of the organization and spearhead development opportunities via network mapping and creation.
TechSoup Online Community and Social Media Director, where I was responsible for the strategy behind the community team's promotion, management and direction of the TS community forums and social media channels.
Designing a social networking and live, interactive event plan across the social graph for the community that TechSoup serves
Runs the social media accounts for the legendary all-female rock band, The Go-Go's.
Launched a community of over 400 nonprofit staff members and volunteers in Second Life.
Asked to Testify before the US Congress about this work in virtual worlds
Runs an active monthly online community meet-up in San Francisco for fellow online community managers in he SF Bay Area to exchange ideas and best practices with a membership of over 1500
Frequently speaks at conferences on online community & social media best practices
Subject Matter Expert who writes and consults on the topic of online community building in its various forms.
Has deep understanding of what it takes to launch and sustain a community from the ground-up and has done this successfully many times with many of my philosophies being kept in practice for over 10 years.
Specialties: Second Life, Social Networking Apps, Conference Speaking Appearances, Clips, Blogs, Groups, listserv's, Community Management
For Press coverage, see: http://del.icio.us/suzboop/susantenby http://npsl.wikispaces.com/Press+Coverage
Resume at: http://susantenby.com/about-me/cv/
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:15):
This is Edwin k Morris,
and you are about to embark on thenext Pioneer Knowledge Services
because you need to know a digitalresource for you to listen to folks
share their experience and knowledgearound the field of knowledge management
and nonprofit work.
(00:44):
If your company or organization wouldlike to help us continue this mission and
sponsor one of our shows,
email b byn tk@pioneer-ks.org.
Hi, I'm Susan Tenby. I livein San Francisco, California,
(01:07):
and the field I work in isactually called online community,
and it's largely unknownby many people as a field.
It's kind of more recently beingdiscovered as a field by major companies.
Most companies use social media asa way to spray out their message,
but they don't know that there's a realcommunity of people and engaged fans and
(01:27):
followers behind that.
And so community management shouldbe prioritized first and throughout.
I work at TechSoup,
which is a technology nonprofitbased in San Francisco,
but we're a global organization. AndI also have social media side hustle,
which I've been cooking up andworking at for about 10 years.
(01:48):
I've worked for 23 years inthe field of online community.
I love to encourage people to join theonline community field as a profession.
I've encouraged many people to do that,
discovered many people whomI knew would be great at it,
but they didn't know that they couldmake a living out of doing what they did
really naturally and well. And many ofthem are still working in this area.
(02:11):
Many of 'em actually have way betterpaying jobs than I ever laugh.
I think, um,
online community is a great tech jobfor the non-technically inclined people
who, you know,
maybe studied literature or journalismwho just happen to love social media and
do it for fun. It's a great field thatthey might not know about and, um,
they don't consider themselves techies,
(02:31):
but it's still a techfield for people like us.
And I generally use Facebook tobe connected to people that I know
and Twitter to be connected to peoplethat I may not know personally,
but want to be connected to.
As this new field.
Can you name any kinda sourcethat you lean on for guidance?
Is there a textbook? Is there a author?Yeah, is there, okay, go ahead. Yeah.
(02:54):
So, um,
to kind of lean into the guidance for the
field, I always refer to cmx,
which is the Community ManagersExchange, is what it stands for.
They have regional meetups,they have a Slack channel.
There's a lot of educationalmaterials. It's, um,
a property or a project of Bevy.
(03:15):
CMX was founded by David Spinx.He's really knowledgeable.
I think it's great to join cmx.
I also think Noel Flowersis a great resource,
a community manager who'svery knowledgeable and is kind of been in the field
for a really long time.
Actually,
the most thrilling thing is to hear whatinspiration has led somebody to where
(03:35):
they are When you are a creator,
and I'm labeling you thatbecause you are an entrepreneur,
you see things that need tohave happen and you take action.
Tell me about where thatinspiration came from for you.
Professionally.
That inspiration came becauseI had cancer when I was
26,
(03:56):
and I was a young woman with cancerand all of the cancer resources that I
found were, as soon as I was diagnosed,
I kind of started looking around forcommunity and they were all very much
geared at older women withcancer. And I was a young woman.
I had needs that were very different thanan old woman all the way down to I had
purple hair and I didn'twant an ugly old lady wig.
(04:19):
I wanted a wig that looked like me.
So everything around finding communityand I realized there was no community for
young women with cancer. Mm.
And so I decided what would happen if Iwas the person to launch that community.
So that's kind of how I got started inonline community was I was a member of
San Francisco Women on the Web, which wasan early email list that still exists.
(04:42):
The women on the web iskind of a regional thing.
And there was a San Francisco emaillist and I was a member and I said, Hey,
I'm interested in launching thisgroup, this online community.
I've never done it before.Can someone build it for me?
This was way before socialmedia. Mm-hmm..
So I got some volunteer webdesigners to build it for me,
and that's how I got started asan online community manager and,
(05:04):
and it became my career.
Where did leadership become atrait that, you example, where,
where does that come from?Were you born that way?
You're talking about leadership here?
Uh, I guess I was born that way.I don't think of myself. I mean,
honestly where, where Isee that there's a need,
I don't have any problems stepping upand saying, okay, we need to fill that.
(05:25):
I'm actually a lot better at saying weneed to fill that and asking someone else
to help me implement that.I am being the doer,
I'm pretty good at like saying we,
and I'm really being volunteeringsomeone else voluntold, as they say.
Well see now. Yeah. By truedefinition of what a leader is,
is you have to have followers. Soyou've already met that requirement.
(05:46):
You are a leader. Tell me againwhere you got your training.
Where did you become this?
I I honestly don't know..I don't know the answer to that. I,
I can't think of how I got training. Okay.
All right. All right. Right. Let's backup the train. Let's go back to, okay.
Early years and say, tell me thefirst example where you did this.
The first example whereI was entrepreneurial.
(06:08):
Or where you took charge, where yousaid, heck damn, I'm gonna go do this.
Maybe the first example is this examplethat I'm talking about with the online
community thing. I can'tthink of another example.
So there wasn't anything in grade school.There wasn't anything in high school.
There was nothing that was like the,you know, you saw your grandparents,
you saw a neighbor do something thatwas a community-minded effort and you're
(06:30):
like, Ooh, that's, I need to do that, I.
Guess. Well, you know,in college there was,
in college I was here during theSan Francisco earthquake in 1989.
It was my first year in college. Peoplewere really freaked out, honestly.
They were, you know, we were all 18and I organized a group of people.
It was way before the internet, you know,I mean, it was, it was in 1989 and I,
(06:53):
I was on the internet in 94 and Ithought I was an early adopter.
So I put posters all around our collegedorm and said like, you guys wanna talk?
We should all get together andfigure out what this means. You know,
we're all kicked out of the dormsfor the, for the week. Yeah.
Because of the earthquake. Yeah.And like, how do we stay in touch?
I organized a phone tree. SoI guess maybe that was it.
(07:14):
I never thought about thatbefore, but maybe that was.
You are a social activist.
I'm, I'm a very social person.I'm very socially motivated,
community motivated, community minded.Very much connected to community.
Yeah.
Well, now that we've establishedwho you are and why you are,
and some examples of,
let's talk around all youreffect in the world of
(07:37):
these types of efforts that you've, um.
Can you be a little more specific?
We started off when you were diagnosedwith cancer and you created this
community of a support mechanism becausethere was nothing out there that met
the need. Right. And now you'vemoved on from that to what, what,
what are the other thingsthat have Great, I see.
What are the other elements ofcommunity building that you've drawn to?
(08:00):
I started at TechSoup, um,
and I was actually hired at TechSoupto write the first 30 articles.
I was kind of hired as a contentdeveloper and writer cuz I had a English
degree.
And then I realized kind of very sooninto it launch of the site and the
pre-launch of the site thatwe needed an online community.
It needed to happen and it neededto be staffed with experts.
(08:24):
I made it up as I went along, I,
I joined a bunch of online communitiesfor people who were in technology
in tech for good and nonprofits.I listened into those communities.
I joined them as somebody in my twentieswho had never done it before. Mm-hmm.
,
I actually kind of had a little bitof an innovative way to find them.
(08:44):
I did a a who sort on outlook.
I just did a sort by whom on Outlookand saw under each group funneled each
group filtered each group into itsown folder, its own filter. Mm-hmm.
,
then I did a who sort and I saw whowas speaking the most and I found those
people and I reached out tothem individually and told them what I was doing and
asked their advice first to get buy-infrom them and then invited them to be
(09:08):
personally the firstexperts in the community.
I launched a forum for TechSoup and nobody wants to kind of dance at a party by
themselves. So I knew that.
So I pretended to be 10 differentpeople with different personas.
Just talked to myself and got a couplestaff members to do the same. Oh.
That's.
Rich. So much so that, um, ourchief community impact officer,
(09:31):
Marni Webb, who's now, you know,number two in the organization,
was answering at the time,you know, she was a brand new,
she started a month after me and,
and she was answering all thesequestions and I said to her, Hey,
we really should look up who thisperson is cuz this person's really good.
And she cracked up. She said, are youbeing serious? I said, yeah. And she said,
you know, that's me, right. Oh.
My.
(09:51):
So that was great. So yeah, so that'show I started it at TechSoup. Mm-hmm.
So then I just kind of continued to workunder online community as what I did
rather than writing. I'm a much bettercommunity manager than I am a writer.
Well, let's, let's back this train up.
When you started this divergingfrom the content developer and
the community maker, tell me the,
(10:12):
the use case an organizationwould want to have a community
for, you know, if we're gonna talkbusiness outcomes and, and strategies.
We get the idea of social media becausethat's where companies market stuff
to the consumer. That's, I'llsay 85% of what social media is.
To me it's marketing,
(10:34):
but in this essence ofa community building,
it's not marketing as much asit is education, awareness,
uh, connecting people, youknow, that sort of thing.
What is the use case that you would goto a small business or a small nonprofit
and say, you know what, you maywanna look at doing this because.
So I mean, I think thatum, with many instances,
(10:58):
communities can be found within alarger social network like Facebook
or LinkedIn. So you're meetingpeople where they're at,
but with specific very kindof subject matter specifics
where it, let's say young womenwith cancer where there's a,
a very dialed down need. It's mm-hmm.
helpful tohave your own community.
(11:20):
And also with regard toprivacy, so many communities,
they don't wanna connecttheir Facebook profile Right.
With their LinkedIn profile,
with a private issue that they might notwant tied to to to their right. Right.
Outward facing, facing identity.
So having a closed kind of whitelabeled online community gives them
(11:40):
this privacy. Mm-hmm.
this kind of safewalled garden if you want it to be.
And then also, like for example,with the tech soup community mm-hmm.
, this is a technologycommunity for nonprofits.
So it's very product agnostic.So as opposed to going to,
let's say a forum under a tech brand name,
(12:02):
like let's say Adobe or Sauna,
that's gonna be great for that specificproduct, but maybe not another product.
So this is brand agnostic,
trusted by the nonprofits becausethe nonprofits are inhabiting it.
So we have a new membership communityat TechSoup called Quad. Mm-hmm.
, it's closed, you have topay to join and then it's very trusted,
(12:25):
the network is trusted. We will rubberstamp and validate those answers,
make sure that they're correct.
You're not getting bad advice that'lllike take down your network. Yeah.
Things like that. That'swhere you would want.
Whereas if you just Google andput it in Let's Spiceworks,
you don't necessarily knowwho's answering there.
Ends up being,
(12:46):
in this case with TechSoup acredibility and a privacy and,
and a bit of a consumer reportskind of protection of uh,
not being a sellout to one brandor one company that you are there
to represent really the consumerin a, in a fair and equal way.
We try to be a trusted resource and thatkind of goes along with our mission.
(13:09):
Let's move on to what's theevolution that you've seen,
uh,
cuz your early days before the internetwith that thing about the earthquake.
You know, I, I just wanna see,
I want to get your perspective of whatthe evolution has brought along in
technology in the digitalage to community building.
(13:29):
Initially, communities were onused net news groups, right?
That's like the very, veryearly days of online community.
And people would sign upfor used net news group,
which is kind of manypeople listening to this,
might not even have ever heard of that,but it was early, early internet days,
text only,
and you would sign up and join kindof chapters of that topics under that
(13:52):
mm-hmm.,
then it became email lists and emailgroups and there were tons of those and
they were great. Mm-hmm..
But the downside of those wasthe anonymity where again,
text only and you can make, anyonecan set up an email address and,
and you know, they started havingwhat they called trolls. Yeah.
And another downside of email listsis that they're not organized.
(14:13):
So you might have the same questionbeing asked over and over and over again.
There's no archive. So then, um,
web-based forums kind oflaunched and that was a,
a great feature or a great feature setbecause they were all of a sudden be able
to be organized and archived.Mm-hmm..
So you don't have to continually askwho's the best web host for nonprofits,
you can just go to the web host forum,
(14:34):
'em where do I need to know aboutcomputer recycling? You just go there.
So that was a great feature. And then, um,
also the ability to have profiles,
so like visible profiles where you canclick into people and you can network
with each other. So it no longerjust becomes about many to many.
It becomes also one-to-onenetworking because you have profiles.
(14:57):
And then I would say thenext stage is social media,
where they're attached to a largernetwork rather than just this
standalone community.
It's attached to a larger networkand people can connect maybe,
let's say about a topic mm-hmm., but then it becomes,
it expands the edges of their personalnetwork. So their personal network,
(15:18):
it's like you might join a group, anonprofit social media group in LinkedIn,
but then that person becomes part of yourlarger LinkedIn network and they might
have a job that you wantmm-hmm. or a
job they can share for you.
So you start expandingthe edges of your network.
And then there are tools like Twitterthat are not about a topic at all,
they're just an open forum.
(15:39):
You build your own network and thenyou can kind of dial into conversations
as you wish, using hashtags that kindof creates your own vertical topics.
And I would say the nextgeneration would be Slack. Mm-hmm.
and Slack and WhatsApp.
Those are these kind of decentralizednetworks where people can ask and answer
questions and create topic-basedchannels. They can be one-on-one,
(16:03):
they can be topic-based, theycan be subgroup locked and open.
Mm-hmm.. Um,
and they also have this kind ofdecentralized way of bringing in people
from a closed network and alsooutside of that closed network for us,
like for at TechSoup we're usingSlack as our virtual office.
We have been since the pandemic mm-hmm.. So since early 2020,
(16:26):
it's taken the place. Mm-hmm., we didn't
have anything like it.
We were on Microsoft teams as anoffice. No, but it wasn't like this,
this has become our, the virtual workplaceof our, of our global enterprise.
It's been amazing.
That competition between teams and Slack,
slack has pushed teams to adoptand adapt and become better teams.
(16:47):
Is a little, is some better,but still it's not Slack.
The availability of tools is notthe problem at all anymore. I mean,
it's the.
Usability.
It's usability and where, and.
Onboarding.
And where's the data?That's the other piece.
If you're gonna talk in-house stuff,uh, behind the doors, business stuff,
who else has got access? That's the issue.
(17:08):
That's true. And I mean, uh,I have to say that there,
there is a problem with Slack that I find,
which is this kind of ease ofuse for adoption. It's not,
to me it's second nature now,
but it's not an easy tool tounderstand how to sign onto even the
sign-ons at the beginning, I rememberlike five different steps. It's like,
(17:28):
but in terms of the data, Imean, honestly, even today,
and I consider myself a power user.
I've launched Slack channelsand communities, many of them,
I still have privateconversations in huddle,
the voice option rather than the writtenoption. Just because I don't know.
I don't know who's seeing it.Yeah. Who's listening? I, I mean,
(17:49):
I don't know who's, who's reading. Yeah.
But I know that if I have aspontaneous conversation and voice,
nobody's listening.
I want to ask you two things.
What would you define knowledge managementas and what would be your best advice
to a small nonprofit in theworld of community building?
I would define knowledgemanagement as a way to organize
(18:11):
and archive what you have learnedand what you've been asking,
what you've been seeking to learn inyour organization so that others can
benefit from it.
And it is not just wrappedwithin your personal workflow.
Knowledge management is away to open up your personal
(18:31):
workflow so that others can benefitfrom it and work within it and kind of
open it up so that it'sinteroperable with your own workflow.
And that would include what I wastalking about with using Slack and
also social media andusing hashtags for example.
And being able to create, I'mgonna throw out an example.
(18:53):
Let's say somebody getshacked. Mm-hmm.,
the outcome of it is a lessonslearned document internally.
Knowledge management wouldbe creating from that a
checklist so that others canbenefit from your knowledge. Mm-hmm.
opening up what youlearn would be knowledge management.
And the second question you ask.
(19:13):
What's your best advice to a nonprofitwhen it comes to community building?
My best advice to a nonprofit whenit comes to community building is
start small and with what you can manage.
Don't think you need to start onevery channel and have your own forum.
What's more important is figureout where your audience is.
So if they're only on Twitter,don't open up Facebook page.
(19:36):
Like find out first of all where youraudience is, meet them where they're at,
and start small.
Start with fewer channels because it'sbetter to have fewer channels that you
post frequently to than multiplechannels that you infrequently
post to.
And I guess the third advice wouldbe don't post the same content across
(19:59):
all channels. It just, yeah.
All that tells your audienceis that you're not there. Yeah.
It's just spraying andspamming. So instead like,
figure out what you can manage,
but give yourself an hour a weekminimum to be in that channel and talk
to people and build your communityand look for those super fans,
those engaged users so that you canenlist them to be your volunteer hosts
(20:22):
and help you grow your community.
Excellent advice. Thankyou. Well, thanks, uh,
we're gonna wrap up thisfirst segment and get,
and we'll see you next time forthe next segment. Thank you. Thank.
You. It's fun.
(20:50):
You have just finished our latest becauseyou need to know a public service of
Pioneer Knowledge Services.
Please join us on LinkedInand find us@pioneer-ks.org.
This is Edwin k Morris,
and you are about to embark on thenext Pioneer Knowledge Services
because you need to know a digitalresource for you to listen to folks
share their experience and knowledgearound the field of knowledge management
and nonprofit work.
(00:44):
If your company or organization wouldlike to help us continue this mission and
sponsor one of our shows,
email b byn tk@pioneer-ks.org.
Hi, I'm Susan Tenby. I livein San Francisco, California,
(01:07):
and the field I work in isactually called online community,
and it's largely unknownby many people as a field.
It's kind of more recently beingdiscovered as a field by major companies.
Most companies use social media asa way to spray out their message,
but they don't know that there's a realcommunity of people and engaged fans and
(01:27):
followers behind that.
And so community management shouldbe prioritized first and throughout.
I work at TechSoup,
which is a technology nonprofitbased in San Francisco,
but we're a global organization. AndI also have social media side hustle,
which I've been cooking up andworking at for about 10 years.
(01:48):
I've worked for 23 years inthe field of online community.
I love to encourage people to join theonline community field as a profession.
I've encouraged many people to do that,
discovered many people whomI knew would be great at it,
but they didn't know that they couldmake a living out of doing what they did
really naturally and well. And many ofthem are still working in this area.
(02:11):
Many of 'em actually have way betterpaying jobs than I ever laugh
I think, um,
online community is a great tech jobfor the non-technically inclined people
who, you know,
maybe studied literature or journalismwho just happen to love social media and
do it for fun. It's a great field thatthey might not know about and, um,
they don't consider themselves techies,
(02:31):
but it's still a techfield for people like us.
And I generally use Facebook tobe connected to people that I know
and Twitter to be connected to peoplethat I may not know personally,
but want to be connected to.
As this new field.
Can you name any kinda sourcethat you lean on for guidance?
Is there a textbook? Is there a author?Yeah, is there, okay, go ahead. Yeah.
(02:54):
So, um,
to kind of lean into the guidance for the
field, I always refer to cmx,
which is the Community ManagersExchange, is what it stands for.
They have regional meetups,they have a Slack channel.
There's a lot of educationalmaterials. It's, um,
a property or a project of Bevy.
(03:15):
CMX was founded by David Spinx.He's really knowledgeable.
I think it's great to join cmx.
I also think Noel Flowersis a great resource,
a community manager who'svery knowledgeable and is kind of been in the field
for a really long time.
Actually,
the most thrilling thing is to hear whatinspiration has led somebody to where
(03:35):
they are When you are a creator,
and I'm labeling you thatbecause you are an entrepreneur,
you see things that need tohave happen and you take action.
Tell me about where thatinspiration came from for you.
Professionally.
That inspiration came becauseI had cancer when I was
26,
(03:56):
and I was a young woman with cancerand all of the cancer resources that I
found were, as soon as I was diagnosed,
I kind of started looking around forcommunity and they were all very much
geared at older women withcancer. And I was a young woman.
I had needs that were very different thanan old woman all the way down to I had
purple hair and I didn'twant an ugly old lady wig.
(04:19):
I wanted a wig that looked like me.
So everything around finding communityand I realized there was no community for
young women with cancer. Mm.
And so I decided what would happen if Iwas the person to launch that community.
So that's kind of how I got started inonline community was I was a member of
San Francisco Women on the Web, which wasan early email list that still exists.
(04:42):
The women on the web iskind of a regional thing.
And there was a San Francisco emaillist and I was a member and I said, Hey,
I'm interested in launching thisgroup, this online community.
I've never done it before.Can someone build it for me?
This was way before socialmedia. Mm-hmm.
So I got some volunteer webdesigners to build it for me,
and that's how I got started asan online community manager and,
(05:04):
and it became my career.
Where did leadership become atrait that, you example, where,
where does that come from?Were you born that way?
You're talking about leadership here?
Uh, I guess I was born that way.I don't think of myself. I mean,
honestly where, where Isee that there's a need,
I don't have any problems stepping upand saying, okay, we need to fill that.
(05:25):
I'm actually a lot better at saying weneed to fill that and asking someone else
to help me implement that.I am being the doer
I'm pretty good at like saying we,
and I'm really being volunteeringsomeone else voluntold, as they say.
Well see now. Yeah. By truedefinition of what a leader is,
is you have to have followers. Soyou've already met that requirement.
(05:46):
You are a leader. Tell me againwhere you got your training.
Where did you become this?
I I honestly don't know.
I can't think of how I got training. Okay.
All right. All right. Right. Let's backup the train. Let's go back to, okay.
Early years and say, tell me thefirst example where you did this.
The first example whereI was entrepreneurial.
(06:08):
Or where you took charge, where yousaid, heck damn, I'm gonna go do this.
Maybe the first example is this examplethat I'm talking about with the online
community thing. I can'tthink of another example.
So there wasn't anything in grade school.There wasn't anything in high school.
There was nothing that was like the,you know, you saw your grandparents,
you saw a neighbor do something thatwas a community-minded effort and you're
(06:30):
like, Ooh, that's, I need to do that, I.
Guess. Well, you know,in college there was,
in college I was here during theSan Francisco earthquake in 1989.
It was my first year in college. Peoplewere really freaked out, honestly.
They were, you know, we were all 18and I organized a group of people.
It was way before the internet, you know,I mean, it was, it was in 1989 and I,
(06:53):
I was on the internet in 94 and Ithought I was an early adopter
So I put posters all around our collegedorm and said like, you guys wanna talk?
We should all get together andfigure out what this means. You know,
we're all kicked out of the dormsfor the, for the week. Yeah.
Because of the earthquake. Yeah.And like, how do we stay in touch?
I organized a phone tree. SoI guess maybe that was it.
(07:14):
I never thought about thatbefore, but maybe that was.
You are a social activist.
I'm, I'm a very social person.I'm very socially motivated,
community motivated, community minded.Very much connected to community.
Yeah.
Well, now that we've establishedwho you are and why you are,
and some examples of,
let's talk around all youreffect in the world of
(07:37):
these types of efforts that you've, um.
Can you be a little more specific?
We started off when you were diagnosedwith cancer and you created this
community of a support mechanism becausethere was nothing out there that met
the need. Right. And now you'vemoved on from that to what, what,
what are the other thingsthat have Great, I see.
What are the other elements ofcommunity building that you've drawn to?
(08:00):
I started at TechSoup, um,
and I was actually hired at TechSoupto write the first 30 articles.
I was kind of hired as a contentdeveloper and writer cuz I had a English
degree.
And then I realized kind of very sooninto it launch of the site and the
pre-launch of the site thatwe needed an online community.
It needed to happen and it neededto be staffed with experts.
(08:24):
I made it up as I went along, I,
I joined a bunch of online communitiesfor people who were in technology
in tech for good and nonprofits.I listened into those communities.
I joined them as somebody in my twentieswho had never done it before. Mm-hmm.
I actually kind of had a little bitof an innovative way to find them.
(08:44):
I did a a who sort on outlook.
I just did a sort by whom on Outlookand saw under each group funneled each
group filtered each group into itsown folder, its own filter. Mm-hmm.
then I did a who sort and I saw whowas speaking the most and I found those
people and I reached out tothem individually and told them what I was doing and
asked their advice first to get buy-infrom them and then invited them to be
(09:08):
personally the firstexperts in the community.
I launched a forum for TechSoup and nobody wants to kind of dance at a party by
themselves. So I knew that.
So I pretended to be 10 differentpeople with different personas.
Just talked to myself and got a couplestaff members to do the same. Oh.
That's.
Rich. So much so that, um, ourchief community impact officer,
(09:31):
Marni Webb, who's now, you know,number two in the organization,
was answering at the time,you know, she was a brand new,
she started a month after me and,
and she was answering all thesequestions and I said to her, Hey,
we really should look up who thisperson is cuz this person's really good.
And she cracked up. She said, are youbeing serious? I said, yeah. And she said,
you know, that's me, right. Oh.
My.
(09:51):
So that was great. So yeah, so that'show I started it at TechSoup. Mm-hmm.
So then I just kind of continued to workunder online community as what I did
rather than writing. I'm a much bettercommunity manager than I am a writer.
Well, let's, let's back this train up.
When you started this divergingfrom the content developer and
the community maker, tell me the,
(10:12):
the use case an organizationwould want to have a community
for, you know, if we're gonna talkbusiness outcomes and, and strategies.
We get the idea of social media becausethat's where companies market stuff
to the consumer. That's, I'llsay 85% of what social media is.
To me it's marketing,
(10:34):
but in this essence ofa community building,
it's not marketing as much asit is education, awareness,
uh, connecting people, youknow, that sort of thing.
What is the use case that you would goto a small business or a small nonprofit
and say, you know what, you maywanna look at doing this because.
So I mean, I think thatum, with many instances,
(10:58):
communities can be found within alarger social network like Facebook
or LinkedIn. So you're meetingpeople where they're at,
but with specific very kindof subject matter specifics
where it, let's say young womenwith cancer where there's a,
a very dialed down need. It's mm-hmm.
(11:20):
And also with regard toprivacy, so many communities,
they don't wanna connecttheir Facebook profile Right.
With their LinkedIn profile,
with a private issue that they might notwant tied to to to their right. Right.
Outward facing, facing identity.
So having a closed kind of whitelabeled online community gives them
(11:40):
this privacy. Mm-hmm.
And then also, like for example,with the tech soup community mm-hmm.
So it's very product agnostic.So as opposed to going to,
let's say a forum under a tech brand name,
(12:02):
like let's say Adobe or Sauna,
that's gonna be great for that specificproduct, but maybe not another product.
So this is brand agnostic,
trusted by the nonprofits becausethe nonprofits are inhabiting it.
So we have a new membership communityat TechSoup called Quad. Mm-hmm.
(12:25):
the network is trusted. We will rubberstamp and validate those answers,
make sure that they're correct.
You're not getting bad advice that'lllike take down your network. Yeah.
Things like that. That'swhere you would want.
Whereas if you just Google andput it in Let's Spiceworks,
you don't necessarily knowwho's answering there.
Ends up being,
(12:46):
in this case with TechSoup acredibility and a privacy and,
and a bit of a consumer reportskind of protection of uh,
not being a sellout to one brandor one company that you are there
to represent really the consumerin a, in a fair and equal way.
We try to be a trusted resource and thatkind of goes along with our mission.
(13:09):
Let's move on to what's theevolution that you've seen,
uh,
cuz your early days before the internetwith that thing about the earthquake.
You know, I, I just wanna see,
I want to get your perspective of whatthe evolution has brought along in
technology in the digitalage to community building.
(13:29):
Initially, communities were onused net news groups, right?
That's like the very, veryearly days of online community.
And people would sign upfor used net news group,
which is kind of manypeople listening to this,
might not even have ever heard of that,but it was early, early internet days,
text only,
and you would sign up and join kindof chapters of that topics under that
(13:52):
mm-hmm.
then it became email lists and emailgroups and there were tons of those and
they were great. Mm-hmm.
But the downside of those wasthe anonymity where again,
text only and you can make, anyonecan set up an email address and,
and you know, they started havingwhat they called trolls. Yeah.
And another downside of email listsis that they're not organized.
(14:13):
So you might have the same questionbeing asked over and over and over again.
There's no archive. So then, um,
web-based forums kind oflaunched and that was a,
a great feature or a great feature setbecause they were all of a sudden be able
to be organized and archived.Mm-hmm.
So you don't have to continually askwho's the best web host for nonprofits,
you can just go to the web host forum,
(14:34):
'em where do I need to know aboutcomputer recycling? You just go there.
So that was a great feature. And then, um,
also the ability to have profiles,
so like visible profiles where you canclick into people and you can network
with each other. So it no longerjust becomes about many to many.
It becomes also one-to-onenetworking because you have profiles.
(14:57):
And then I would say thenext stage is social media,
where they're attached to a largernetwork rather than just this
standalone community.
It's attached to a larger networkand people can connect maybe,
let's say about a topic mm-hmm.
it expands the edges of their personalnetwork. So their personal network,
(15:18):
it's like you might join a group, anonprofit social media group in LinkedIn,
but then that person becomes part of yourlarger LinkedIn network and they might
have a job that you wantmm-hmm.
So you start expandingthe edges of your network.
And then there are tools like Twitterthat are not about a topic at all,
they're just an open forum.
(15:39):
You build your own network and thenyou can kind of dial into conversations
as you wish, using hashtags that kindof creates your own vertical topics.
And I would say the nextgeneration would be Slack. Mm-hmm.
Those are these kind of decentralizednetworks where people can ask and answer
questions and create topic-basedchannels. They can be one-on-one,
(16:03):
they can be topic-based, theycan be subgroup locked and open.
Mm-hmm.
and they also have this kind ofdecentralized way of bringing in people
from a closed network and alsooutside of that closed network for us,
like for at TechSoup we're usingSlack as our virtual office.
We have been since the pandemic mm-hmm.
(16:26):
it's taken the place. Mm-hmm.
We were on Microsoft teams as anoffice. No, but it wasn't like this,
this has become our, the virtual workplaceof our, of our global enterprise.
It's been amazing.
That competition between teams and Slack,
slack has pushed teams to adoptand adapt and become better teams.
(16:47):
Is a little, is some better,but still it's not Slack.
The availability of tools is notthe problem at all anymore. I mean,
it's the.
Usability.
It's usability and where, and.
Onboarding.
And where's the data?That's the other piece.
If you're gonna talk in-house stuff,uh, behind the doors, business stuff,
who else has got access? That's the issue.
(17:08):
That's true. And I mean, uh,I have to say that there,
there is a problem with Slack that I find,
which is this kind of ease ofuse for adoption. It's not,
to me it's second nature now,
but it's not an easy tool tounderstand how to sign onto even the
sign-ons at the beginning, I rememberlike five different steps. It's like,
(17:28):
but in terms of the data, Imean, honestly, even today,
and I consider myself a power user.
I've launched Slack channelsand communities, many of them,
I still have privateconversations in huddle,
the voice option rather than the writtenoption. Just because I don't know.
I don't know who's seeing it.Yeah. Who's listening? I, I mean,
(17:49):
I don't know who's, who's reading. Yeah.
But I know that if I have aspontaneous conversation and voice,
nobody's listening.
I want to ask you two things.
What would you define knowledge managementas and what would be your best advice
to a small nonprofit in theworld of community building?
I would define knowledgemanagement as a way to organize
(18:11):
and archive what you have learnedand what you've been asking,
what you've been seeking to learn inyour organization so that others can
benefit from it.
And it is not just wrappedwithin your personal workflow.
Knowledge management is away to open up your personal
(18:31):
workflow so that others can benefitfrom it and work within it and kind of
open it up so that it'sinteroperable with your own workflow.
And that would include what I wastalking about with using Slack and
also social media andusing hashtags for example.
And being able to create, I'mgonna throw out an example.
(18:53):
Let's say somebody getshacked. Mm-hmm.
the outcome of it is a lessonslearned document internally.
Knowledge management wouldbe creating from that a
checklist so that others canbenefit from your knowledge. Mm-hmm.
And the second question you ask.
(19:13):
What's your best advice to a nonprofitwhen it comes to community building?
My best advice to a nonprofit whenit comes to community building is
start small and with what you can manage.
Don't think you need to start onevery channel and have your own forum.
What's more important is figureout where your audience is.
So if they're only on Twitter,don't open up Facebook page.
(19:36):
Like find out first of all where youraudience is, meet them where they're at,
and start small.
Start with fewer channels because it'sbetter to have fewer channels that you
post frequently to than multiplechannels that you infrequently
post to.
And I guess the third advice wouldbe don't post the same content across
(19:59):
all channels. It just, yeah.
All that tells your audienceis that you're not there. Yeah.
It's just spraying andspamming. So instead like,
figure out what you can manage,
but give yourself an hour a weekminimum to be in that channel and talk
to people and build your communityand look for those super fans,
those engaged users so that you canenlist them to be your volunteer hosts
(20:22):
and help you grow your community.
Excellent advice. Thankyou. Well, thanks, uh,
we're gonna wrap up thisfirst segment and get,
and we'll see you next time forthe next segment. Thank you. Thank.
You. It's fun.
(20:50):
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