2020 was a dumpster fire in many ways. 🔥 One silver lining, though, has been the rise of online community spaces. CMX’s 2021 Community Industry Report tells us clearly that community has become essential for businesses going forward. In a year where we saw industries fall overnight, many times having an active community was the differentiating factor that saved organizations. We love this quote from CMX’s report that summarized this trend very well.
We also saw this trend first-hand within our agency working with education brands. Before COVID, social media management was generally what edtech companies asked us about and community never came up. When COVID hit, many edtech companies that weren’t selling directly to districts saw exponential traffic and user growth. However, all of them were worried about keeping and/or upselling to these new customers after the pandemic. That’s where community became the cool kid at the playground again. As my colleague, Porter Palmer, says over and over again “A brand community’s primary objective beyond improving the lives of its members, is creating loyalty.” Among many things, a healthy community can help your new users become active users by introducing them to a community of people who care about each other, share best practices, and answer questions. And when a person uses your product a lot, they generally renew or decide to pay for it (if it’s a freemium model). In response to this renewed interest in community, our team crafted a helpful community package for edtech companies that helps grow or start educator and/or parent communities in a way that meets business objectives, member needs, and company’s capacity.
Every year, we’re excited to get and take time to digest CMX’s annual Community Industry Report. This year’s report is 50 pages long, and we don’t say this with many reports but this report is worth going through in its entirety. But we also know how busy you all are. So we’ve highlighted the most important things to take away below, listed in chronological order of the report.
Note: Although this report is not specific to the education sector (only 9% of respondents were from the education sector, with the majority (54%) of respondents came from the tech industry), it does reveal some high-level trends that are important to any industry. Note: If you’re curious, the report goes into detail about the methodology and sample size and demographics of the survey respondents in detail (pages 6-10).
1. There’s a sense of momentum, increased interest, and a community profession carving out its own lane. The study reinforced that the community industry, as a whole, is maturing, and organizations are seeing the long-term value communities provide. In fact, 49% of respondents indicated that their community was over 5 years old. Parallel to this growth, companies were also hiring more community professionals. 67% of respondents indicated that they had at least 2 full-time employees on their community team, a year-over-year growth of over 50%. One of the most interesting findings to us is that 79% of companies that are starting a brand community are choosing to dedicate a full-time community manager at launch. We have seen companies fail at community more often than they should. One of the reasons they fail is due to a lack of commitment. This could be a lack of buy in or understanding of community benefits from senior leadership or simply a lack of resources needed to help their community thrive.
2. Community professionals across industries still struggle to quantify their community’s value. We’ve seen this consistently across our work with education brands. Something to note: In order to track ROI, you need to have data systems set up. That may take some set up time to do this initially, but as you can see, doing this one thing can differentiate your community from a majority of other communities and more importantly, it can give you the data you need to communicate value to your company.
3. Although customer support remains the primary objective of communities, engagement has risen in importance over the years. Customer success, which was originally combined with customer support as a community purpose, in CMX’s SPACES model has become a much higher priority recently. Support, external engagement, and success are the most popular objectives we’ve seen within education communities, and all of them help create loyal customers.
4. Many of the most popular metrics measure community health, rather than business impact. In fact, only 28% of community professionals surveyed indicate that they track new customers and 26% track customer retention. While it is complicated because many things that are not community related also impact purchasing and renewal decisions, it’s possible to track metrics that will help you tell a beautiful story of the impact community-building is making on the lives of members and on the brand.
5. Only 12% of community professionals surveyed were confident in their ability to quantify the total value a community generates or saves. What’s worse, is that 22% were unsure of the value of their community. We get that this is hard. In a thriving community, people associate the value they get from other members to the company often without the organization ever really knowing about it. While quantifying value should always be a work in progress, as what you measure should correlate with your business objectives and the needs of your community, it’s clear that measuring community value could improve across industries.
6. Community platforms are not perfect, and a majority of respondents (56%) indicated that they were somewhat or not satisfied with their platform. When clients ask us where they should build community, we ask, “where do your target community members hang out already?” In education, that generally means Facebook Groups when trying to reach educators and parents. Although not perfect by any means, FB Groups also allows privacy options to ensure confidentiality and safety. What we found incredibly interesting is that the most popular community objectives for education: Support and Engagement, also generally chose Facebook Groups to host their communities.
7. COVID19 crippled our economy and crushed industries overnight. Despite this, investment in community continued to increase. In fact, 80% indicated that their investment remained the same or increased. What’s even more awesome is that 56% of respondents reported that their leadership viewed community as more essential since the start of the pandemic. Online communities open up access in a way not previously possible, and we are inspired to see so many brands willing to invest in their customers’ success.
8. The rise of virtual events and spoiler alert — they’re here to stay. We all know that virtual events increased exponentially everywhere, but it was promising to see that 80% of community professionals said that they’re becoming a critical part of their business strategy. What’s even cooler to see is that 49% said that offering more virtual events has positively impacted their business, and 59% said that they will continue to offer the same amount or more virtual events.
9. More than half of the communities in this study had diversity, equity, and inclusion policies for managing their community, and of those that don’t have one in place, one-third plan to. There is also some interesting information on brands that took a stand with Black Lives Matter and their members’ response. And…their demographic research also showed that a majority of the community professionals that responded to their survey (68% overall and 75% of US respondents) were white. There’s clearly more work to be done to ensure professionals that grow communities represent the communities they serve.
10. Although not a finding from the survey, the CMX team ended the report with some helpful guidelines to set your community up for success:
Align community vision and company leadership (this is key!)
Track business outcomes (Not enough people are doing this. Make a point to do this in 2021.)
Take advantage of more event types
Build inclusive spaces and diverse teams
Take your seat at the table
As the data in the CMX report show, community’s contributions to business outcomes are not consistently being tracked, and while it can be difficult, it isn’t impossible. Doing the work to show business value will be critical to maintaining buy-in with leadership. It’s also worth saying that creating and supporting a brand community isn’t for all brands either, and that’s ok. It’s a constant commitment to creating a sense of belonging and helping people become who they want to be. If those things are not priorities for your organization, keep providing great value with products, services, content, and opportunities for your customers and potential customers. When you’re ready, we’d love to help.