{"id":20164,"date":"2015-12-08T03:14:48","date_gmt":"2015-12-08T03:14:48","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/enterprisestrategies.com\/?p=20164"},"modified":"2015-12-08T14:16:40","modified_gmt":"2015-12-08T14:16:40","slug":"teach-them-to-fish-community-management-builds-the-community","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/enterprisestrategies.com\/2015\/12\/08\/teach-them-to-fish-community-management-builds-the-community\/","title":{"rendered":"Teach Them to Fish — Community Management Builds the Community"},"content":{"rendered":"

Last week I was working with a customer, planning for their 2016 community management education and awareness program.\u00a0 One thing that struck me was her reference\u00a0to wanting to teach her community managers “how to fish”.\u00a0 I loved this analogy.<\/p>\n

Where this was coming from was that this customer, like most of those\u00a0that I work with, has a small central team to manage adoption of their enterprise social network. \u00a0When you have a small team, a strong program of community management is an important component in extending the reach and efficacy of the central team.<\/p>\n

Competence and Confidence<\/strong><\/h3>\n

Education and awareness campaigns are often part of any comprehensive enterprise social launch.\u00a0 However, often once the launch is complete education opportunities often wane and many community managers or owners are left to their own devices to make their community successful.\u00a0 I have spoken before about building competence in community management<\/a> to achieve repeatable success.\u00a0 Building that competence requires a twofold approach<\/p>\n

1.\u00a0<\/span><\/strong>Fostering community maturity by building basic skills and increasing competence<\/p>\n

2.\u00a0<\/strong><\/span>Engaging community managers so they feel supported and gain confidence<\/p>\n

Building Community Management Skills<\/strong><\/h3>\n

To build the competence of your community managers, you need to have a robust ongoing program of education.\u00a0 This should be planned out on an annual basis and reviewed at least bi-annually.\u00a0 So in the example of the customer that I am currently working with, they are following this good practice and planning their annual education approach one year in advance.\u00a0 Don’t assume that once you’ve trained your community managers on the basics that you are done.\u00a0 You will have new community managers being identified and existing community managers who need assistance in maturing their communities.\u00a0 Craft your training plan to support both ends of this spectrum of training needs.<\/p>\n

Engaging Community Managers<\/strong><\/h3>\n

That brings us to the second point.\u00a0 Couple your education planning with activities that create awareness and provide opportunities for engagement. Awareness helps ensure your community managers know what help is available to them. Highlight education materials, help communities and support processes, best practices and enabling features of your enterprise social network.<\/p>\n

If possible, connect your community managers face to face at least once a year. Even if this is not possible due to geography or budget, you can engage them by connecting the community regularly using live events like a teleconference, video call or “tweet jam” style live chat on your social network. By creating a community of practice<\/a> for your community managers, your more experienced community managers can support the new community managers being identified.\u00a0 Remember that if you have a small central team it will be difficult for you to be hands on with all levels of community managers, especially in larger organizations or more mature programs.\u00a0 That’s why it is so important to ” teach them to fish”, and they in turn can teach one another.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Last week I was working with a customer, planning for their 2016 community management education and awareness program.\u00a0 One thing that struck me was her reference\u00a0to wanting to teach her community managers “how to fish”.\u00a0 I loved this analogy. Where this was coming from was…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":20170,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[346,82,86,60,1],"tags":[432,435,436,437,355,434],"class_list":["post-20164","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-communication","category-employee-engagement","category-internal-communication","category-social-enterprise","category-uncategorized","tag-allison-maguire","tag-community-management","tag-community-manager","tag-community-managers","tag-social-business-2","tag-work-social"],"yoast_head":"\nTeach Them to Fish -- Community Management<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"Create a community of practice for your community management team, your more experienced community managers can support the new community managers being identified.\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/enterprisestrategies.com\/2015\/12\/08\/teach-them-to-fish-community-management-builds-the-community\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Teach Them to Fish -- Community Management Builds the Community\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Create a community of practice for your community management team, your more experienced community managers can support the new community managers being identified.\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/enterprisestrategies.com\/2015\/12\/08\/teach-them-to-fish-community-management-builds-the-community\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"Enterprise Strategies\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:publisher\" content=\"https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/EnterpriseStrategies\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2015-12-08T03:14:48+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:modified_time\" content=\"2015-12-08T14:16:40+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:image\" content=\"https:\/\/enterprisestrategies.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/12\/early-morning-fishing-1196162-639x426.jpg\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:width\" content=\"639\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:height\" content=\"426\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:type\" content=\"image\/jpeg\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"Andy Jankowski\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:creator\" content=\"@AndyJankowski\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:site\" content=\"@workingevolved\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:label1\" content=\"Written by\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data1\" content=\"Andy Jankowski\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:label2\" content=\"Est. reading time\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data2\" content=\"2 minutes\" \/>\n<script type=\"application\/ld+json\" class=\"yoast-schema-graph\">{\"@context\":\"https:\/\/schema.org\",\"@graph\":[{\"@type\":\"WebPage\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/enterprisestrategies.com\/2015\/12\/08\/teach-them-to-fish-community-management-builds-the-community\/\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/enterprisestrategies.com\/2015\/12\/08\/teach-them-to-fish-community-management-builds-the-community\/\",\"name\":\"Teach Them to Fish -- Community Management\",\"isPartOf\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/enterprisestrategies.com\/#website\"},\"primaryImageOfPage\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/enterprisestrategies.com\/2015\/12\/08\/teach-them-to-fish-community-management-builds-the-community\/#primaryimage\"},\"image\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/enterprisestrategies.com\/2015\/12\/08\/teach-them-to-fish-community-management-builds-the-community\/#primaryimage\"},\"thumbnailUrl\":\"https:\/\/enterprisestrategies.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/12\/early-morning-fishing-1196162-639x426.jpg\",\"datePublished\":\"2015-12-08T03:14:48+00:00\",\"dateModified\":\"2015-12-08T14:16:40+00:00\",\"author\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/enterprisestrategies.com\/#\/schema\/person\/5cc50b0a461fb29e9839942d29fc0268\"},\"description\":\"Create a community of practice for your community management team, your more experienced community managers can support the new community managers being identified.\",\"breadcrumb\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/enterprisestrategies.com\/2015\/12\/08\/teach-them-to-fish-community-management-builds-the-community\/#breadcrumb\"},\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\",\"potentialAction\":[{\"@type\":\"ReadAction\",\"target\":[\"https:\/\/enterprisestrategies.com\/2015\/12\/08\/teach-them-to-fish-community-management-builds-the-community\/\"]}]},{\"@type\":\"ImageObject\",\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/enterprisestrategies.com\/2015\/12\/08\/teach-them-to-fish-community-management-builds-the-community\/#primaryimage\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/enterprisestrategies.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/12\/early-morning-fishing-1196162-639x426.jpg\",\"contentUrl\":\"https:\/\/enterprisestrategies.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/12\/early-morning-fishing-1196162-639x426.jpg\",\"width\":639,\"height\":426,\"caption\":\"COMMUNITY MANAGEMENT\"},{\"@type\":\"BreadcrumbList\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/enterprisestrategies.com\/2015\/12\/08\/teach-them-to-fish-community-management-builds-the-community\/#breadcrumb\",\"itemListElement\":[{\"@type\":\"ListItem\",\"position\":1,\"name\":\"Home\",\"item\":\"https:\/\/enterprisestrategies.com\/\"},{\"@type\":\"ListItem\",\"position\":2,\"name\":\"Teach Them to Fish — Community Management Builds the Community\"}]},{\"@type\":\"WebSite\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/enterprisestrategies.com\/#website\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/enterprisestrategies.com\/\",\"name\":\"Enterprise Strategies\",\"description\":\"Delivering the Future of Work\",\"potentialAction\":[{\"@type\":\"SearchAction\",\"target\":{\"@type\":\"EntryPoint\",\"urlTemplate\":\"https:\/\/enterprisestrategies.com\/?s={search_term_string}\"},\"query-input\":{\"@type\":\"PropertyValueSpecification\",\"valueRequired\":true,\"valueName\":\"search_term_string\"}}],\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\"},{\"@type\":\"Person\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/enterprisestrategies.com\/#\/schema\/person\/5cc50b0a461fb29e9839942d29fc0268\",\"name\":\"Andy Jankowski\",\"image\":{\"@type\":\"ImageObject\",\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/enterprisestrategies.com\/#\/schema\/person\/image\/\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/978ad146c4e273d94fd290e33faf0c95?s=96&d=mm&r=g\",\"contentUrl\":\"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/978ad146c4e273d94fd290e33faf0c95?s=96&d=mm&r=g\",\"caption\":\"Andy Jankowski\"},\"description\":\"Why read this blog? Never before has it been as important to provide employees an optimal digital work environment. And never before has it been so confusing to do so. As a Chief Human Resource Officer you want to provide inviting, efficient and fulfilling employee experiences. As a Chief Technology Officer you want technology that is extensible and provides flexibility for business changes. As a Chief Communication Officer you need channels that break through digital noise and enable effective and efficient bi-directional communication with employees. As Chief Financial Officer you want a comprehensive solution and commercial model that comes at a low financial impact and ultimately pays for itself. And as employees we want to be able to do our jobs in a frictionless, effective manner with tools that have the same style and ease of use that we have become accustomed to in our personal lives. The good news is that enterprise technologies, social constructs and many work cultures have evolved to the point where all of this is possible. The challenge is evaluating the seemingly endless technology and process options to make this a reality for any one company. This blog is my attempt to share what I have learned working with Global 2000 companies over the last 26 years to solve various instantiations of these same challenges. I do not have all of the answers, and I fully suspect that through the process of researching, talking to others and writing, I will likely learn as much as anyone who reads these posts. At the very least, by the time I retire, maybe I will have documented enough knowledge and insight to have helped someone, somewhere.\",\"sameAs\":[\"andyjankowski\",\"https:\/\/x.com\/AndyJankowski\"],\"url\":\"https:\/\/enterprisestrategies.com\/author\/admin\/\"}]}<\/script>\n<!-- \/ Yoast SEO Premium plugin. -->","yoast_head_json":{"title":"Teach Them to Fish -- Community Management","description":"Create a community of practice for your community management team, your more experienced community managers can support the new community managers being identified.","robots":{"index":"index","follow":"follow","max-snippet":"max-snippet:-1","max-image-preview":"max-image-preview:large","max-video-preview":"max-video-preview:-1"},"canonical":"https:\/\/enterprisestrategies.com\/2015\/12\/08\/teach-them-to-fish-community-management-builds-the-community\/","og_locale":"en_US","og_type":"article","og_title":"Teach Them to Fish -- Community Management Builds the Community","og_description":"Create a community of practice for your community management team, your more experienced community managers can support the new community managers being identified.","og_url":"https:\/\/enterprisestrategies.com\/2015\/12\/08\/teach-them-to-fish-community-management-builds-the-community\/","og_site_name":"Enterprise Strategies","article_publisher":"https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/EnterpriseStrategies","article_published_time":"2015-12-08T03:14:48+00:00","article_modified_time":"2015-12-08T14:16:40+00:00","og_image":[{"width":639,"height":426,"url":"https:\/\/enterprisestrategies.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/12\/early-morning-fishing-1196162-639x426.jpg","type":"image\/jpeg"}],"author":"Andy Jankowski","twitter_card":"summary_large_image","twitter_creator":"@AndyJankowski","twitter_site":"@workingevolved","twitter_misc":{"Written by":"Andy Jankowski","Est. reading time":"2 minutes"},"schema":{"@context":"https:\/\/schema.org","@graph":[{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https:\/\/enterprisestrategies.com\/2015\/12\/08\/teach-them-to-fish-community-management-builds-the-community\/","url":"https:\/\/enterprisestrategies.com\/2015\/12\/08\/teach-them-to-fish-community-management-builds-the-community\/","name":"Teach Them to Fish -- Community Management","isPartOf":{"@id":"https:\/\/enterprisestrategies.com\/#website"},"primaryImageOfPage":{"@id":"https:\/\/enterprisestrategies.com\/2015\/12\/08\/teach-them-to-fish-community-management-builds-the-community\/#primaryimage"},"image":{"@id":"https:\/\/enterprisestrategies.com\/2015\/12\/08\/teach-them-to-fish-community-management-builds-the-community\/#primaryimage"},"thumbnailUrl":"https:\/\/enterprisestrategies.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/12\/early-morning-fishing-1196162-639x426.jpg","datePublished":"2015-12-08T03:14:48+00:00","dateModified":"2015-12-08T14:16:40+00:00","author":{"@id":"https:\/\/enterprisestrategies.com\/#\/schema\/person\/5cc50b0a461fb29e9839942d29fc0268"},"description":"Create a community of practice for your community management team, your more experienced community managers can support the new community managers being identified.","breadcrumb":{"@id":"https:\/\/enterprisestrategies.com\/2015\/12\/08\/teach-them-to-fish-community-management-builds-the-community\/#breadcrumb"},"inLanguage":"en-US","potentialAction":[{"@type":"ReadAction","target":["https:\/\/enterprisestrategies.com\/2015\/12\/08\/teach-them-to-fish-community-management-builds-the-community\/"]}]},{"@type":"ImageObject","inLanguage":"en-US","@id":"https:\/\/enterprisestrategies.com\/2015\/12\/08\/teach-them-to-fish-community-management-builds-the-community\/#primaryimage","url":"https:\/\/enterprisestrategies.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/12\/early-morning-fishing-1196162-639x426.jpg","contentUrl":"https:\/\/enterprisestrategies.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/12\/early-morning-fishing-1196162-639x426.jpg","width":639,"height":426,"caption":"COMMUNITY MANAGEMENT"},{"@type":"BreadcrumbList","@id":"https:\/\/enterprisestrategies.com\/2015\/12\/08\/teach-them-to-fish-community-management-builds-the-community\/#breadcrumb","itemListElement":[{"@type":"ListItem","position":1,"name":"Home","item":"https:\/\/enterprisestrategies.com\/"},{"@type":"ListItem","position":2,"name":"Teach Them to Fish — Community Management Builds the Community"}]},{"@type":"WebSite","@id":"https:\/\/enterprisestrategies.com\/#website","url":"https:\/\/enterprisestrategies.com\/","name":"Enterprise Strategies","description":"Delivering the Future of Work","potentialAction":[{"@type":"SearchAction","target":{"@type":"EntryPoint","urlTemplate":"https:\/\/enterprisestrategies.com\/?s={search_term_string}"},"query-input":{"@type":"PropertyValueSpecification","valueRequired":true,"valueName":"search_term_string"}}],"inLanguage":"en-US"},{"@type":"Person","@id":"https:\/\/enterprisestrategies.com\/#\/schema\/person\/5cc50b0a461fb29e9839942d29fc0268","name":"Andy Jankowski","image":{"@type":"ImageObject","inLanguage":"en-US","@id":"https:\/\/enterprisestrategies.com\/#\/schema\/person\/image\/","url":"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/978ad146c4e273d94fd290e33faf0c95?s=96&d=mm&r=g","contentUrl":"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/978ad146c4e273d94fd290e33faf0c95?s=96&d=mm&r=g","caption":"Andy Jankowski"},"description":"Why read this blog? Never before has it been as important to provide employees an optimal digital work environment. And never before has it been so confusing to do so. As a Chief Human Resource Officer you want to provide inviting, efficient and fulfilling employee experiences. As a Chief Technology Officer you want technology that is extensible and provides flexibility for business changes. As a Chief Communication Officer you need channels that break through digital noise and enable effective and efficient bi-directional communication with employees. As Chief Financial Officer you want a comprehensive solution and commercial model that comes at a low financial impact and ultimately pays for itself. And as employees we want to be able to do our jobs in a frictionless, effective manner with tools that have the same style and ease of use that we have become accustomed to in our personal lives. The good news is that enterprise technologies, social constructs and many work cultures have evolved to the point where all of this is possible. The challenge is evaluating the seemingly endless technology and process options to make this a reality for any one company. This blog is my attempt to share what I have learned working with Global 2000 companies over the last 26 years to solve various instantiations of these same challenges. I do not have all of the answers, and I fully suspect that through the process of researching, talking to others and writing, I will likely learn as much as anyone who reads these posts. At the very least, by the time I retire, maybe I will have documented enough knowledge and insight to have helped someone, somewhere.","sameAs":["andyjankowski","https:\/\/x.com\/AndyJankowski"],"url":"https:\/\/enterprisestrategies.com\/author\/admin\/"}]}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/enterprisestrategies.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20164","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/enterprisestrategies.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/enterprisestrategies.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/enterprisestrategies.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/enterprisestrategies.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=20164"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/enterprisestrategies.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20164\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":20172,"href":"https:\/\/enterprisestrategies.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20164\/revisions\/20172"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/enterprisestrategies.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/20170"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/enterprisestrategies.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=20164"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/enterprisestrategies.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=20164"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/enterprisestrategies.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=20164"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}