Ask Me Anything sessions or more commonly known as AMAs are scheduled events organized typically in communities where other members can ask question to another member or an industry-expert who has been invited solely for the event.
Advocacy is the activity of promoting or sharing your brand publicly and an advocate is someone who is involved in the act of doing so.
An audience is a group of people who closely follow what you do and what you put out there. They actively engage with the content that you put out - be it blogs, articles, tweets, or videos - and usually also are subscribed to channels through which you share new content or updates.
Administrators or Admins are people who are responsible for running the community. Monitoring control over the entire community is the foundation of their responsibilities.
An automation workflow means a process or a part of a process which is completely carried out by a computer program or a software. In community building, the concept of automation is not well established but is becoming essential.
Analytics or Data Analytics is a way to utilize certain tools and information to analyze and measure the impact of engagement (see engagement) or community management strategies. Data is the most statistically reliable way to observe your community with a bird-eye view.
Think of this as the fuel for your community. Activation is what helps take your community off the ground. Activation is the process of breaking through the atmosphere with effective engagement tactics and strategies until the it reaches the orbit - the realm of organic growth.
A user’s activity represents their level of engagement with the community. There are many metrics that can determine the level of activity of a user.
A best practice is used to refer to the act of doing something in the best way that it can be done. The idea behind a best practice isn’t to do something differently but rather about doing the same thing in a way that has proven to show better results.
Badges represent a member’s achievements, skills, and involvement with an online community. A badge is usually displayed on a member’s or user’s profile and it denotes their reputation within the community.
When people who use a certain product go beyond just the confines of using it, and interact with others on the basis of their mutual liking towards the product. This space is called a brand community and is specifically dedicated to the people who believe in the product, values, or the company altogether.
Crowdsourcing is the process of collecting ideas, information, opinions, and concepts from within the community. Because of how diverse communities can get, crowdsourcing can bring to light a myriad of possible ideas, each coming from different experiences and skillsets.
Channels are spaces within communities that help further streamline discussions and increase the relevancy of conversations. Usually, when you first join a community, you will be greeted with a guide to what each channel is for, and depending on what question, interests, or resources you might have, you can pick out the relevant channel and strike a discussion there.
The flywheel concept has been popularized more as a customer success metric than something that has to do with community building. In the recent years, customer success has become more prominent and a sought after category in business.
Churn in general is the measure of the number or percentage of people who have left or are no longer in affiliation with the community.
Community culture encapsulates the everything that makes the community whole - goals, vision, celebrations, events, rewards, recognitions, beliefs, rituals, and presence. A culture is what separates a community from the rest of the crowd. It gives an identity to the community and the people who are involved in it.
Community-led growth, also commonly known as CLG, is the strategy of building communities around users of a product or the supporters of a brand or a business. Any company or organization that has harnessed CLG relies on community as its source for better product adoption, customer support, user retention, and brand positioning.
Community Guidelines are defined rules and regulations that are meant to govern how members interact within a community. The purpose of guidelines is to draw boundaries and set limitations as to what will or will not be accepted in a community.
Managing or building communities is an elaborate process that can get exponentially complicated as the community progresses. It can get overwhelming to keep track of everything that goes on, especially in a community where so many things are happening simultaneously.
Engagement within a community is a process of improving, introducing, and increasing strategic endeavors to organically push members toward investing themselves more in the community. The more members engage in conversations and sharing, the higher the engagement gets.
Community Managers are more commonly referred to as CMGRs. As the name suggests, Community Managers are responsible for managing communities to overlook the goals and purpose of the community.
Community building is an art that focuses on the creation, enhancement, engagement, and growth of communities around something that is a common denominator amongst everyone who chooses to get involved with said community.
Doxxing or doxing is a malicious act of publicly searching and revealing sensitive (and private) information about an individual, group of people, or an organization.
Diversity is the presence of differences in a group. These differences can include race, caste, creed, gender, religion, sexual orientation, ethnicity, personal beliefs, nationality, political views or affiliations, socioeconomic status, language, tradition, culture, perspectives, rituals, age, or disabilities.
Dashboards provide an overview of the entire community from a single, comprehensive source. Dashboard, more typically both offers actionable insights and lets you take actions accordingly.
A direct Message or casually referred to as a DM is a message you send to a community member’s personal inbox. DM is also used casually to tell someone you will be messaging them or have messaged them personally.
An Evangelist is someone who advocates for the role of communities and how can it enable an extremely impactful platform for learning, communicating, sharing, and eventually, growing.
External communities are primarily for customers or prospects of a brand or product. Internal and external communities differ in connotations but are similar in some ways.
An event with respect to community is typically a gathering of individuals for something that’s happening. Event management is the process of planning and executing that event. These can be any type of event - virtual, in-person, or hybrid.
Enterprise Social Network or ESN is an internal business community of employees who are working in those enterprises or companies. You can also consider them to be social networking platforms but only for internal teams of organizations.
Fireside Chats are intimate, personal, and interactive discussions that involve a guest speaker and a moderator or host. Fireside chats are very informal as compared to various events and do not particularly revolve around agendas.
A forum or a community forum is a common place where come to discuss, share knowledge, ask questions, get feedback, and interact with each other usually about a specific area of interest.
A follower is someone who’s slightly above the lurker. This person has been influenced by the community and its content so he/she/they keep the notifications turned on, and maybe even has subscribed to a lot of the content channels like newsletters, blogs, or any updates.
Community facilitators or facilitators in a community are those members of the community who help you run it. They can be officially appointed or indirectly be so heavily involved with the community that they can be considered Superusers or Superfans on the verge of becoming administrators.
Gated online communities are designed to have restricted access to those who want to be a part of the community. These can also be called private communities that typically have a screening process before allowing the general public to become members.
Growth in communities refers to the process of progressing or moving forward.
Gamification was conceptualized to apply game mechanics to communities to create exciting incentives for engagement. Its purpose is to reward member contributions with game-style techniques in order to make participation more fun.
An internal wiki is a place for your internal team to share knowledge, insights, and all information relevant to the team. Internal wikis are a community’s go-to place for any collaborations and team efforts. This is why it should be as well detailed and organized as possible.
An icebreaker in a community is an act of starting a conversation through questions, games, or typically, introductions. Ice-breakers are a very common practice in communities as it helps warm up the conversations and reduces awkwardness.
An internal community is a private or closed community typically within an organization that serves a purpose. They’re established to help enhance communication and make collaborations easier.
Inactive members are those who have not contributed to any conversation or have not engaged for some time in the community. This time period is typically 1 month but can be dynamic based on how each community classifies its inactive members.
Initiation is the beginning of something in the community. Most commonly, initiation refers to starting the conversation. So, when someone asks a question or poses a topic for discussion, the act of doing so is called initiation.
Ideation is the process of generating or coming up with ideas, solutions, tactics, and measures you can take in order to grow your community. Ideation can be about anything or any stage.
A knowledge base is a headquarters for all knowledge resources pertaining to what the community is all about. It’s a primary source or location for storing all sorts of informational content for the community to refer to and learn from at any time.
Leaderboards are part of a community gamification strategy that displays the ranks of community members or participators according to points or badges. Leaderboards help community builders see the top contributors at a glance and keep track of all activity in the community.
A leader is basically someone who has been a superfan long enough. If you’ve been extremely active in a community, it’s easier to get noticed.
The ones who are never really active in your community. These will unfortunately make up for more than 90% of your audience and there’s nothing wrong with it.
Highlighting the contributions of a member in a community is referred to as the member spotlight. The purpose or aim of this is to show appreciation for those members who have been consistent or have done something outstanding for the community.
Roles or Member roles are the responsibilities that some members of the community have in order to ensure seamless functioning.
Moderation is the continued practice of keeping a close watch on all the content generated by users within the community in order to ensure that everything is in parallel with the guidelines.
Member discovery is about understanding and identifying your target audience before your build a community with them. The hardest part of anything in the beginning.
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