Thursday 24th June 2010 by Elena Goodrum

Community Champions are those members who are the most active and whom you have officially appointed to be volunteer leaders within your community. You may call them Advocates, Volunteers, Leaders, Mentors or a number of other names. SiftGroups calls them Champions.

We’ve previously written about Community Champions in the blog by Lawrence Clarke called Any volunteers? How to reduce costs and increase activity, but now I would like to look in more depth at two very specific parts of this working relationship – the tangible results that you will see, and the ways in which you can give back.

What your Community Champions do for you

Champions go out of their way to start discussions – to post articles, information, stories, anecdotes, advice, experiences. They break the ice. They’re the life of the party. They think of relevant discussions, keep the conversation going, pick up unanswered questions and welcome new members. They help set the tone and atmosphere of the community by being advocates of a healthy community. They lead by example by adhering to the rules, filling in their profile, adding a photo, and by speaking the type of language that is friendly, welcoming and on topic. They spot spammers and bullies and flag up potentially risky situations to the Community Manager or Moderator. They give to and receive a lot from all the people they come into contact with, and they love being a part of the space so they have a genuine commitment to seeing it succeed.

Last year I took over a newly created community and discovered that while I had a handful of Community Champions on my list, I hadn’t heard from most of them nor had I seen them posting anything into the community. The discussions were like a ghost town and I was the only person there, just talking away to myself and one other woman. I spoke to the Champions and discovered that most of them had other commitments which meant they would no longer be able to participate. When new visitors arrive to your community, they will quickly run away if they spot that no one is talking – no one wants to arrive at a party too early! So I quickly got to work recruiting new Champions. I wrote a Community Champions Guide to explain the role in detail, and the level of activity that is expected of Champions, and when I found someone who I thought would be a good match, I gave them the guide and invited them to read it first and then confirm whether they would like to commit. Before long I had a handful of new Champions and within a matter of a few weeks, the community was lively and populated with friendly folks. It was as if the community had suddenly come to life. I breathed a huge sigh of relief…

I never stop recruiting new Champions – the community is growing all the time, so at certain intervals it makes sense to get someone new on board. I try to look for a wide variety of people, sometimes specifically targeting a person who would bring something to the community which is missing. For example, someone who is particularly knowledgeable on a subject or who has a certain type of experience or perspective which the rest of the community will benefit from knowing more about.

I’d be completely lost without my Community Champions. It’s really as simple as that!

What you can do for your Champions

Community Champions are volunteers, so from time to time it’s extremely important to give back to them. The simplest starting point is to create a private area of the discussions especially for them. In this area they can chat and develop more personal relationships with each other, and they can work with the Community Manager to discuss issues in the community – for example, how to respond to a very sensitive issue raised by a member. Lots of organisations will use this private area for Champions in order to share plans, invite ideas and glean invaluable feedback about what would be most helpful for the members. You can test out ideas or new features for the website and/or community. And you can work with the Champions on valuable content for the community, giving them working drafts and inviting their insights. This is also the space where you can reveal news from your company or organisation in advance of it becoming public knowledge, which will make your Community Champions feel privileged – and rightfully so!

Some communities will give special permissions to their Community Champions. At SiftGroups we advise our clients not to give special permissions at first, but to wait until it makes sense to give them a bit more responsibility. The first permission we usually give our Champions is the ability to move a discussion from one area to another. This is a simple house-keeping task that Champions can perform, and it helps them have an interest in keeping the discussion forum neat and tidy.

One of the most significant ways of acknowledging the hard work of your Champions is to invest in training – to pay for them to travel to your offices and participate in an event or seminars which will give them valuable knowledge in exchange for the time they give to the community. This gives not only the opportunity to learn something new, but also meet each other in real life and establish those real-world connections that make their online connection even stronger. One of the communities I work with recently brought their Champions to the head office in order to take a tour, meet some of the staff who participate in the community, and to receive training from a professional who was brought in for the afternoon to teach about handling difficult situations online.

There are so many ways of giving back to your Champions – just keep an eye out for those opportunities where you can make them feel special and appreciated.

 

Image credit: NonviolentPeaceforce.org on Flickr