Supercharge your online community
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Every program or resource should be evaluated occasionally to ensure that all users still benefit, and an online community is no different. New best practices and capabilities become available that can and should be taken advantage of. Join Small World Labs and Personify as we discover how the Institute of Food Technologists (IFT) evaluated new options for its online community to create an engaging environment for its members. Learn how they leveraged new capabilities in their AMS/CRM to develop a flexible integration that is both powerful and easily updated. Hear how those integration options enable IFT to create an online community experience that is personalized for its members, recognizes their community and non-community achievements, and promotes an engaged, healthy member base.
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Supercharge your online community
- 1. SUPERCHARGE YOUR ONLINE COMMUNITY
- 2. Marc Bernstein • VP of Information Technology • Institute of Food Technologists OUR PRESENTERS
- 3. • CEO & Founder • Small World Labs • Personify Technology Partner Michael Wilson OUR PRESENTERS
- 4. 4 SUPERCHARGE YOUR ONLINE COMMUNITY
- 5. •Why IFT Updated Its Online Community •How Personify Was Integrated with Community •What the Integration Enables Us to Do •Results To Date •Future Plans SESSION OVERVIEW
- 6. 6 WHY IFT UPDATED ITS ONLINE COMMUNITY
- 10. 10 EASE OF USE
- 12. 12 UNCLEAR COMMUNITY FOCUS & STRATEGY
- 14. 14 DOES COMMUNITY EVEN MAKE SENSE
- 16. WE CREATED A CORE TEAM
- 17. WE DEVELOPED A PLAN
- 20. 20 WE HIRED A CONSULTANT Vanessa DiMauro Leader Networks
- 21. 21 THEY TALKED TO OUR MEMBERS
- 23. Years of Experience AUDIENCE SEGMENTATION
- 24. Organization Size Top “Other” Mentions: Regulatory Affairs (5) Quality Assurance/Control (5) More Audience Segmentation
- 25. FEATURE FEEDBACK
- 26. AND EVEN…
- 27. Note: These categories are from the IFT database. There appear to be inconsistencies between the database and what survey participants self-reported. n = varies Analysis of those survey participants who responded “Greatly.” 0% 10% 20% 30% 40% 50% 60% 70% A channel for regulatory and policy updates and dialog Food industry definitions, standards and regulations (e.g. food wiki) An online channel for customer support for IFT products and services Abstracts on selected articles and research Information about the achievements of fellow food scientists and the ability to… A way to find and connect with other food science and technology professionals… The ability to access select presentations and talks online to reduce travel for… The ability to connect one- on-one with other experts in the field The ability to participate in and get results from industry research such as surveys… Case study information (e.g. outcomes of the application of best practices) Best practice information (e.g. facility certification, good manufacturing… Ability to comment on articles and interact with fellow food industry professionals on… Access from a mobile device Participating in Ask-the- Expert discussions Member Professor Student Emeritus AND EVEN… FEATURE FEEDBACK SEGMENTATION
- 28. DID THEY WANT A COMMUNITY?
- 30. Would You Consider an Investment in a Revamped Community to be a Valuable Use of IFT Resources?
- 31. Most frequent responses Count Ease of use 75 Active discussions 44 Relevant content 32 Peer connections 23 Collaboration 22 Trends 19 Expert connections 18 Educational materials 16 Networking 15 Regulatory information 15 Access to best practices 10 Global focus 10 Technical information 10 Job postings 5 Safe environment 4 What is the one thing that would inspire you to participate in a new, improved IFT online community?
- 32. Most frequent responses Count Ease of use 75 Active discussions 44 Relevant content 32 Peer connections 23 Collaboration 22 Trends 19 Expert connections 18 Educational materials 16 Networking 15 Regulatory information 15 Access to best practices 10 Global focus 10 Technical information 10 Job postings 5 Safe environment 4 Ease of Use! What is the one thing that would inspire you to participate in a new, improved IFT online community?
- 33. Most frequent responses Count Ease of use 75 Active discussions 44 Relevant content 32 Peer connections 23 Collaboration 22 Trends 19 Expert connections 18 Educational materials 16 Networking 15 Regulatory information 15 Access to best practices 10 Global focus 10 Technical information 10 Job postings 5 Safe environment 4 What is the one thing that would inspire you to participate in a new, improved IFT online community? Active Discussions
- 34. • Food safety • Food quality • Career advice • International food science • New product development • Nutrition / Nutriceuticals • Food chemistry • Product development • Regulatory • Labeling • Sensory evaluation • Opportunity to share my research • Anything IFT needs me to do Content topics that survey respondents are most frequently willing to share information about include…
- 35. What is the one thing that would inspire you to participate in a new, improved IFT online community? Most frequent responses Count Ease of use 75 Active discussions 44 Relevant content 32 Peer connections 23 Collaboration 22 Trends 19 Expert connections 18 Educational materials 16 Networking 15 Regulatory information 15 Access to best practices 10 Global focus 10 Technical information 10 Job postings 5 Safe environment 4 NetworkingNetworking
- 36. CLEAR PREFERENCE FOR A MORE DIVERSIFIED MEMBERSHIP
- 38. KEY EVALUATION AREAS AND SPECIFICATIONS
- 39. KEY EVALUATION AREAS AND SPECIFICATIONS FOCUSED OUR EVALUATION
- 42. THE PERSONIFY | COMMUNITY INTEGRATION
- 43. FUTURE UPDATES Usable By All Clients PRODUCTIZED INTEGRATION Better R&D Utilization Better Support for Integration Clients BUILD GENERALIZED FRAMEWORK Integration Plug-In Point & Click Updating NEEDS ANALYSIS Client-Specific Needs Future Industry Needs TURNING INTEGRATION INTO A PRODUCT
- 44. SEAMLESS USER ACCESS INTEGRATED PROFILE INFORMATION INTEGRATED GROUPS 360-DEGREE DATA VIEW INTEGRATED PERSONALIZATION REAL-TIME & SCHEDULED SYNC PERSONIFY INTEGRATION OVERVIEW
- 45. SEGUE TO INTEGRATION OVERVIEW INSERT GRAPHICS: HAVING OPTIONS IS GOOD HAVING OPTIONS IS GOOD
- 46. INTEGRATION AREA PERSONIFY DIRECT PERSONIFY WEB SERVICES DESIGNER User Account Creation & Login Standard Personify SSO Web Service Profile Data Synchronization Personify Base Profile Fields Add Custom Fields Flexible Profile Fields List Flexible Profile Field Data Integrated Personalization Personify Customer Role Flexible Segments Creation Automatic Group Membership Personify Committee Flexible Groups Creation Integrated Community Activity Personify Customer Activity Codes & Subcodes Real-Time & Scheduled Sync Uses Personify Web Services Designer PRODUCTIZED INTEGRATION OPTIONS
- 47. INTEGRATION AREA PERSONIFY DIRECT PERSONIFY WEB SERVICES DESIGNER User Account Creation & Login Standard Personify SSO Web Service Profile Data Synchronization Personify Base Profile Fields Add Custom Fields Flexible Profile Fields List Flexible Profile Field Data Integrated Personalization Personify Customer Role Flexible Segments Creation Automatic Group Membership Personify Committee Flexible Groups Creation Integrated Community Activity Personify Customer Activity Codes & Subcodes Real-Time & Scheduled Sync Uses Personify Web Services Designer PRODUCTIZED INTEGRATION OPTIONS
- 51. EASE OF USE
- 52. SEAMLESS USER ACCESS INTEGRATED PROFILE INFORMATION INTEGRATED GROUPS 360-DEGREE DATA VIEW INTEGRATED PERSONALIZATION REAL-TIME & SCHEDULED SYNC INTEGRATION OVERVIEW DIVERSIFY THE MEMBERSHIP BASE - Members - Industry Experts - Conference Attendees - Students - Full Constituent Directory
- 55. 55
- 56. 56
- 57. 57
- 58. 58
- 60. 60 BI-DIRECTIONAL EDITING & DATA SYNC
- 61. 61 PULL FROM PERSONIFY OPTION
- 64. COMMUNITY MANAGER: EDITS & UPDATES
- 65. COMMUNITY MANAGER: EDITS & UPDATES Display Only (Pull from Personify) Personify Sync vs. Community Only
- 66. COMMUNITY MANAGER: EDITS & UPDATES Field Help Text Required/Not Options Display on Profile Display Only (Pull from Personify) Personify Sync vs. Community Only
- 67. COMMUNITY MANAGER: EDITS & UPDATES Field Help Text Required/Not Options Display on Profile Display Only (Pull from Personify) Editable By Viewable & Searchable By Personify Sync vs. Community Only
- 68. SEAMLESS USER ACCESS INTEGRATED PROFILE INFORMATION INTEGRATED GROUPS 360-DEGREE DATA VIEW INTEGRATED PERSONALIZATION REAL-TIME & SCHEDULED SYNC INTEGRATION OVERVIEW CREATE IFT MEMBERSHIP VALUE - Constituent Directory Access - Profile Data Visibility - Member Search Access (Detail) - Constituent Recognition
- 69. PERSONALIZATION: PROFILE VISIBILITY FULL MEMBER VIEW NON-IFT MEMBER VIEW
- 70. PERSONALIZATION: MEMBER DIRECTORY SEARCH FULL MEMBER VIEW NON-IFT MEMBER VIEW
- 75. TIERED LEVELS OF RECOGNITION
- 76. SEAMLESS USER ACCESS INTEGRATED PROFILE INFORMATION INTEGRATED GROUPS 360-DEGREE DATA VIEW INTEGRATED PERSONALIZATION REAL-TIME & SCHEDULED SYNC INTEGRATION OVERVIEW AUTO-MEMBERSHIP IN GROUPS - Sections - Leadership Groups - Board of Directors
- 78. Sections INTEGRATED GROUPS Governance Workgroups IFT Connect CLOSED GROUPS
- 79. SELF-MANAGED INTEGRATION UPDATES Personify Web Services Designer Small World Labs Productized Integration Community Manager Integration Updates
- 81. SELF-MANAGED INTEGRATION UPDATES Personify Small World Labs
- 83. Sections INTEGRATED GROUPS Governance Workgroups Divisions Other Groups IFT Connect OPEN GROUPSCLOSED GROUPS
- 84. INTEGRATED GROUPS Sections Governance Workgroups Divisions Other Groups IFT Connect OPEN GROUPSCLOSED GROUPS PAID MEMBERSHIP VALUE MEMBERSHIP DIVERSITY
- 85. 360-DEGREE DATA VIEW - Started Discussion - Answered a Question - Downloaded File - Etc… 360-Degree View
- 86. SEAMLESS USER ACCESS INTEGRATED PROFILE INFORMATION INTEGRATED GROUPS 360-DEGREE DATA VIEW INTEGRATED PERSONALIZATION REAL-TIME & SCHEDULED SYNC INTEGRATION OVERVIEW KEEP EVERYTHING SEAMLESS - For the User Experience - Data with Personify
- 87. REAL-TIME AND SCHEDULED SYNC SCHEDULED REAL-TIME
- 88. INTEGRATION SUPPORTS USER EXPERIENCE 360-Degree View REAL-TIME seamless user updates
- 89. INTEGRATION SUPPORTS USER EXPERIENCE 360-Degree View SCHEDULED Up To Date Membership & Group Directories REAL-TIME seamless user updates
- 90. Full page graphic Collage of many different pictures of people doing vastly different things OTHER THINGS WE ARE DOING OTHER THINGS WE’RE DOING
- 91. INFORMATION ARCHITECTURE: MICROSITE VS. EMBEDDED
- 92. NEW MEMBER WELCOME WALKTHROUGH
- 93. IFT CONNECT+ GROUP • Top 1% Contributors • Community Strategy Discussions • Contribution Requirements for Eligibility
- 98. ADVANCED WORKFLOWS: ONBOARDING Registration Path Member Dashboard Welcome Step 1 Welcome Step 2
- 99. ADVANCED WORKFLOWS: ONBOARDING Registration Path Member Dashboard Welcome Step 1a Welcome Step 2a Welcome Step 1b Welcome Step 2b FULL MEMBERS STUDENT MEMBERS
- 100. ADVANCED WORKFLOWS: LEADERS Member of 1 Section’s Leadership Group
- 101. ADVANCED WORKFLOWS: LEADERS Member of 1 Section’s Leadership Group Add to Section Leaders Resource Group
- 102. ADVANCED WORKFLOWS: LEADERS Member of 1 Section’s Leadership Group Add to Section Leaders Resource Group Assign 5 Getting Started Tasks
- 103. ADVANCED WORKFLOWS: LEADERS Member of 1 Section’s Leadership Group Add to Section Leaders Resource Group Add Leadership Group Admin as Connection Assign 5 Getting Started Tasks
- 104. ADVANCED WORKFLOWS: LEADERS Member of 1 Section’s Leadership Group Add to Section Leaders Resource Group Member of 1 Division’s Leadership Group Add to Divisions Leaders Resource Group Assign 5 Getting Started Tasks Assign 10 Getting Started Tasks Add Leadership Group Admin as Connection Add Leadership Group Admin as Connection
- 105. ADVANCED WORKFLOWS: RECOGNITION Connectors 1st Connection 25th Connection 10th Connection
- 106. ADVANCED WORKFLOWS: RECOGNITION Connectors 1st Connection 25th Connection10th Connection Experts 1st Accepted Solution 10th Accepted Solution 5th Accepted Solution
- 107. ADVANCED WORKFLOWS: RECOGNITION Connectors 1st Connection 25th Connection10th Connection Experts 1st Accepted Solution 10th Accepted Solution 5th Accepted Solution Social Promoters 1st Social Share 25th Social Share 10th Social Share
- 108. ADVANCED WORKFLOWS: RECOGNITION Connectors 1st Connection 25th Connection10th Connection Experts 1st Accepted Solution 10th Accepted Solution 5th Accepted Solution Mentors Applied for Program Actively Mentoring Accepted into Program Social Promoters 1st Social Share 25th Social Share 10th Social Share
- 109. ADVANCED WORKFLOWS: RECOGNITION Connectors 1st Connection 25th Connection10th Connection Experts 1st Accepted Solution 10th Accepted Solution 5th Accepted Solution Mentors Applied for Program Actively Mentoring Accepted into Program Volunteers Applied for Program Actively Volunteering Accepted into Program Social Promoters 1st Social Share 25th Social Share 10th Social Share
- 110. RESULTS TO-DATE
- 111. 115% INCREASE IN NEW DISCUSSION TOPICS
- 113. 54% INCREASE IN REPLIES TO TOPIC RATIO
- 114. 11X INCREASE IN NEW MEMBERS/MONTH
- 115. WHAT ARE WE THINKING ABOUT NEXT?
- 116. MENTOR PROGRAM
- 117. MENTEE WORKFLOW Need a Mentor Complete Form Application Contact Potential Mentors Filter Mentors By Industry Focus & Credentials
- 118. MENTEE WORKFLOW
- 119. MENTEE WORKFLOW
- 120. MENTEE WORKFLOW
- 121. MENTEE WORKFLOW
- 122. BECOME A MENTOR WORKFLOW Become a Mentor 1-Click Application Mentor/Mentee Match Filter Available Mentees Need a Mentor Complete Form Application Contact Potential Mentors Filter Mentors By Industry Focus & Credentials
- 123. MENTOR WORKFLOW
- 124. MENTOR WORKFLOW
- 125. MENTOR WORKFLOW
- 126. MENTOR PROGRAM Become a Mentor 1-Click Application Mentor/Mentee Match Filter Available Mentees Need a Mentor Complete Form Application Contact Potential Mentors Filter Mentors By Industry Focus & Credentials
- 127. MENTORING PROGRAM: CONFIGURABLE Become a Mentor 1-Click Application Mentor/Mentee Match Filter Available Mentees Need a Mentor Complete Form Application Contact Potential Mentors Filter Mentors By Industry Focus & Credentials
- 128. MENTORING PROGRAM: CONFIGURABLE Become a Mentor 1-Click Application Mentor/Mentee Match Filter Available Mentees Need a Mentor Complete Form Application Contact Potential Mentors Filter Mentors By Industry Focus & Credentials Mentee Best Practices Group Mentor Training Group
- 129. Marc Bernstein VP of Information Technology Institute of Food Technologists mbernstein@ift.org Michael Wilson CEO & Founder Small World Labs mwilson@smallworldlabs.com QUESTIONS?
- 130. ASAE Annual Meeting 8/8 – 8/11 Detroit, MI Mission Driven 9/10 Austin, TX Nonprofit MarkCon 9/17 New York, NY UPCOMING EVENTS
- 131. Contact Jeremy Demers 512.474.6400 x 22 jdemers@smallworldlabs.com SCHEDULE A LIVE DEMO
Editor's Notes
- [Michael] So today we’re going to talk about how Institute of Food Technologists Supercharged Its Online Community
- [Michael] Read slide. … Marc is a savy user of Personify. How many years has IFT been using Personify?
- [Marc]
- [Michael] So today we’re going to talk about how Institute of Food Technologists Supercharged Its Online Community
- Marc
- Marc – I’m going to give you, not 1…not 2…not 3…but SEVEN reasons why we updated our online community.
- First, we had an online community that was purchased in 2009 and launched in 2010. It was built on SharePoint 2007 as a platform, which was already 3 years old when we deployed it. With a small SharePoint farm to ensure redundancy, it turned out to be a bit more complex to configure and manage than we would have liked. This is a perfect example of why cloud or hosted services are so popular.
- The software we had, which was beautiful when it was demonstrated, turned out to be very sluggish after we incorporated various feeds on the home page in order to create dynamic content. We worked extensively with the vendor to tune high-volume issues, but in the end, we had limited funds and willpower to invest so much time and effort into performance tuning.
- Prior to this community, we had many active list servers that were very simple to use. The trend was moving away from list servers towards web-based collaboration platforms, but we underestimated the drop in participation due to a lack of reply-by email feature. We wanted to drive people to the website to collaborate, but in doing so we made it much harder. So we had something like this…
- And we wanted something like this
- Ultimately, the vendor was not as successful in the market place as they had hoped, and they lost commitment in the product. R&D tapered off, leaving us behind the curve from a feature perspective and eventually, they surrendered completely, cancelling future upgrades and support for the platform. LESSON: Beware of a Service Company trying to enter the Product space.
- Our first foray into a private, online community did not have the necessary focus and strategy it needed to be successful. We did too much guessing about what people would want and not enough outreach.
- Lastly…what I called the three-headed monster.
- After 3 years, we had to step back and ask whether a private, online community is the right approach/
- Why not just use LinkedIn? It has groups. It already has discussions. It has profile information. It already has an IFT group that is larger than our membership (Yikes!). It’s free. Outside of data ownership issues (they own it all), it lacked essential features that can only be delivered via integration with Personify (member only areas) that add value to being an IFT member.
- So we created a core team…
- And we developed a plan…
- And it was important to have a plan. Because our members are scientists. No winging it with them
- And we hired a consultant
- Vanessa DiMauro – Leader Networks. – one of the Top 40 Social Media Masters in the World - Forbes. Helped us focus on a limited set of high-value features, identify priority member segments and really focus in on creating more dense engagement in a fewer number of areas.
- [START QUICK & FAST SECTION] They talked to our members…
- The took the results and did some math
- They segmented our audience
- And segmented our audience futher…
- And got feedback from our members on desired features
- And we even got…
- Segmentation on the feature feedback we received. And the key is that we wanted to and needed to be methodical about this. Remember… our members ARE scientists
- We also included the most important, but also most basic question: We asked out members if they even wanted a private, online community.
- And our members said Yes
- Then we asked if they wanted to put their money where their mouth was.
- Interesting that safe environment, one of the features we thought would be very important the first time around, ranked at the bottom. Many other low-ranking responses represent content or activity that can largely be obtained through other, existing IFT channels. [NEXT 4-5 SLIDES ARE FAST]
- [FAST] What they really wanted was a community that was Easy to Use
- [FAST] Had focused, active discussions
- And we got their input on what topic areas were important for prominence in the community
- And they wanted to be able to network easily
- {OPEN COMMUNITY UP TO NON-MEMBERS] And our members wanted their community to have a more diversified base that extended beyond just paid/full IFT members They wanted to network with: Industry Thought Leaders Manufacturers Consumer Food Interest Groups And even exhibitors at our annual Expo Conference
- Deliverable was a vendor specification that was shared with potential providers.
- And we used the feedback we got from our consultant to identify key evaluation areas and a community spec.
- And we focused on those specifications during the evaluations
- So we got through that process, and we selected a partner…
- Just kidding. We selected a partner, who is Small World Labs. The primary reasons we selected Small World Labs should become apparent during this presentation, but they include: EXPERNECE INTEGRATING - with other platforms ACTION WORKFLOW - tool that provides a lot of flexibility They really worked to UNDERSTAND OUR BUSINESS and help lead us forward with new IDEAS & suggestions Clean LOOK & FEEL of the platform EASY to Configure & Administer
- Our partner had never done a Personify integration, which was a big concern. Our first community platform hadn’t done one either, and we knew that doing one from scratch was time consuming and expensive. However, they had done many integrations with other systems and we liked that they have a standard integration methodology that allowed them to plug into Personify within our timeframe and pretty affordably. [MARC THEN HANDS TO MICHAEL FOR INTEGRATION PORTION]
- I’ll describe briefly that integration process that Marc mentioned, which we call “Productized Integrations” What we do is we… [START ANIMATION] And that’s the process we used for our integration for Personify 360 overall, and for IFT specifically
- The Personify integration that is being used with IFT includes 6 different areas, which include… [READ CHART]
- But it’s not just that. With any product, you want to have options available to you. Having options is good
- So… for the Personify integration we included options for what we call “Personify Direct” And options that make use of the Personify Web Services Designer This just helps us cover a greater set of potential scenarios that may need to be leveraged for a particular client
- And it’s kind of an eye-chart, but these are the options that IFT is using
- So now we’ll go into more detail about IFT’s Community-Personify integration and how we used the productized options available to help IFT further its goals as an organization
- Which includes using integration to further the user experience for members not just the data integration
- So we start with seamless user access. If you want to promote a seamless and frictionless user experience than getting the User Registration and User Login integrated is key. So single login and single registration is included, both which provide direct access to the community
- But for IFT, remember that “Make it Simple” and “Ease of Use” needs they heard from their members?
- As well as that desire by members for IFT to “diversify the community’s membership base” to extend community membership beyond just “Full IFT Members”
- So we wanted the community access to support those goals And optimize what we call “next step conversion” for each user state
- For existing, logged in users, it’s seamless. You continue in a logged in state across all areas of IFT’s web presence, whether it’s in Personify or in the Community
- But, the online community is also a valuable entrance and acquisition path for IFT. So if a user arrives directly at the IFT community, and he or she or hasn’t yet registered with IFT yet, or they aren’t logged in already, they get this nice, simple landing page
- If the visitor has already registered with IFT and they simply need to login (they haven’t logged in anywhere yet) Then the “next step conversion” is the integrated login option. Login & keep going.
- If the visitor is intrigued, but wants to learn more before continuing, then they can watch the IFT community introduction video So the “next step conversion” here is education & providing information
- And lastly, if the visitor hasn’t yet registered with IFT, they can use the Personify-integrated registration to register with IFT to gain access. And this helps with New Member Acquisition efforts, and broadening the community’s membership base.
- Next, we’ll look at Integrated Profile Information
- There are 3 profile integration options available. The first is that member profile fields can use bi-directional updating and synchronization. With this, if a community member’s information is updated in Personify or directly from the community, it updates both Personify & Small World Labs keeping both systems in sync.
- But IFT had some profile fields that they wanted to display in the community, but for business process reasons, wanted updating only to occur on Personify. So for these, IFT used the “Pull From Personify” option.
- And finally, the Community Team wanted the ability to experiment with new areas, without any impact on the Personify Data, and could use “Community Only” profile field options
- But remember those User Experience needs? Well they aren’t just for community members. They should also be incorporated to help make Community Manager’s lives easier.
- So here is a screenshot of the Profile Field editor in Small World Labs, that a community manager has access to Now I’ll use the general term “Community Manager” to describe the ease of accessing and making profile integration updates. But the community platform has Administrator Roles, so if you only wanted your Membership Manager, or you also wanted IT Manager to have access to this area, then that is supported as well
- And you’ll see a variety of point & click options, that give the community manager control of the integrated experience. Which include : Bi-directional sync Pull From Personify Only And Community Only
- Which are mixed in with the other options a community manager may want to utilize, like Help Text Required/Optional Display on Profile vs. Collect Oonly
- As well as some options that help IFT extend its value proposition for paid membership More specifically: Who can see, search by, and even edit certain profile fields
- Which takes us into the next area… Integrated Personalization So IFT can personalize each community member’s experience based on who they are. For brevity’s purposes, we’re going to focus on just a few
- So the community is open to non-paid member registration and access But Full members get better networking options. Which include: - Full vs. Partial Profile Visibility
- And Full vs. Partial Member Directory Search
- The productized Personify / Small World Labs integration also supports Recognition Here you can see a few recognition badges on a community member’s profile
- [MARC] First time around, we said “We don’t need no stinking badges”. We were wrong. So we worked with IFT to create the community’s engagement pyramid, and used recognition to help drive that member engagement
- … which includes recognition for community participation, as you see here…
- … as well as engagement, participation, and achievement outside of the community, which includes things like: Number of years as an IFT member Scientific competition winners Volunteerism And donors to IFT’s Feeding America fundraising program. And this information originates in Personify, but drives the community experience
- And we take that concept a step further by including tiered levels of recognition, to cover things like: Connector Level 1, 2, 3, 4, and 5 Community Influencer levels IFT membership year milestones And other areas
- Next we’ll look at online groups and how the integration supports those initiatives
- The IFT Community has open and closed groups. For closed groups, IFT was already using Personify to manage membership for its Sections and its Governance Workgroups So the integration leverages that information, takes those members, and auto-places them in the relevant online groups in their community…
- … with what we call Auto-Membership And auto-membership helps the user experience by automatically placing members in the areas where they should already be, Versus making them search, hunt for, find, and re-join. And not all of these groups are “Committees” in Personify. IFT selected the Personify Web Services Designer approach to Group Auto-Membership so IFT can create query-based segments of users in Personify and Auto-membership them to the related closed groups in their community
- We’ll this as another opportunity to show how easy it is for the organization to leverage the productized Integration between Personify and the Small World Labs to add additional Auto-Membership Groups
- Just find the related group in Personify, or create one if it doesn’t already exist. Use simple copy/paste to grab a piece of information…
- Paste it into the Auto-Membership section of Small World Labs…
- And there you go!
- And in the community, IFT also has open groups For its divisions, which are more interest & specialty driven As well as other groups, like for its conferences. These groups are open to all community members, and opt-in
- And including those two types of collaboration options, for full-members and non-members enables IFT to use their community to: Drive paid membership value And provide collaboration opportunities for non-members, in order to drive community membership diversity
- Next, we’ll look at Member Engagement data integration. IFT’s community tracks over 250 different member engagement actions. This includes things like, if a member asked a question, submitted an idea, provided a reply that was marked as the answer, downloaded a file, accepted the community’s terms of service, and many others. All of this data is eligible to be pushed into Personify to give IFT a 360-degree view of their members, and also incorporate that data, if desired, into a member’s engagement score
- The last area of Personify integration that IFT uses is Data Synching, to keep things seamless for the User Experience, and for Data Analysis.
- The integration with contains both Real-Time & Scheduled data Syncs.
- To promote a positive User Experience, you don’t want users to update their information in one place, only to find that update hasn’t carried out elsewhere. So we use real-time updates for that.
- But there are also updates that aren’t User Driven. Things like: Expiring Membership overall Or, A change in membership within a Section, Workgroup, or Committee And scheduled data syncs help cover scenarios like that. So IFT’s membership directory in the community overall, and within groups is always up to date
- So that covers much of the integration-focused activities IFT is doing with it’s communities. Next, we’ll look at just a couple of other things IFT is doing with their community
- [MARC] Ease of Use! Embedded caused navigation confusion and sacrificed ease of use in order to fit the community within the IFT IA and UI.
- [MICHAEL] And we extend that Ease Of Use concept, with a customized New Member Onboarding series. Currently IFT is using a 4 step New Member Onboarding process.
- [MICHAEL] IFT also has a collaboration group for it’s Top Contributors in the community. It’s an invitation-only program, that requires not only that you be invited, but also some contribution requirements to maintain eligiblity. And it serves as a place where IFT can talk about the community & the community’s strategy with its top members.
- [MICHAEL] The last area we’ll look at in term of Community Experience is Advanced Work Flows [MARC CHIMES IN] Big part of reason for selecting SWL [MICHAEL] So if you’re a community manager, and you get a community platform. It’s going to function a certain way. That’s previously been the tradeoff between Custom Build and Off-The-Shelf Software. But Advanced Workflows bridges that divide and lets you take full control of the User Experience. And I’ll show you just a couple these
- So, onboarding. Let’s say that the out-of-the box registration process…
- Takes the user to the member dashboard
- But you’d rather redirect them to a welcome page Advanced Workflows enable that.
- Or you can change that welcome page to a multi-step welcome walkthrough…
- And even break that out into two onboarding workflows that are different for Full Members vs. Students.
- Now let’s look at another workflow involving IFT’s Leaders. If a community user is a member of a Section’s Leadership Group…
- Then we auto-membership them to the Section Leaders Resource Group. Which is a group for all section leaders and is designed to make sure they have everything they need to manage their Sections effectively
- But we could also automatically assign each new Section Leaders Resource Group member 5 Getting Started Tasks, which are a part of Section Leadership onboarding & training process
- And even auto-connect the Owner of that Section Leadership Resource Group to each new member To facilitate networking, top of mind, private messaging, and activity stream following
- And do the same for not only IFT’s Sections. But also it’s Divisions.
- Next we’ll look at a workflow designed for Recognition. Here is a simplified view of a workflow that IFT is using to trigger Recognition Badges after a community member triggers milestones based on the number of connections the member has made in the community.
- But this could also be extended to include: Recognizing Community Experts based on how many answers they’ve provided that have been accepted as solutions
- Or Recognition Badges based on the number of times a member has shared items out to Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, or other social sites
- And have workflows, that don’t trigger recognition till the full process has been completed, like we see here for Mentoring
- Or here for volunteerism Now IFT is only doing some of these right now, but all of these, and many more are possible with their community. And that leads us back to Marc who is going to talk about IFT’s Results To Date with their community
- [MARC] Our new community launched late last year and I’ll take you through some comparative results. Results based on previous community versus 2015 YTD
- [MARC] Our members wanted active discussions, and our Discussion topics have more than DOUBLED
- [MARC] Our number of replies to topics more than TRIPLED
- [MARC] Our Reply to Topic ratio went up by 54%
- [MARC] And our new community member acquisition rate has increased by more than 11X per month. IT’S NOT JUST MEMBERS, IT’S NON-MEMBER CUSTOMERS AND PROSPECTS PARTICIPATING. That’s a great statistic for us, because that is not only helping us diversify our community membership base (a key want by IFT Members) but it will also help drive our active discussions and networking performance even further.
- [MICHAEL] So next, we’ll talk about what IFT is planning for the future [MARC] Will chime in about SWL’s ability to help IFT with what to think about next was another thing IFT likes about SWL
- So IFT wanted to start small and focused. Which was based on the feedback they got from their membership. Build fewer, more successful areas. And then expand from there. And there are a number of things that IFT will be turning on later this year, but we’ll talk just about its upcoming Mentor Program
- The program has a process flow for Mentees (those requesting Mentors) Here you can see the workflow for Mentees
- And here are some quick, zoom-in visuals, Initiating the request for a mentor
- Completing a mentee application, which is customizable, and for IFT contains a list of potential “Coaching Need Areas”
- Access to the Mentor Directory, with the ability to filter Mentors by: Industry Specialty Industry Credentials & Certifications
- And the ability to contact potential mentors, to provide more information about themselves, or simply reach out to increase their chances of being selected.
- And here you can see the “become a mentor” workflow.
- Which includes Opting into the program
- Gaining access to the list of available Mentees Along with the ability to filter by the Mentees’ Coaching Needs To help provide a better Mentor/Mentee match
- And the ability to pick a Mentee and initiate the Mentor/Mentee relationship
- And you see that the process to become a mentee is more rigorous than that to become a mentor. And that’s because IFT believes the success of the program will actually be Mentee driven. So they want harder qualifiers on the Mentee process. Which will also help make sure that each Mentee that a Mentor gets, is qualified and driven. You’ll also notice, that it is only the Mentor that can transact the Mentor/Mentee relationship
- However, because all of this is configurable, IFT could change its mind with a couple clicks and allow Mentees to transact the Mentor/Mentee relationship
- And even extend its Mentoring Program to include Mentor Training Groups and Mentee Best Practices groups And the options go on and on…
- And with that… Marc and I will open it up for questions! … If you’d like to learn more, grab me or one of my colleagues in the blue shirts. We also have a booth outside with some tasty Ohio Buckeye treats so come by, say hello, and pick one up.