Want to know the most effective ways to build and sustain a thriving community? Or curious about the challenges of building freelancer communities?
In the Community-Led Alliance Slack channel, we hosted an Ask Me Anything session featuring:
- Alice Paul, Community Expert at Qonto
- Charlotte de Peretti, Head of Community at Scalezia
You can read all the questions and their insightful answers right here. 👇
(And don't forget to join us on Slack to get involved with future AMAs!)
Strategies for community growth
Building and nurturing a thriving community is essential. Whether it’s engaging with customers, employees, or stakeholders, businesses are recognizing that communities provide a unique space for collaboration, feedback, and loyalty.
But community growth is not something that happens overnight — it requires strategic planning and constant nurturing.
With this in mind, we were eager to hear from Alice and Charlotte about the most effective strategies for creating and sustaining a strong, engaged community.
Alice’s top tips for community growth
Building and sustaining a thriving community requires a combination of many aspects (which can be quite challenging). Some strategies I've found most effective:
- Have a clear vision and purpose: It's essential to have a clear vision of where the community is today and where you want to take it. Define the purpose for both the members and the company to ensure everyone understands the goals.
- Organized retroplanning: I LOVE being organized in our daily (crazy) mission. Having a structured plan that ties your ambitions to specific objectives and key results helps keep the community on track and focused on achieving its goals.
- Having the right tools and tech stack: I've managed several community migrations between different tools. Having the right technology is crucial for improving member experience and ensuring continuous engagement.”
Charlotte’s top tips for community growth
When I enter a company with a community strategy to implement, I follow three phases over time.
The first is the discovery phase.
I believe it is important to take some time to understand the community in question through both quantitative and qualitative studies. The combination of these two approaches helps us clearly identify the community we are addressing.
It’s essential to put ourselves in the shoes of our community members. This is very important to me.
Next, in the second phase which I name the guiding thread, I implement a true roadmap that will help me develop my entire strategy.
When I say roadmap, it involves aspects of marketing, customer success management, business, etc.
Combining all these elements provides a clear guiding thread to follow, leading to the third phase: the execution of this roadmap, including strategy and operations.
As Alice said, all of this is done with a vision that is shared by everyone, a well-organized schedule, the right tools, and the proper tech stack.”
How communities can fuel business growth
As companies increasingly rely on remote teams, freelancers, and diverse customer bases, the importance of community-building becomes even more significant.
A member of the CLA community wanted to know how Scalezia.co leverages its community to fuel business growth and how it measures the success of its initiatives. Charlotte shared some fascinating insights into her work managing two distinct communities — freelancers and clients.
Charlotte’s top tips for community-led business growth
Community plays a central role in Scalezia’s growth. I’m in charge of two communities. On one hand, there’s a collective of freelancers who are available to my clients to help grow their businesses (about 100). On the other hand, I have my community of clients that I support and guide (250 members).
I think it’s more relevant to talk about my freelancer community here. They need to be 100% efficient in coaching our clients. We operate in a fully remote environment: we have a strong onboarding method through a well-structured onboarding process that comprises a one-hour interview use case, followed by a one-hour training session on podia).
We’ve also implemented the net promoter score, which allows us to remotely evaluate the experts who work with our clients. We conduct this evaluation after each sprint that the freelancer has had with our clients: We have a strong feedback culture.
For example: If after ten coaching sessions, the NPS is below 3.5, we will issue a first warning, then a second one, and if necessary, we won’t keep them on board. They’re the kinds of initiatives we implement.
Regarding the client community, it’s a completely different community strategy. Here, we are not talking about expected results, but rather focusing on retention and upsell.
Advocacy programs
Advocacy programs play a pivotal role in amplifying a brand's voice, empowering community members, and driving organic growth.
These programs recognize top contributors, turning them into brand advocates who actively promote and support the community.
One of our community members was interested to learn how both Charlotte and Alice have implemented advocacy programs within their respective communities, and what strategies they use to recognize and engage their top community contributors.
Charlotte’s top tips for implementing advocacy programs
For the past five years in which I’ve been creating community strategies, I’ve also been building ambassador (advocacy) programs. I build them through a strategy tailored to the community.
I ask myself what different levels of advocates we have.
“We have what we call detractors, passive/neutral members (watchers but not actors), active members, super active members/top advocates. And this depends on the community we have, which helps us define these levels, etc.
Then, I ask myself what might interest them, what could we implement to make it more appealing for them to be more or less involved, etc (see example one below).
At the same time, I also ask myself how I can move a detractor to a passive member, a passive member to an active one, and so on. Then, I will create initiatives for each role and step as part of the community strategy.
For example, with a detractor, I need to make them like the community more because they are complaining about it. So, I’ll apply more marketing, involve our customer success team and bring on board our Customer Success Managers (CSM), and more of that, etc. Much like a recipe, you follow it and adapt it through different service departments.
Eventually, I end up with a fully developed program. Then, I create a cycle where all these people move from one step to another in a continuous growth process, always with the aim of creating a strong word-of-mouth and referral effect.
Once I have these member levels, I develop and implement initiatives that might interest them and be beneficial.
Example 1:
I noticed that when I was managing a community of freelancers in IT, some were interested in being featured on LinkedIn, while others were only interested specifically in IT or technical topics because they were too shy and didn’t want to speak at events or be on LinkedIn.
So, I created small committees, – like executive committees – where I formed five or six of them, each tailored to their interests. For instance, those interested in IT were consulted once a month about our IT product to get their feedback. They really appreciated this because it made them feel like active contributors to our product. On the other hand, for those who liked visibility, we featured them on LinkedIn once a month.
Alice’s top tips for implementing advocacy programs
While I may not have the same level of experience as Charlotte for advocates, I’ve also developed effective initiatives to enhance recognition among communities.
Previously, in a closed customer community, we identified the most active members through a leaderboard. This simple approach allowed us to pinpoint key speakers and invite them to specific events such as workshops and calls with CSMs.
Our focus was on engagement and retention.
Currently, I have recently launched a local “club” with 150 top customers (those with high NPS scores), who’re enthusiastic about engaging with our brand and products.
Our goal is to include them in co-constructing the product roadmap with our product teams. We also offer both financial and non-financial rewards such as discounts, gift boxes, and exclusive invites.
As mentioned by Charlotte, word of mouth and referrals are very easy tools as well! I'm always starting small to test these initiatives with or without money to test and learn, ensuring alignment with our business objectives.”
Community feedback
Listening to the voice of the community is essential for driving continuous improvement in any business.
Communities often provide invaluable insights that can influence major decisions, from product development to customer service improvements.
Alice shared a compelling example where feedback not only guided significant changes but also improved customer satisfaction and operational efficiency.
Alice’s example of community feedback paving the way to change
One of the community platforms I've managed was built on different sections, with one focused on "co-construction".
It was a section dedicated to customers' ideas, that gathered all the product features users wanted to implement into our roadmap.
Based on the number of votes and feasibility, I could share these ideas with our product team and significantly impact our business roadmap (ensuring product adoption and retention).
Another example was a help center we completely restructured, including new software integrated into our forum and tied to the customer service team.
Based on our members' feedback, we created a new experience by establishing a knowledge base with many features like search, support answers, etc., to help customers find their answers before opening a support ticket.
These new team projects and features not only improved user satisfaction but also led to a 25% reduction in customer support tickets related to navigation issues.”
Leveraging technology and digital skills
Technology and data play a crucial role in building and sustaining communities. The right tools and a deep understanding of digital communications can drive higher engagement, improve user experience, and boost overall growth.
Someone wanted to learn how Alice’s background in high technology and digital communications has helped her elevate community engagement at Qonto.
How experience in tech and digital communication helped Alice’s community engagement
Leveraging my background in high technology and digital communications has been instrumental in community engagement and growth at Qonto.
Here are a few ways I've applied these skills:
Advanced data analytics
I'm comfortable with a data-driven approach, using key metrics to track engagement and evaluate the performance of the community.
But also various projects tied to our job such as events and email campaigns. This skill helps me identify trends and tailor our strategies to meet the needs and preferences of our community more effectively.
(Note: in my comms team not everyone has this skill so it's a big added value for both the team and your career!)
Community platforms:
I’ve implemented and managed several community platforms, each equipped with various features designed to enhance user interaction.
This experience allows me to continually challenge the user experience, "listening" to them, and ensuring we deliver the best possible service tailored to the needs of our community members based on their profiles.
Building freelancer communities
Freelancer communities have become essential for businesses. However, managing these diverse and dynamic groups comes with its own set of challenges.
Freelancers often have different working styles, motivations, and levels of engagement, which means building a cohesive and engaged community requires a thoughtful and adaptive approach.
Someone was curious to learn more about the specific challenges community leaders face when working with freelancers. Charlotte, who has extensive experience in this area, shared some of the key hurdles she’s encountered and how she navigates them.
Charlotte’s experience of challenges as a community manager
Since I started working as a community builder, I have always managed freelancer communities.
There are quite a few common aspects among freelancers, like mobility for instance: they are often either on-site, remote, or a mix of both. This is a community aspect that must be considered.
Freelancers are generally quite open to discussion and communication, although the degree of visibility, shyness, and approach can vary depending on the profession. Trying to understand all the profiles in the huge family of freelancing was one of the challenges I faced because you don’t treat every freelancer the same way.
It’s true that the term “freelancer” often encompasses a broad range of roles, but each freelancer is unique, and this must be taken into account.
My biggest challenge in freelancer communities is trying to capture their attention because these communities are highly approached by other communities, other people, and other elements. They are in high demand. You have to try to offer original content, etc., and stay attractive while providing real added value for these freelancers.
Want to network with other community leaders and take part in future AMAs? Join the Community-led Alliance Slack channel and jump into the conversation!
