Episode 104 - Community One Person Show and How to Get Sh#t Done

Chris Detzel: So, welcome to another peers over beers i'm Chris Detzel and.

Scott K. Wilder: Scott wilder.

Chris Detzel: Scott wilder you're back for another peers over beers with no beers.

Scott K. Wilder: yeah I felt a little thirsty so I thought it was time to come back and.

Scott K. Wilder: enjoy the show.

Chris Detzel: yeah yeah I always enjoy having you on the show Scott, so I appreciate coming.

Scott K. Wilder: anytime.

Chris Detzel: You know we're talking a little bit about on the pre show is how to scale and also how to embed yourself into other teams, especially if you're part of the team so.

Chris Detzel: I wanted to get some of your thoughts around that because you know I struggle, sometimes, believe it or not, just like other community leaders, and so I thought i'd throw this out to you how does that sound.

Scott K. Wilder: That sounds great see Belfast and i'm ready to drive.

Chris Detzel: All right, well, here goes.

Scott K. Wilder: So one thing I wanted to just point out so for some of your folks who are listening watching etc so.

Scott K. Wilder: crowd advocate where I work has been rebranded oops there we go.

Scott K. Wilder: yeah and so now we're called base.

Scott K. Wilder: So just to let everybody know and you can find us at based API.

Scott K. Wilder: So just a little you, you know you plug your your beer mugs i'm plugging base.

Chris Detzel: hey no worries I mean that's what it's for is was there a big reason for that or when you can discuss or no.

Scott K. Wilder: Sure sure, so I think one thing is a base kind of rolls off your tongue more than the word crowd advocate.

Scott K. Wilder: And crowd advocate you know, the way the word that.

Scott K. Wilder: is constructed as a great name but you know implies advocacy and there's just so much more than we do that, we do, besides advocacy I mean basically we're powering your whole.

Scott K. Wilder: Customer lifecycle and all the different areas that you know, are part of that, so you know, for example, you know camp tracking analyzing all the different activities, you have all across the customers, you know journey right they involve advocacy involve references referrals.

Scott K. Wilder: Case studies customer stories etc so it's just thinking much broader and then also you know we really believe in this customer led growth approach and the customer base.

Scott K. Wilder: basis.

Scott K. Wilder: Always.

Scott K. Wilder: start with our customers imagine that.

Chris Detzel: I like it, I like it a lot, now that you explained it yeah I saw the background was like what's based mean, and can you tell me during the pre show so that's that's exciting.

Chris Detzel: I like the name customer base base but I get that so.

Chris Detzel: So did anything change like from your team or anything like that or was it just pretty much just a rebranding and things.

Scott K. Wilder: It was just a rebranding you know my team, I think we talked about earlier on, is you know titles aside but title is you know I focused on customer team is focused on customer engagement, but internally, since we like four letter words.

Scott K. Wilder: We call ourselves the care team and so we're focused on community.

Scott K. Wilder: advocacy resources and education CA R E.

Scott K. Wilder: So let's put that charter is pretty much the same.

Scott K. Wilder: focused on enabling people to you know master our products, obviously, but really master their craft and accelerate their careers it's all about helping you know all boats rise with the tide.

Scott K. Wilder: I think, yes, with the tide and so basically more focus on really leading the customer led growth industry.

Chris Detzel: cool cool.

Chris Detzel: that's that is really cool menu, I have to get deep into next time kind of what exactly your team is doing and and and you know because i'm i'm highly interested in that I will do that today.

Chris Detzel: So, today I want to kind of talk about you know the one person team, you know in today.

Chris Detzel: Even for me real to you know I run the Community I run our real to Executive Council and then i'm starting to kind of think about customer led growth in a bigger way.

Chris Detzel: And an opportunity there, but I also report directly into marketing back in November I moved to the marketing team from our customer.

Chris Detzel: team, so I used to report into chief customer officer now I report into the chief marketing officer, you know, it was a big change, for me, because i'm used to being part of the customer org you know what I mean.

Chris Detzel: yeah and so a big shift, for me, because now, I still think about the customer in big ways and how they education and things like that, and how they use our products get getting the most out of the products and things like that, but sometimes.

Chris Detzel: It doesn't this doesn't bode well, but you know marketing is all about the top of the funnel I mean that's in general that's kind of what we're focused in on.

Chris Detzel: And i'm not necessarily you know i'm not I mean that's not where my mindset is So how do I kind of think that way and how do I embed myself.

Chris Detzel: into the marketing organization, even if I can say i've got all these really cool things that say you know.

Chris Detzel: When people when people engage into the Community they buy more they you know gave you the more they're engaged they tell others about you know their product they do a lot of different things from a you know renewal standpoint from a you know higher renewal rate type stuff even.

Chris Detzel: When you think of case deflection but none of that is marketing per se, you know what I mean like that's some other organization.

Chris Detzel: And so I just want to kind of one thinking about the three things that I own, or at least two and a half.

Chris Detzel: And then you know how do you do, how do you kind of.

Chris Detzel: You know, do either stop doing certain things, or how do you do it all.

Scott K. Wilder: As a one person team and.

Chris Detzel: Maybe help get resources.

Chris Detzel: You know in different ways, when you can't hire and then two is how do you embed yourself into the marketing organization, when your focus has been more of the customer type stuff does that make sense.

Scott K. Wilder: yeah it does so, a few thoughts, you know.

Scott K. Wilder: We were saying about being a marketing and not focused as much on the top of the funnel you know some more and more and historically, I think we all know that you know, most of the money goes to the acquisition top of the funnel.

Scott K. Wilder: yeah but that's changing you know foresters come out with some really interesting recent you know data come out with some data recently, you know where historically maybe 20% 30% of the money went to retention.

Scott K. Wilder: But we're getting to 5050 and I think you know in these economic times, you know where people are strapped etc it's it's accelerate so coven the economy all obviously related but all that's accelerating that companies are putting more and more energy into that upsell cross sell.

Scott K. Wilder: awareness and, in doing that, they realize that it's really important to build those relationships with customers and using a Community lead play is really key so I actually think you're in a really good situation.

Scott K. Wilder: And you might say that you know communities, not part of top of the funnel now I forget that if you guys have a closed Community or not, but there's so many people.

Scott K. Wilder: To open okay open so there's so many people that I talked to you know when they're interested in, say, a hubspot product.

Scott K. Wilder: That you know they'll go to the hubspot you they'll get a free account they'll go to the hubspot community and they'll kind of learn that way about what's up port they're going to get from others, so there is a really so I guess the first name is that more you know retention and.

Scott K. Wilder: You know customer lead plays are getting more money and it's too, too, is that I think that a Community does have a big.

Scott K. Wilder: opportunity to help top of the funnel because more and more people are saying.

Scott K. Wilder: You know I don't really trust the company what they say so they're going to go to g to they're going to go to trust radius but they're also going to go to the Community to see like you know what the issues are there right.

Scott K. Wilder: Now savvy people will do a search or two and figure out like Okay, these are the top issues, how can I deal with it it's kind of like you know when you buy a product on Amazon, you know I always check the one star two stars before the five stars because.

Scott K. Wilder: Of course, the bad before the good.

Scott K. Wilder: So.

Scott K. Wilder: So I think you know it is a great opportunity, you know resources are tighter and so, if I can think about that as well i'm kind of used to that play you know I think at my last company, I was spoiled by all the different Community moderators we had etc.

Scott K. Wilder: But when I was at mark hedo.

Scott K. Wilder: You know, we had 100,000 people in the Community, and we had one Community manager.

Scott K. Wilder: And me and yes Liz, who was the Community manager had a lot of superpowers she's great she's at air table now during customer marketing but.

Scott K. Wilder: She was very good at really partnering with the champions the heavy users, the experts and building out that Community would basically became the marketing nation.

Scott K. Wilder: So you know we can talk about organization resources, but the step before, that is, you know figuring out how you partner with your customers or people were active in the Community.

Scott K. Wilder: To help build that Community you know, a term I use a lot is co piloting, you know with those folks and they're not all going to say you know great things about you, but that's learning opportunities, so I think you know, Chris if you're you know, a one man show.

Scott K. Wilder: yeah you know you've been in the space for a while, so you know you know how to figure out and identify those champions but.

Scott K. Wilder: consider them your you know your external team and figure out how you can you know work with them to build build out the Community, and then you get into.

Scott K. Wilder: what's what's in it for them right, and then the intrinsic and extrinsic benefits as well, but certainly at mark hedo incredible marketing nation champion group that are still really close when I was at into it, we call them all stars that was earlier, the century and then.

Scott K. Wilder: You know, certainly at hubspot as well, I think.

Scott K. Wilder: You know the Community is always wrestled with resources right even and I think you know we kind of got ahead of ourselves in the last year, where everybody was a Community led growth Committee, led growth.

Scott K. Wilder: And we're going to get more money, and I think the economy has kind of reminded us that it's still difficult to get those resources and.

Scott K. Wilder: You know teams are being cut back because of that, and so you need to at least a third question you asked is like So how do you.

Scott K. Wilder: How do you get sh it done, how do you get things done and that's where you know prioritization is really important internal alignment and you know can talk a little bit more about how to work, you know with your organization.

Chris Detzel: that's very well said, I think.

Chris Detzel: When you're talking about alignment and internal you know kind of you mentioned prioritization which I think is key, but it's hard it's really hard for me to say, well, I gotta stop doing this.

Chris Detzel: You know what I mean sometimes when you prioritize what what is it that you're trying to accomplish at the end of the day.

Chris Detzel: And if it's you know look Community still needs to build there's only a year old I still need to kind of nurture it push it like you said, even start building relationships to maybe even get some of these users engaged more and and really start you know.

Chris Detzel: getting their opinions on certain things and to see where we can go next and that kind of stuff but.

Chris Detzel: When you're so the positive about the realtor Community internally is that there's a lot of by and if you are a lot of.

Chris Detzel: interest and and people get they get it, they they understand that you know.

Chris Detzel: That.

Chris Detzel: they're excited about it still, the reason I hesitate is because, when you're not putting money or resources or things like that towards something that you know, has had a lot of success, then you kind of wonder.

Chris Detzel: I kind of wonder like where's the organizations had you know where are they thinking if they don't want to understand you know times are tough but sometimes you're like well you know.

Chris Detzel: What you're still hiring for this thing you know what I mean like.

Chris Detzel: So sometimes you kind of wonder like.

Chris Detzel: Have you done enough.

Chris Detzel: And and and a lot of times I think man, maybe I haven't you know, maybe you know I need to kind of continue to kind of push at the top, like so, for example, we have a new chief revenue officer and.

Chris Detzel: You know I think there's a huge opportunity, because now he owns he owns the entire sales team, but he owns anything that is you know focused on revenue so PS, he also and CSM.

Chris Detzel: So all of that organization piece, and so i'm thinking damn you know, like I need to start building a relationship with that guy you know what I mean and start trying to you know.

Chris Detzel: Trying to understand kind of where he's coming from and things like that, so I know you've directed a little bit, but i'm would love to kind of think about, so why i'm in marketing and the opportunity to really.

Chris Detzel: start talking to the CRM is a really good opportunity because you know sales and marketing like this, or should be like this, you know working hand in hand, or tried to be.

Chris Detzel: So, what are your thoughts around a new CRM coming in and how you know I can you know go to him and talk to him about Community like.

yeah what's the.

Chris Detzel: opportunity there he's know.

Scott K. Wilder: I think the first thing is.

Scott K. Wilder: get to know him obviously or her and then two is and that sounds really simple, but you know that relationships, going to be important, but find out what's.

Scott K. Wilder: You know, really what's in it for them what's their goal was what are they trying to solve for what are their you know I don't know if you have company wide okay ours, you know we.

Scott K. Wilder: Have here and so.

Scott K. Wilder: yeah you know I know it's it at the end of the day, what's going to solve it for him, and so you know if you can find that out, and then figure out how Community can support that.

Scott K. Wilder: You know if they have a customer success if they are a customer success background right so they're trying to.

Scott K. Wilder: build those relationships, so one thing is like.

Scott K. Wilder: Community helps you scale from one to one to one too many, too, is enablement is really important to him, but it's really hard for you know i'm reading this great new book somebody just gave it to me, I met the window.

Scott K. Wilder: advertisement but you can't see it so it's called enablement mastery by you like Cohen CEO of sales, so too, I met yesterday.

Scott K. Wilder: But in reading that you know we you know we talked about like you know enablement so real challenge and so and that's what you know what a success with a CRM can be focused on or somebody in the organization so.

Scott K. Wilder: Community can help with that right again going back to the the champions, those are the people who can help you know.

Scott K. Wilder: People onboarding, for example, they can provide best practices so you're really trying to find out like you know what their okay ours are what their priorities are and then figure out how Community works into that and then.

Scott K. Wilder: You know just say them, you know look I need your support, I mean that'd be transparent, like I need your support let's start with like one priority first.

Scott K. Wilder: yeah you know, like like onboarding there's so many things that community can do to help.

Scott K. Wilder: You know, a customer on board with a product, you know that into it, for example, we had the luxury of embedding Community inside the product.

Chris Detzel: know when.

Chris Detzel: and beautiful.

Scott K. Wilder: Right and it's like that's the one of the Holy grails and it's amazing, and you know the 20 years i've been doing this.

Scott K. Wilder: i've only seen like maybe two companies really do that and it's crazy because, like take turbo tax, for example, very compliant know, everybody hates taxes it's complex but, as you go through the workflow you can talk to an accountant live or asynchronously.

Scott K. Wilder: Who can guide you through the process and through the product right, I mean that's incredibly powerful it takes a while to get there, but the point being is that if a net you know onboarding i'm just picking onboarding is you know really key for that person for that CMO then.

Scott K. Wilder: You know, you can make the argument about how Community can help you know a little.

Scott K. Wilder: thing about onboarding here, so he might say, well, wait How does that tie to revenue.

Scott K. Wilder: When I was at adobe.

Scott K. Wilder: I was put on this cross functional team to work on the first mile which was an onboarding first 30 days I was like wow 30 days man, I could like.

Scott K. Wilder: You know fly across the world, come back you know I mean that's like 30 days to be a lifetime, you know, think about it when you're you know when I met my wife, if I took 30 days to realize to continue that like I knew right away so that maybe that's how i'm built so.

Scott K. Wilder: So we change that to what we did is said within the first 24 hours we would know if a customer was going to stick with us and what that value would be if the customer and so.

Scott K. Wilder: You know if you can incorporate community into that onboarding play and send tell the CRM that this is going to have a revenue impact and maybe you can model that out depend on your resources, then that person is probably the CRM is going to be in.

Scott K. Wilder: Like he's like oh yeah Okay, you made that case, but you have to get aligned with him.

Scott K. Wilder: In that and then you know alignment is the new strategy it's really difficult.

Scott K. Wilder: I can talk a little bit about organization alignment with other parts of the company, but.

Chris Detzel: yeah.

Scott K. Wilder: i'll stop i'll stop there, so I think that's really important find out what's what makes him tick what's going to make him happy.

Chris Detzel: I guess that's the answer for all of them.

yeah yeah.

Chris Detzel: it's like.

Chris Detzel: that's kind of the formula for each and everyone right like each LEADER I like the idea of.

Chris Detzel: kind of going back to turbo tax and that's the example I show even do a little DEMO about.

Chris Detzel: How community is embedded directly into turbo tax and how you can go in there and ask a question inside of turbo tax now they do have a community that you can go to the doctor whatever whatever it is.

Chris Detzel: But you could ask a question and then boom it post it to the Community, you can email directly write this email says hey you post, the Community, you know, and then, when you get an answer you can email us and get an answer and then.

Chris Detzel: Generally it's one of the users that answered it or somebody that's getting a bunch of points or whatever, because you see it.

Chris Detzel: i've seen it like it says so, and so is an expert or whatever the title is you know, and then they answered it right like it was like today is only took like an hour in that case right.

Scott K. Wilder: yeah I think.

Chris Detzel: This is it's not just that it's embedded in the product it's also embedded into the users that they actually answer the questions extremely fast.

Chris Detzel: You know, because they're rewarded and recognized, you know I don't know the whole program, but it was pretty awesome because.

Chris Detzel: Because I show I showed it, you know, and I still show the DEMO to the product, the VP of our product teams and even anybody who listens I can shoot that over, and I even made the made the.

Chris Detzel: We did this not to get completely off, but we did this hackathon last year and I worked with our.

Chris Detzel: person that runs ux and design within the product.

Chris Detzel: is one of the things that he wanted to do was kind of this self help.

Chris Detzel: chat Bot type thing, and I said perfect as a you and I should work together, because I think Community could be a big part of that.

Chris Detzel: You know, and so we put together this whole deck and we we spent literally hours on this deck and made it kind of really.

Chris Detzel: Look really good and everything you know he's a designer so he made it really look, and all this stuff animated.

Chris Detzel: We couldn't do a DEMO DEMO because you know we have a developer to do it, but he still made it look pretty cool just inside the presentation.

Chris Detzel: And at the end of the day, we came out with an outcome of, we could say, from a self help or from a support standpoint, we could save $3 million within three years of just answering those quick eight questions.

Chris Detzel: We didn't get picked mean I mean we got looked up and nothing and i'm like you know because it's a developer hackathon was a developer thing, but it was.

Scott K. Wilder: yeah.

Chris Detzel: A nice way to one create this really cool PowerPoint that shows what you can do, because now, I can take it.

Chris Detzel: to different people in the org and show.

Chris Detzel: You know the value of what a community can bring right, you know and so.

Chris Detzel: Although I thought that was really cool because i've been trying to push for product.

Chris Detzel: You know.

Chris Detzel: It because that is the Holy Grail is pushing community into the product directly for some reason is very hard, because they have other priorities you know they want to build this feature in the product, you know, so I.

Chris Detzel: was like yeah but you know we get on the ship to do so, you know I mean.

Scott K. Wilder: yeah no I hear you it's definitely i'm surprised more companies don't focus on that because you know they keep pushing features, but.

Scott K. Wilder: The 80% of those features are not going to be used.

Scott K. Wilder: To right and so why not have the Community help with the discover ability of those features, for example.

Scott K. Wilder: But you know somebody higher on the food chain and as well we'll figure that out, but design is really important, and.

Scott K. Wilder: You know, I was talking to bill Johnson who's definitely a thought leader in the space and he's got a background in design, I think you know design gets.

Scott K. Wilder: Last time we talked I said, integrating your employees into the Community process is not something that people focus on enough, and so this week i'll talk about how the whole design aspect and really putting a lot of energy into design and.

Scott K. Wilder: into it, we used a this initiative, and you can Google it called design for delight, which were really small teams, even before growth squads small teams that focused on.

Scott K. Wilder: The design aspect but it wasn't just kind of what you see design, it was really again partnering with customers to figure out how to really improve the ux experience and.

Scott K. Wilder: it's outdated, I have a great slide somewhere of when I worked on the intuit site I show the in my 10 years they're all the different homepage is we have.

Scott K. Wilder: All the research we got from focus groups and usability studies on them and then we made the changes that we learned from customer interactions the.

Scott K. Wilder: The improvement, overall, so we quantify that, so I think as Community people we.

Scott K. Wilder: We don't put enough energy into design now part of that is because of the platforms right the platforms are kind of limited.

Scott K. Wilder: In terms of what you can do from a design, unless you have money, and can you know do a lot of customization.

Scott K. Wilder: But I think that's you know if I look into my crystal ball and say you know some opportunities for the next few years operations is one design as another employee engagement is another.

Chris Detzel: yeah you know I remember rich Martin writing some stuff or at least posted something on Twitter talking about you know homepage of.

Chris Detzel: Any online Community right like what's who is coming to your homepage is probably the people that one want to see new content on a consistent basis right.

Chris Detzel: And then you know how do you design it that way, because a lot of people that do come to communities price searching on Google if it's open and.

Chris Detzel: Coming to some other page, that is, you know with a Q amp a or a blog or whatever you're doing you know so even designing for that so there's a lot of things that you can design for but.

Chris Detzel: Just a few things, there is one is you know you can have a resource to help design it the platforms some can do it, and some can so, for example, like.

Chris Detzel: Higher logic i'm not sure how you can design the homepage is whatever you like, like, I mean there's a lot of things you can do there, but to design a discussion page.

Chris Detzel: there's not a lot of flexibility that I know of in that kind of stuff so you know.

Chris Detzel: I think you're limited and then the other thing is trying to find budget for design specifically like I agree, I agree with that so much that.

Chris Detzel: But you know, like for me it's like well do I spend a lot of time designing this or do I have another program that I need to do a webinar and create content for and all these other kinds of things.

Chris Detzel: it's a hard balance, you know what I mean.

Scott K. Wilder: yeah you gotta you know prioritization you know my wife is always like no not another project, so I have this.

Scott K. Wilder: metaphor, if I use called the virtual garage it's getting crowded in there and.

Scott K. Wilder: So I had to build an add on to that virtual garage but that's where I store, you know ideas for projects and things like that, and you know, has plenty of time to get to get to stuff You said the homepage so I you know i've read some of the stuff you're referring to.

Scott K. Wilder: You know preaching to the choir here so Google.

Scott K. Wilder: Community is great for seo.

Scott K. Wilder: yep, but what we all figure out pretty quickly is you know in my last job only 20 30% went to the homepage is their first landing page right so it's really important to.

Scott K. Wilder: And if I was quick enough, I could show an interesting graphic here.

Scott K. Wilder: Maybe i'll try and dig it out, while we're talking but basically the landing pages, if you have 80% of your traffic is coming from Google.

Scott K. Wilder: 20% of that or so it's only going to go to the homepage so really pushing the envelope on design and that initial experience on those category pages, or even those discussion pages, and you know that's another thing that.

Scott K. Wilder: doesn't get talked about enough.

Chris Detzel: I agree, I think that we spent so much time and i'm not saying I don't I have to thinking about what that homepage looks like and, yes, today, since we're only a little over a year old a lot of our a big percentage of our.

Chris Detzel: Traffic comes directly.

Chris Detzel: From the main page but that's slowly but surely going like this right like.

Chris Detzel: homepage at first is kind of the main because people are coming from it from real to.com or docs not real to calm, you know some referral traffic.

Chris Detzel: Then now you're starting to see a shift seo has been doing this, it was at the end of last year right because no, you know we didn't have any seo juice, but now it's number two on the list.

Chris Detzel: that's about to overtake you know the and at some point, you know the next two to three years will probably be 80% of our traffic.

Chris Detzel: You know just takes time to get there, but I agree, why aren't we spending more time on and talking about those discussion pages, you know even the like you said sub pages that people are coming to.

Chris Detzel: And and and that there's content pages that if you have an open Community people are finding through Google right, you know and so.

Scott K. Wilder: Here, can I show you and, if I can share my screen.

Scott K. Wilder: You can see, this will be a new play for you here, because I know people sharing their screens, can you see my screen.

Chris Detzel: yep yep okay.

Scott K. Wilder: So this was a slide that I presented at our obsession Conference so last week we had several hundred people.

Scott K. Wilder: Three 400 people at our obsession conference in San Francisco focused on customer led growth and I gave a presentation about using traditional kind of growth.

Scott K. Wilder: Growth tactics growth, growth marketing growth product marketing and building community and I showed this slide here that actually has some actual data from one of the companies, I worked at.

Scott K. Wilder: And you can see from you know 80% of your traffic comes from Google right only 25% or to the homepage.

Scott K. Wilder: yep and so you know.

Chris Detzel: Which is still significant.

Chris Detzel: So it's not that it's hey you shouldn't spend any time on it.

Scott K. Wilder: But.

Chris Detzel: How much how much time versus the discussion pages.

Chris Detzel: And how many how many companies have actually spent time on a discussion pages some i've seen.

Chris Detzel: But not a lot mean.

Scott K. Wilder: yeah but you know these are usually templates.

Scott K. Wilder: And so, how do you think about those templates in terms of like a initial experience right.

Scott K. Wilder: You know all apartments have that back door, and so you need to be ready for that person comes in the back door and out the front door.

Chris Detzel: that's right no I love that slide that's really.

Chris Detzel: helpful so.

Chris Detzel: Well Scott.

Chris Detzel: I think it's been really good.

Scott K. Wilder: You want to talk about working with other groups in the company or.

Chris Detzel: yeah let's do it.

Okay.

Scott K. Wilder: yeah so you mentioned earlier about the you know you talked about marketing, but you also have other obviously interested stakeholders in the company, whether it's customer success, whether it's you have an education group whether it's a.

Scott K. Wilder: Customer support you know i've tried different models and different companies and the most successful one was when I was at again it into it, where.

Scott K. Wilder: You know Liz was a one person show running community and.

Scott K. Wilder: We together develop this what we call like the captain's model and a chart they'll collect a little bit like the Charter just showed, but basically.

Scott K. Wilder: We identified different internal stakeholders that had an interest in Community anointed them captains and really let them own the user experience in those.

Scott K. Wilder: Areas of the site.

Scott K. Wilder: We set up, we used to call ourselves a G man, so he set up the g's guidelines guardrails and.

Scott K. Wilder: Some other options other things, but like support, so we had all our support run off the Community platform that was opening cases knowledge base so that can, who was head of support at the time can law.

Scott K. Wilder: He was the captain of that and he owned that experience, and I was there to to make sure, like you know certain standards were kept, etc.

Scott K. Wilder: Customer success is another example Lou ran our partner program and we actually turn the platform and do a partner portal, because it was too expensive to pay for a partner matt relief partner relationship management system all right, and so lunas partners, better than me.

Scott K. Wilder: So we all got aligned, and it was kind of you know this.

Scott K. Wilder: i'll mix my metaphors here, but I was like an editorial committee right and Liz and I were kind of the editors in chief but all these people own their sports section their arts and leisure section, etc.

Scott K. Wilder: And that was extremely successful and it's hard to do that, sometimes, because of personalities like people it's hard to do that, because not everybody will get aligned and share metrics and that's where you need your Chris you know your.

Scott K. Wilder: Your CEO to support that but we had you know really well defined share met shared metrics for the whole project and we met every week, and this was back in the days when he did things in person and.

Scott K. Wilder: It was extremely effective, and so you don't you know need an army to build a community.

Scott K. Wilder: You know I talked earlier about empowering your users to co pilot and beat you know help you develop this this great platform this great experience.

Scott K. Wilder: But there's also the employees and making them captains and getting them aligned as well and, just like I said earlier, not enough work is done about like how.

Scott K. Wilder: You don't necessarily need all the employees involved and posting on the Community but employee engagement is really key and there's a woman named Kelly who's done a lot of really interesting work around that in terms of.

Scott K. Wilder: The effectiveness of employee engagement.

Chris Detzel: I think employee engagement is key, you know when I go to any company like I did it real to when I went to her BA and even excel back to the days, the first you know.

Chris Detzel: Two months or let's just say actually the first 20 days I just started picking going through the.

Chris Detzel: directory and seeing you know.

Chris Detzel: Different people that I knew I was supposed to talk to, or should talk to an organization that's going to help me kind of be successful on the Community.

Chris Detzel: Smart people you know even the executives as a skill on the phone start talking to them 30 minutes, I think I talked to 40 or 50 people.

Chris Detzel: Every single time I started a new job you know, for the first two or three weeks, and then you get to kind of continue that on over time, but you need to find those people that are going to help you.

Chris Detzel: answer questions, maybe get on a webinar or you know all those things I like the idea of you know, as I kind of look at real to, for example.

Chris Detzel: You know, we have a partner team and i'm starting to get really close to those guys and they have their own website or partner portal, if you will.

Chris Detzel: That you know there's no engagement All they do is you know push out kind of sells things and whatnot you know just to have a place that they can do that and I always thought, why can we use a closed Community for that you know what I mean like.

Chris Detzel: You should know.

Chris Detzel: yeah I agree and so maybe some opportunity there I did talk to i've talked to folks, but I think getting people to actually move all that content over you know start using the Community is a hard thing for them, you gotta mean so maybe it's kind of a you know well.

Scott K. Wilder: yeah there's I don't know your ecosystem that well.

Scott K. Wilder: Shame on me but.

Scott K. Wilder: You know, with partners are important.

Scott K. Wilder: there's you know.

Scott K. Wilder: Gil raleigh and also space in his name but this been some really interesting stuff and in fact right now in parallel there's a conference around ecosystem, the partner play is really key and.

Chris Detzel: It is you know.

Scott K. Wilder: I think that in the Community space it doesn't get talked about enough, you know that.

Scott K. Wilder: it's been really key in terms of you know my personal success is early on getting partners involved when I was at Google.

Scott K. Wilder: The long tail of adwords revenue comes from these small agencies, and so we built a cult Community for these adwords agencies, I mean there's like.

Scott K. Wilder: 50,000 of them like Just think, and I mean that's probably 100,000 and we built it in parallel with our small business community.

Scott K. Wilder: so that they could work together, and so I just think the partner ecosystem is not thought about enough from us, you know people like us, and so.

Chris Detzel: For me it's.

Chris Detzel: Our community has partners in there, so whatever you know, one of the thing that seems to drive a lot of our engagement discussions is the.

Chris Detzel: Community shows that i've built, you know, so we every week I try to have a Community show around either our product, maybe some thought leadership and things like that or new releases and that does help drive, so we both have partners customers sometimes prospects and, of course, employees.

Chris Detzel: get on to those that think that we can do more with our partners in my mind, we could have that whole partner portal beyond the Community and just a space for them.

Chris Detzel: In you know what I mean but partners people think well partners are always kind of gone if if his delight our cognition or whatever they're always kind of going well sort of but they still.

Chris Detzel: want to know best practices, how to sell how to you know implement in those days we use partners for both selling and implementation that makes sense, so.

Chris Detzel: I think there's a huge opportunity to do even more and have that team own it, you know.

Scott K. Wilder: I totally agree and like I said i'd hubspot at Denmark caddo.

Scott K. Wilder: We actually had the partner portal on the what was at the time the jive Community platform.

Scott K. Wilder: yeah and extremely and you know you can do everything we we had different tiers of partners so obviously you know you can give access to certain people, whether they're gold, silver bronze or type of partners, so I think these platform committee platforms are well suited for that.

Scott K. Wilder: um.

Scott K. Wilder: You know I think a lot of times the question comes up about content management, because you talked about.

Scott K. Wilder: Pushing content.

Scott K. Wilder: But there's there are also.

Scott K. Wilder: Other things you can do on these platforms as well, I think it's um.

Scott K. Wilder: yeah so i'm a big believer it's great to hear that you're doing that.

Chris Detzel: i'm doing some of it, but you know again it's a it's a it's more than one person job right, you know, and so you just gotta prioritize and see what's going to give you the most bang, for your buck.

Chris Detzel: But also kind of the most value to the organization, at the end of the day and it's a hard balance to be you know, sometimes you so.

Chris Detzel: What Skype it's been good man, this time i'm I know you're getting it going, but thanks again for coming on piers over beers i'm Chris dazzle and.

Scott K. Wilder: Scott wilder.

Chris Detzel: Thanks for coming in.

Scott K. Wilder: Thank you very much, always they're great conversation i'm here if you need anything, whether it's you or anybody out there.

Chris Detzel: All right.