Where community strategy
meets intentionality.

2:55 Richard shares how he built his first online community for a client in the gaming industry and discovered that he could enjoy building online communities and get paid to develop a place for others to connect. He started blogging and stuck with it in the beginning. 

5:11 Richard describes his entry into the community industry as a gaming industry because the people he built for had time and wanted to connect as players. He shares that while he doesn’t work much with companies in gaming now, he thinks they will always be a bit ahead of the rest of the industry regarding technology. 

6:12 Community-building is like solving a puzzle for Richard; he describes how he works with organizations by supporting them with clarity on their strategy. Deb describes community-building as the “ultimate puzzle,” Richard explains how data is the key to understanding how communities work. 

8:37 One example Richard shares about clients he works with and how he helps them is an online community experiencing declining engagement and debating the next steps. Richard shares that he helps with guiding leadership to decide if the company will continue with the community, change directions, or choose to close. 

12:36 As a community consultant, Richard shares that he brings a “wide-angle lens” when supporting clients. When he started his consulting business, it was more about what worked for building engagement. Now, it’s transitioned to data-driven metrics that can be reviewed and help guide the decision-making process. 

16:06 Every organization has complained about the same issue, “we don’t have the data,” Richard’s team has worked to crack that challenge. The data shows what people do, not what they say, so we build a system with three parts: What is the value of the community? Can you show a clear, undeniable impact? Secondly, Is the community healthy? Data should inform every decision instead of listening to a few voices, which can give a biased opinion. What’s important? What’s not? Thirdly, people collect a lot of data but don’t know what to do about it. 

18:54 Richard shares how he uses data to analyze and anticipate the actions and needs of members. Retention is just a word, not a metric. It always begins with the community impact, and that’s what we focus on, he shares. 

29:35 Community platforms can be complicated, but there are some great tools out there, Richard says, to create a community experience. You don’t always need to have the “best” platform, and he usually says to people when they ask them, “What’s the best car?” which speaks to the diversity of the platforms and the fact there are lots of options, but it is not an “all sizes fit one” scenario. 

32:50 Richard shares that there’s a difference between what we (as community professionals) want to happen and what is occurring in online communities. He started his community-building journey in 2010 (ish)