AMA with Céline of Canva. Uncommunity #45
👋 Hi everyone, Rafy here.
Welcome to the latest issue of Uncommunity - the newsletter that helps you become a better community builder. We bring you community experts’ interviews, content on communities, tools to scale community or events, and jobs to be applied.
Friends, after carefully thinking we have decided to bring together community builders to discuss community topics, talk about all things community and also have fun. We only have 20 slots left and it’s first come first serve. If you are interested then hit reply or DM me on Twitter.
Now on to the regular stuff.
This week we have Céline Riemenschneider for AMA.
Céline is a long-time community professional having started her career at Yelp and went on to do her business and founded the Community Mentor. She is now leading the Creators Community for Germany at Canva.
Let’s begin. 🖖
From your experience, how can creators build a community full of passionate people? What are some critical steps to follow in order to convert simple users to fans?
At Canva, we are working together with Creators, enabling them to create templates for the Canva Library. One thing I learned through working with Creators is, that it is important to have an outstanding product that people want to be a part of! If your product is bullet-proof, people will not only be users but be fans and want to be Creators for you! What I learned from Creators is that it is important to have a niche, be consistent with their content, but most important be authentic so that people connect with you or feel connected to you!
What are some of the misconceptions around community engagement that you see?
I think the biggest misconceptions are that people think they can run the same strategy and tactics to a smaller sized community, as to a big one. Whereas some core tactics may stay the same - such as being authentic, having a human connection with your members and finding ways to connect with them - the scale of things changes from, let’s say a community with 40 members and a community with a 1000 members in it. Having 1-1s with members at the start of a new community that is still growing is crucial, whilst it is just not feasible to do it when you have 1000 members or more!
How do chapter programs or user group programs further a mission of a company?
Chapter programs are a great way to show the company’s vision is growing and expanding into different groups. This usually is due to geographical factors - that the community is growing across cities/states/countries. Through chapters, you can give more localised care to members, as well as content and events.
How can marketing and community coexist in an organization?
In some organisations, they do co-exist but in most they are separate. I started my community career where both of them co-existed, meaning that I had all the responsibilities of a community manager (community growth, engagement, events, etc.) but I also had a lot of Marketing responsibilities, such as creating Newsletters, running social media channels, crafting PR campaigns and much more. I think separating the two is more healthy, if you want to focus on your community and really scale it. The sweet spot where the two can co-exist is to see where both strategies align with the company’s mission and goals to see where forces can be joined.
Advice to someone who's just getting started in community management?
To not get overwhelmed. :) And that Rome wasn’t built in a day. Many companies focus on growth so much, that they forget quality over quantity. Your community will deliver much more value if it has 50 active and engaged members, rather than 200 inactive and 5 active members. Keep this in mind! And connect with other community managers when you feel stuck or alone - we like to help each other out in this crazy world!
What's the best article on communities you've read ever?
I think anybody who has ever worked at Yelp will cite the same - or at least remember it - Predictably Irrational by Dan Ariely. Chapter 4 - The Cost of Social Norms! Take a look. ;) I assure, you won’t regret it!
But in general, I do enjoy a lot of Feverbee’s articles as they are short, but always precise and to the point!
What's something exciting that you are working on currently?
I am working on launching my course for community professionals - The Community Workademy - very soon! I have been working on it for quite some time, but took a little break in-between, due to my full-time job. I am also a perfectionist and really want the course to resonate with people who are new to the community space or have made a shift in their career and need a fresh perspective. It is a digestible online course, about one hour in length, along with a lot of bonus materials!
Follow Céline on LinkedIn.
What else we’re reading?
Commarketing. Markommunity. Community Marketing. Holly Firestone is back. She’s the VP of Community at Venafi. She talks about beautiful relationship of marketing and community in this article.
Community Marketing is marketing your community to your audience(s). When a company is building a product, they have to market that product so people know about it. The same goes for community. If your audience(s) don’t know the community exists or why they should care that it exists, you’re going to have a hard time getting people to join your community.
What do we mean by “community”? This question has been asked 1000th time online and in this piece you can find great answers from well known community professionals. Read the full article here.
Communities don’t just happen. They are intentionally built and stewarded by official and unofficial community weavers.
How to Create Collaborative Community Mission & Vision Statements. Carrie Melissa Jones deep dives into complex process of community’s foundation in this piece.
Once you have your purpose, vision, and mission statement, you can use these to vet all future content, programming, marketing language, and other critical strategic decisions you make about your community. You should wrap up the facilitation with the mission and vision statements and run these by your stakeholders -- including your key community members and leaders.
How to scale your community: A content collection. A really useful curated content collection from Common Room on how to scale communities.
Every community is different, so if there’s only one thing you’re able to do today to step in the direction of scaling your community, reach out and ask a founding member (or two!) what would make them feel most valued and how they’d most like to help the community grow. Starting small is better than not starting at all.
[EVENT] May 18 | Community Metrics: Going beyond just insights. CMX India is collaborating with Threado for community workshops. In the first workshop Suhas Motwani of The Product Folks will talk about community & data. RSVP Here.
[EVENT] May 24 | Designing superuser programs and experiences that succeed with Sarah Hawk - COO at Discourse. RSVP for Threado Community Hour here.
This is a great piece of advice even if you are just starting out.
Ssssh. If you’ve made it till here, then you know how to join our community. ;)
Growth Hack & Communities cannot go together at all.
The one who make memes, rules the world. On a serious note TOOLS are not important while starting out.
Want to get your learnings published on Uncommunity?
If you’re a seasoned community professional or got learnings from your community experience to share with 700+ amazing community builders, now is the time. Just reply to this mail or DM me on Twitter. I will get in touch with you.
If you liked this edition, do tell your friends to subscribe to us. 😄