Don’t waste time convincing executives to participate in your online community #cmgr

New research from The Community Roundtable suggests that when executives engage in the organization’s online community, the overall engagement rate goes up. As community managers, we like that. Predictably, there’s been some chatter recently about getting an organization’s executives to engage in its community.

Image by: Bob Owen

That’s because executive participation in online communities is the very rare exception to the rule. CEOs like TCEA’s Lori Gracey, who spends up to 20% of her time engaging in her community, are few and far between. Executives are busy, with many competing priorities. Everyone’s trying to get their attention and they’re typically hard to convince.

The execs who do “participate” in their organizations’ communities usually don’t engage like Lori Gracey. They typically have their posts ghost-written and make bland, carefully scripted announcements. They don’t really engage in the conversation. Do you really want that?

No. You want a Lori Gracey in your community.

Is it worth spending your time and political capital to try to convince executives that they should participate in your organization’s online community? Maybe not as much as you’d think.

Let’s think about why community engagement goes up when a CXO participates.

• Do community members want to be friends and hang out online with the CXO?
• Do they have a fear of missing out because the executives have interesting things to say?
• Do they feel they can raise their stature within the community when the CXO is watching?

Based on what we know about motivation theory, I’d suggest that the primary reason online community engagement sees a lift when executives engage is:

• The community members feel their engagement will be effective, because they believe that a listening CXO can quickly make stuff happen based on their comments, complaints, and feedback, so they’re motivated to make higher quality posts and participate more frequently.

But here’s the thing: In most organizations, the CXO hands down the orders and the people who really make stuff happen are managers, directors and coordinators. If the front line staff don’t have to wait for orders, they can actually make stuff happen quicker than the executives.

Plus, if you’re a community manager, these people are probably your peers; they’ll be easier to convince to engage in your community.

Why make an argument to executives that you may not win, which could potentially produce bullhorn-like executive participation, when you could — with a greater degree of certainty — get better results by engaging your co-workers in the community?

More importantly, when you spend time on stuff like convincing executives, you’re not doing the things that are proven to grow communities. Effective community managers spend time on the things they can affect. Spend yours executing on the basics: converting newcomers, getting questions answered within 24 hours, proactively leading the community conversation, etc.

If you have receptive executives, by all means, try to convince them. But rather than repeatedly losing the debate with them and griping about it, concentrate on things that you have more control over and will have a greater impact. Once you’ve built a successful community and modeled the behavior you want from them, your executives will be motivated to engage — not just participate.

In summary, an online community with an engaged executive team will see a boost in engagement. But there are things the community manager can do that will boost it more and with more predictability. Focus on those tasks first.