Community Manager Advancement Day 2021: Here’s to the resilience of communities

Community Manager Advancement Day, formerly Community Manager Appreciation Day, is an important day at Khoros. We take today to acknowledge and celebrate both types of community managers: brand-owned communities and social network communities. We’ve always believed that online communities can change the way brands can achieve their purpose and connect customers, partners and employees. This past year turned into a shining moment for digital communities to prove just that.

Amid the challenges of 2020, online communities stepped up and showed how valuable they can be. Digital communities allowed brands to address customer service needs at scale, perpetuate brand love, and foster genuine human connection online.

None of that is possible without community managers. The people who, day in and day out, engage with customers and prospects, facilitate connections, solve problems, spark conversation, and maintain a constructive and collegial tone. This past year tested all of us, but put special pressure on community managers, so many of whom found themselves on the front lines of escalating tensions, increased volumes, and shorter tempers. Resilience is the theme for this year’s Community Manager Advancement Day and it’s a fitting word to describe the many quiet leaders who held their communities together through uncharted territory.

One story that comes to mind is our award-winning customer, Intuit. There’s no pre-written manual for managing a brand-owned community during a global pandemic, but Intuit kept calm and carried on. Intuit’s brand purpose is to “power prosperity around the world,” so they advocate for and educate millions of small businesses and individual taxpayers. Intuit’s global team quickly responded to the crisis at hand by offering agent-staffed forums to foster discussions and peer-to-peer support, hosting Ask An Expert events, and quickly publishing a compilation of best practices and tips. Resilience isn’t just about getting back up again. It’s also about preparing for difficulty and being resilient from the beginning, and that’s exactly how Intuit and its community thrived and will continue to, on a go-forward basis.

I want to send personal thanks to the community managers around the world who shepherd the many hundreds of brand-owned communities running on the Khoros Communities platform. At the beginning of April, traffic across Khoros Communities spiked nearly 50%, and in conjunction, so did community engagement and posts. People were going anywhere possible to get answers to undiscovered questions, as we all tried to figure out how to handle something so unexpected.

Our own Khoros community, Atlas, was no different. I applaud our Digital Customer Experience, Professional Services, and Strategic Services teams who went above and beyond to support our customers with insightful content, relevant advice, and most importantly, a positive space for everyone to collaborate and simply connect.

While Community Manager Advancement Day only happens once a year, community management can — and should — be celebrated everyday. If you haven’t already, join our Atlas Community where you can continue to connect, learn, and share ideas among fellow community experts.

Here’s to resilient communities and their fearless community managers leading the way in 2021 — representing the best of human and digital connection. Thank you.