We hosted ‘Community Conversations: Conversation Strategy’ today.
Many thanks to Hillary and Jamie for co-hosting with me, I enjoyed the flow and conversation.
The notes we took:
Drop your name and link to help connect:
- Rosie Sherry / @rosiesherry on Twitter, rosie.land (co-host)
- Jamie Howard / @JamieHoward on Twitter, Slingshot Swag (co-host)
- Hillary Black / @internethillary on Twitter, Mav, Conversation Design Community (co-host)
- Kely S. Eljadue / @keljadue on Twitter
- Michael Hall / @mhall119 on Twitter, LinkedIn, Gmail and @mhall119@fosstodon.com
- Chun / @zkchun on Twitter
- Lorraine Burrell / conversation designer / linkedin.com/in/lorraineburrell
- Jay / @Jay_Elango on Twitter / https://www.linkedin.com/in/jayelango/
- Angela Cantieni on linkedin www.linkedin.com/in/angelacantieni/
- Sarah Connor / https://www.linkedin.com/in/sarahkconnor/
- Jill Nicholson / www.linkedin.com/in/jill-nicholson-
- Erin Moore / https://twitter.com/erinmuur
- Marie Antons / https://twitter.com/MarieAntons
Links mentioned:
- https://village.rosieland.com (where we are now!)
- Better Conversations
Topics we discussed:
- Why should we be talking about conversation strategy?
- We need to think about the people we are serving
- There are lots of places on the internet that have ‘watering holes’
- There is a debundling of community, we have our own tiny communities, there are lots of new tools, like Circle.
- Jamie - new customers get put into slack, it becomes a channel to share, connect and point people to other conversations happening (eg. Twitter Spaces)
- Hilary has done it more in adding people in as Slack Connect (?)
- It’s hard to create real conversations
- What would it look like to create a true community? And good conversation?
- Conversations are interesting from a shared learning perspective.
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Where should we even we begin?
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how do we decide what conversations to have?
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how can conversation help people do a better job?
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conversations can explore our creativity, what if we did x?
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how can we create a repeatable framework? A list of questions?
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how can we do the leg work to enable conversation, help them put their story into word?
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anonymize experiences and turn it into a community conversation?
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to stir new ideas
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tapping into energy and going with the flow
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make the ask, how can you make the ask to take a conversation further, make it bigger, invite more people in, create more content.
How can we be more authentic/personal?
- How can we facilitate conversations unrelated to specific products?
- People are people
- Example conversations?
- How can I help?
- Personally DM people
- Lift people up
- Make connections between people’s personal and work lives
- Social events/conversations?
- Encourage people to share things outside of their work, help people find things in common
- Icebreakers - who you are, where you’re from, what do you do?
- It has to be personal to make it meaningful
Content as a conversation starter
- Rosie has used blogs/trends/news as inspiration for conversation starters
- Conversation flywheels, woo!
- Wordle is a good example of people sharing stuff
Have conversations, make friends and good (community) things will follow.
We almost tag people, even if it’s just in our own minds, into things that they are interested in, or things they do, or know about.
Conversations lead excuses, how can you make an excuse from a conversation or piece of content.
The quality of the conversation determines the quality of the community.
- Which is why ‘engagement’ is dangerous
- We always have to find things to talk about, it can be tiring!
“No relationships, no community” - Michael Hall
What are ways to encourage conversations to happen more widely? To have it more than 1:1?
- Find ways to support people at their level
- People suffer from procrastination
- Use Google to find inspiration for questions
- But also let what people are saying inspire and lead you to converse
- Jump in to respond
- Tag people in
- Is it a wider issue? How can you take note of repeat requests/asks and keep sharing it beyond a small group?
How can we design a conversation strategy?
- Ask yourself - what is the hardest thing you’ve done this week? What did you learn? What did you doubt? What were the lessons?
- How can we share/converse in a way that is relevant to your people?
- Our experiences matter more than we think?
- A seed idea - then how can we apply it to be relevant to other people?
- Is a conversation strategy really an engagement strategy?
- Maybe be inspired by content strategies
- Discovering opportunities - pains, problems, challenges, desires, how can we create conversations around these?
- What are your conversation goals?
- Conversations are the seeds of ‘proper content’?
Topics we thought would be interesting, but didn’t quite talk about
- Why should we be talking about this?
- How can conversations become a shared learning?
- How do people converse in community?
- What does a conversation strategy look like in community?
- How can we do better with conversations?
- What should we do with all the conversations that are happening?
- How can we design conversations into our community?
- Where is your community right now? What do conversations on that platform look like?
- How do you incentivize conversations among community members without starting them all yourself?
- When should you worry about moderation?
- How do conversations differ depending on the community platform (discord, Facebook groups, Twitter, Circle, etc)? Which platform is right for you?
- How do you encourage 1-on-1 (DM) conversations to become 1-to-many?
- Should you enlist experts or affiliates to facilitate conversation?