Intro
When an opportunity arises to hear community experience stories from Germany, then I will be the first to jump on it. In community land, Germany is now emerging with more and more community practices This time we had Marco Steinhaueser from Shopware Germany. He was struggling with vocal community members and shared his experiences so far. The community leaders forum is a true community so, of course, Marco also had some questions and statements that we could discuss.
This session we welcomed a lot of new members participating so we had a good size meeting.
Marketing in the mix: enemy or ally?
Marco and his team of 4 have a community of 42000 developers that develop e-commerce solutions with their Shopware product. The community has 1200 daily active users and is active in DACH, US, IT, and Benelux. He has been working for 20+ years on communities and one of the first discussion points was: “Don’t let marketing touch the community or it will die!” As there were also community managers reporting into marketing, this led to an interesting debate about the role of marketing in the community. 2 things stood out as a result:
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Community teams frequently get moved around in the organization. Sometimes they are in support, marketing, product, or customer success. Community management does not have a stable location in the chain of command. It is more related to the vision of leadership.
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Community Management for marketing can work (given previous presenters' results) but it does require marketing to embrace community tactics. Once they are mastered, marketing can become a powerful ally.
New product? Involve your audience from day 1!
Driven by advances in technology, Shopware released a new version of its product that was a change to the old product. The central question was: How do you deal with those angry members who do not agree with the choices made? As we had quite a few community managers in the meeting that dealt with such a situation the advice was: Involve them from day one if you are going to break something. Involve your leading community influencers and potentially have them help shape the new product. They will defend the choices made and it will be a whole lot easier to have the community understand and accept the changes.
“I’m not responsible, we are!”
In preparation for this presentation, Marco and I talked about his biggest lesson doing community management for so long and his immediate response was: “I’m not responsible!” We as a company are responsible. Choices made in the company, lead to reactions in the community. I asked him to put up the statement and see how the group would react. The group reacted with an audible silence. Every community manager is passionate about their work and feels responsible for the success of the community but everybody also understands that the community has a deep impact on the organization and the choices made by the organization become visible to all. A valuable lesson, especially for those at the start of their community journey.
The Sequel
Granted, we ran out of time. There was so much discussion that the main topic only was touched for 10 mins. Not enough. So there will be a sequel by another presenter soon.
Join Us
You too can be part of this group of community managers. It is a true community. You give and you get. All members gladly share their stories and also can ask the questions they are struggling with. Just go here and register. It’s once a month every last Thursday. 10x a year. Access is free.