Firestone: Pair Mid-Level Community Hires with Consultants When Senior Talent Is Scarce
Holly Firestone · Enterprise Communities: The What, Who, Why, When & How | @VenafiCo Head of Community Holly Firestone · Jun 1, 2022 · at 11:10
This episode carries Holly Firestone's own address, with nobody on the show putting questions to them. It still counts as said, and it is kept out of every score on their page.
Holly Firestone offers strategic staffing advice for companies looking to establish community teams amidst a shortage of senior talent.
0:00 / 0:24exact quote · 24.1s
▶ Watch the full episode on YouTube → 720p mp4 · rendered on demand · StarZero watermark
“There aren't a ton of people that have been doing this a really long time. So what I would recommend if you can't find someone super senior, look for someone that has, you know, four or five years of experience, bring in a community consultant and the community consultant can really Build and, you know build and drive the strategy and work with your hire who's going to execute on that strategy and they can work on milestones together.”
quote is from the automated transcript, cleaned for reading: filler sounds and stutters are removed, nothing is rephrased. names can be misheard (the analysis reads context, assessments check outside sources). how →
More from Holly Firestone
Firestone: Community members drove 2x pipeline and 3x lower attrition
“This is from a community that I used to lead. So driving growth and ROI. We saw for members of the community, two times more pipeline, two times bigger deals, 33% higher product adoption, and three times lower attrition.”
Firestone: Community peer support saved $2M per month in support costs
“Then when it comes to support costs, there were 4000 questions that were answered in the community like in a community forum. 83% of those were answered by other members of the community. And we calculated that that was two million dollars a month in support s…”
Firestone: Every executive department should share a top-level community goal
“Every team should have a goal that's shared with community across the board on the exec team, because there's other teams that you don't even think about that you really need to work with to build a community like accounting or legal, and they have to be putti…”
Firestone: Community must connect peers rather than broadcast company messaging
“Community is your people connecting to each other over a shared set of interests and values, and your company is the glue that sticks them together. I cannot stress how important this is. Community is not an opportunity for you to build, you know, your connect…”
Firestone: Building enterprise communities for every audience at once is a mistake
“Now, would I say build for every single one of your audiences right off the bat? Absolutely not. That's a terrible idea. You need to prioritize the audiences that you want to work with, but it can really include everybody, and it's a good idea to include every…”
Firestone: Co-creating communities with early users turns them into fierce recruiters
“When they do that, they will feel such a sense of ownership over that community that they will be your fiercest advocates in the community, and they will be the people that are engaging and recruiting people into the community because of that sense of ownershi…”