Community Program Essentials is designed for community professionals looking to grow their community program management skills and focuses on creating the strategic, operational, and technical elements that enable thriving online communities.
This self-paced course includes eight video modules with related worksheets and homework. You'll work through the modules and worksheets independently and on your schedule.
Community Program Essentials explores:
- Community Roles and Responsibilities
At the end of this session on community roles and responsibilities, you'll understand the different roles community professionals play, the essential skills of community professionals, and what to include when you write a job description for someone working with community.
- Building a Community Business Case
At the end of this session you'' understand how to build a new community business case that expands your community program, how to communicate community value, and how to think about community ROI.
- Securing Executive Support
At the end of this session you'll understand the tools and motivations needed to get executives excited about community at your organization. We’ll look at the five engagement stages of executives, the common prompts that encourage them to learn more about the benefits of community, and tips and tricks for creating coaching and mentoring programs.
- Developing a Community Playbook
At the end of this session you'll understand the essential elements of a community playbook, how to develop a playbook for communicating with a consistent voice and tone, and the basics of building and maintaining a community playbook of your own.
- Building an Advocacy Program
At the end of this session you'll understand the link between advocacy and member engagement, the typical characteristics of potential advocates and the roles of advocates, and ideas for how to build a formal advocacy program.
- Developing Community Training
At the end of this session you'll understand how to design a training program to meet the needs of different audience segments, recognize opportunities for formal and informal training, and understand how to standardize community education with a Community Center of Excellence.
- Community Benchmarking
At the end of this session you'll understand the value of community benchmarking, the criteria needed to help you determine what to track and measure, an understanding of how to use benchmarking to plan and budget, and how to use benchmarking as a communications tool with stakeholders.
- Future-proofing Your Community
We'll spend our last module together exploring tactical ways you can set your community up for long-term success.
Related course materials include:
- Job Description Checklist
- Community Business Case Template
- Executive Coaching Framework
- Community Playbook Checklist
- Advocacy Program Planning Template
- Community Learning Framework
- Community Benchmarking Template
- Future-proofing Your Community Checklist
- Community Bucket List Guide
This course is designed for professionals working with both internal (employee) and external (brand, marketing, and support) community types.
