The Community-Led Show #1: What is Community-Led, and Why Should You Care?
Alex Angel and Kirsti Buick unpack the concept of Community-Led, and the profound impact it has on an organization.
We’ve been anxiously awaiting the day when we could finally bring our podcast back, and that day is today!
Back in early 2021, Mac and I wanted to start a podcast where we spoke with founders, non-community execs, and community pros alike. We wanted to hear how they think about the intersection of community and each function (like sales, success, and marketing), and how they’re building Community-Led organizations. We spoke with some notable guests like Alexis Ohanian and Jack Altman on why they think community is critical and what they’re doing about it.
After a bit of a hiatus to focus on some other projects like our website overhauls for both Commsor and The Community Club, The 2022 Community-Led Report and Commsaur NFTs, we’ve had so many inspiring conversations with people working at Community-Led organizations that we thought it was high time we brought it back!
Kirsti, our amazing Content lead, and I will be your hosts, with a rotating cast of familiar faces when Kirsti goes on maternity leave. We have some incredible guests lined up for the next few months, talking about the intersection of Community and Success and Community and Marketing, why founders and CEOs are investing in community, and plenty of other meaty topics.
So, without further ado, here's our first episode of The Community-Led Show!
You'll also find the podcast on:
If podcasts aren't really your thing, no matter — we'll be posting a regular TL;DL (too long, didn't listen) summaries right here on our blog to keep you in the loop. If you'd prefer to read the chat, here's the full transcript.
We hope you enjoy the show! If you have any suggestions about topics you'd like to see us cover or guests to interview, we'd love to hear from you. Please reach out via hello@community.club.
The Community-Led Show #1: TL;DL
Too long didn't listen? Here's the gist of what we discussed in our 'pilot' episode (minor spoilers ahead):
Who we are
If we haven't crossed paths before, hi! I'm Alex Angel, the Chief Community Officer at Commsor and The Community Club, and I've been in the community industry for more than a decade (though it feels like a lifetime!). My co-host Kirsti Buick is a journalist turned community evangelist (her words), and heads up the Content team at Commsor and The Community Club.
What Community-Led actually is
Being Community-Led is more than just having a community — it’s all about treating community as a core part of your business strategy, and investing resources into the community and the team building and supporting it. It’s about ensuring community is a core thread that runs through the entire organization, not something that’s siloed and transactional.
There are a whole host of reasons why organizations should care about this and take the time to understand why community is important and how it can positively impact their entire organization. One major factor is that investing in community opens the doors for increased trust and access to customers and prospects. Communities help organizations easily connect with members and build lasting relationships that positively impact every team within an organization.
We also touched on how Community departments can work cross-functionally with other departments in their companies, including Sales, Success, Support, Product, and Marketing. Head over to the blogs linked above to learn more about that.
What to expect in this podcast
I've touched on this above, but we discussed this a little in the podcast too. As you’ve probably deduced from our very clever name, we plan to talk all things Community-Led. We’re going to be talking to community industry leaders, of course, but also founders and exec outside the field, to unpack why they’ve invested in community at their organization, how community ties back to other teams and areas of the org, and how they’re implementing Community-Led practices.
We have another episode dropping soon! Watch this space.
Where to find Community-Led resources
As we touch on in the show, we've got a whole host of things available on our Community-Led site. There, you'll find the Community-Led Growth Model, The 2022 Community-Led Report, and the Community-Led Assessment.
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