Have you ever wondered about the ways that operators and community managers overlap? How can operators assist in empowering community managers to become strategic thinkers?
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Today I am chatting with Shana Lynn, a community strategist in the operations space.
Meet Shana
Shana Lynn is the community strategist behind many of the 7 & 8 figure brands you love. With more than a decade of experience, she’s been speaking about online communities since 2008. She’s worked with industry leaders such as Stu McLaren, Jennifer Allwood, and Corinne Crabtree to help guide their community strategy and empower their community teams. As the founder of Community Cultivated, Shana helps online business owners maximize their profit and multiply their impact through community consulting, training, and support. A Nashville native, Shana lives in the suburbs with her hubby and 3 little kiddos. She enjoys regular visits from her oldest kiddo and her grandbaby. When she’s not knee-deep in community work, you’ll find her eating too much avocado and trying to sneak away for time on her paddleboard. Connect with her each week on her podcast, Community Creators, where she delivers bite-sized episodes with proven strategies, actionable tactics, and innovative ideas that will increase your reach, retention, and revenue.
Why Community is Important
- [Natalie] As I look back on my life there has been a need for deep connection to people
- Both with friends and mentors
- To get where I am at today, I had to get to know myself on a deep level to understand what kind of business I wanted to build
- Community and leveraging relationships needed to be a big part of that
- I’m putting on our live event, Growth Getters Live, because I dream of the experiences that we are all going to have and the transformations that will happen
- Our programs are also about building a community of like-minded people so we can grow and transform alongside each other
“Everyone has the desire for community whether they realize it or not.” – Shana Lynn
Created for Community
- [Shana] Everyone has the desire for community
- If we don’t, it is usually because we have been wounded by community in the past and we don’t feel safe or our perspective of community is at a certain scale
- Maybe a smaller group feels better to you
Shana’s Background
- Her love of community came from a lack of community growing up
- Went on a journey of trying to live without community, and realized that she wasn’t showing up fully as herself
- Finally found a community where she could be known
- Her goal is to create a place where people can belong, so they can show up more fully in the world (and that has an incredible ripple effect)
- Went to school for marketing and started to speak about community in the virtual world
- Started working in corporate, then consulting, and helped businesses bring their communities online
- Had a marriage blog and led a wives group, and a moms Facebook group and those things ended up merging when she was starting to grow a membership
- Stu McLaren reached out and asked her to join him on his team as Director of Community
“When I finally found a community that I felt safe in and could connect with…I showed up more fully in the world.” – Shana Lynn
“Community [in the Ops Authority] is a beautiful by-product of what we provide.” – Natalie Gingrich
Shana’s Framework
- Two of the Pillars of her framework are having a really strong cause and having a really strong culture
- The cause is the common mission we are all working on
- The culture helps define the beliefs, behaviors, and boundaries so everyone feels safe and comfortable
Community Management
- [Shana] People often think “community management” means a Facebook manager, or a cheerleader
- The truth is that a community manager plays two roles:
- A relationship manager role: an engagement manager role who nurtures the group on the platform, and moderates it
- Program manager: more operational and makes sure the program is running, that the deliverables are getting out, does onboarding, nurtures, and monitors progress
- The merging of those two roles is a Community Cultivator
- Someone who is filling the role of carrying the vision of the business owner into the community
- Creates connections among community members
- Serves as a progress guide and thinks about how the program is structured to help people make progress and how you leverage resources and connection to help them
- This requires someone to think operationally and strategically
Operators and Community
- [Natalie] Operators need to help their leaders to know that community management is; NOT just engaging on posts… there is an operational piece at play
- What has a deep impact is the resourcefulness that someone with an operational mindset comes in with
“Operators help business owners understand the value of the team members they have and help measure that value.” – Shana Lynn
- [Shana] We talk a lot about metrics in my training and attach it to the community manger
- They measure retention rate and progress… can we measure how many people are active?
- When an Operator can call a community manager to be accountable to those metrics and how to identify them, it empowers the community manager to start thinking more proactively
How Do you Train and Guide this Skilllset?
- Cultivate: A self paced course, not platform specific
- It is about how to change the way you think about community form a strategic perspective and how to develop that community strategy
- How to proactively run the community
- Valuable for anyone who is involved running courses, memberships, or group programs and want a high level understanding of managing the community
Connect with Shana
Community Creators with Shana Lynn
Instagram
Community Cultivated (course)
Weekly Ops Activity
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