Recent Activity
Announcing the Khoros Titans Program
2 MIN READI’m extremely excited to announce that we are launching a new user recognition program here at Khoros. The Khoros Titans! Our previous user recognition programs have been quite successful, but over the past few years have waned in audience, engagement, and execution. The Titans program aims to reinvigorate what it means to be a power user of the Khoros platform! The program introduces four levels of Titan and will run in partnership with our Khoros Core program which caters to a (mostly) different audience. Our Titans will be recognized on a regular basis as people enter the program or gain more levels. How do I become a Titan? Great question! You: Must be a current paying customer or an approved consultant* Must remain in good standing on Atlas per the Code of Conduct with no infractions May not work for a competitor Must meet certain criteria as listed on our Titans program page - these criteria take into account Atlas participation, attendance & engagement with different media such as webinars and product coaching, and in-application activities* From time to time, we may adjust criteria and invite highly engaged customers into the Titans program based on their strengths in strategy and execution, as well as their help spreading the love for Khoros and driving enterprise customer experience initiatives. What’s in it for me? What are the benefits? On top of the formal recognition provided in our regular updates of new Titans, members also gain a unique badge and label on Atlas, exclusive access to group hubs, greater networking opportunities within the Titans, and opportunities to build their own brands. There are so many ways to grow your knowledge of the Khoros platform. To see what some of these are, along with benefits at each Titan level, check out our Titans program page. Who are some current Titans? We have a set of amazing Titans, and look forward to adding you to the ranks, too. You can identify Titans on Atlas by a blue badge next to their name on posts, the Titan badge on their profiles, or by going to our Titans program page. In addition to this, you’ll see showcased blogs and highlights about our Titans around the community! We look forward to your thoughts on our program, and please let us know if you have any questions. BlakeH - Community Manager AnnaL - Director, CX and Systems PhilippeM - VP, Customer Experience * Consultants have slightly different criteria. Please contact AryannaK for the time being.14KViewsSign in to react to this post6CommentsAtlas Redesign Update
2 MIN READThe Atlas team is proud to present the next stage of the Atlas Redesign Project! Since the previous redesign, we’ve continued to listen to our members’ comments and suggestions about Atlas and believe we are moving in the right direction. Take some time to review the updates and learn about the strides we have made to enhance your experience with Khoros and our community. Let us know what you think about the changes here in the comments or in Suggestions for Atlas! Your feedback will continue to drive the changes that you want to see. Navigation Bar As the most common starting point for users, the Navigation Bar has been a focal point for the team. This update comes with a now beautifully interactive menu where color-coded category tabs light up. We also fixed a few issues from previous iterations by placing a permanent search bar and solving the disappearing category icons. Category Page Every category in Atlas is unique, filled with a wealth of information for you to discover. We wanted our category top pages to reflect that. Each category now has product colors for visual signposting, keeping in line with the navigation bar theme. We reduced the number of category cards and shifted the group hub component higher, making it easier to distinguish discussion types and find content. *Release notes are now located in the blogs area. Search The process of searching the community has been streamlined with a few simple changes. Filters are now located on the left sidebar, and more visibility is given to the basic search options. We are currently continuing work on improving search performance. Three Dot Menus We have replaced the three vertical dots menu (kabob menu) on Search, Group Hubs, Blog/TKB Dashboard, and Private Messages with more descriptive options. This gives users better visibility into the purpose of different menus.ViewsSign in to react to this postCommentsDriving Growth in Community with Banners & Content Gates
3 MIN READRecently, CheckMates introduced banners aimed at encouraging our community users to log in or register. This fairly simple idea has already proved successful, so I thought it could be helpful to others. In thinking about this, it was just one stop on a much longer journey. So first, a little history. Check Point was a Jive customer, but there wasn’t any actual formal program before the CheckMates community program started in 2017. In 2015, a different community lived on JiveX, which became CheckMates, and migrated to the Lithium/Khoros platform in 2019. We dialed in on tracking Member Registrations to demonstrate overall community growth to our execs. We recently started being interested in Member Entrances, but first, let’s look at the metrics we’ve been tracking consistently, Completed Registrations, as these metrics are related. Historically, we’ve been getting roughly 1,000 registrations a month. When this number dips below 1,000, we start looking at what we can do to encourage more registrations. Most of our content is available without logging into the community platform. But we have some content restricted to only logged-in users for various reasons, including ensuring users log into the platform. In the old JiveX platform, the only way to make content available when logged in was by putting it in a space that isn’t accessible to someone not logged in. The downside to this method is content won’t be indexed by Google—an important consideration when you consider the vast majority of our traffic comes from search engines. When we moved to the Lithium/Khoros platform in 2019, we developed a custom component to “gate” specific posts. If users have not logged in and hit a gated post, they’ll be presented with a preview of the top-level post in the thread, and the rest is hidden. Below is a visual of the preview, or you can see this in action here. When we first implemented these custom components, I hard-coded the thread IDs into the components. The downside is that it requires pushing code changes through Studio anytime I wanted to gate a post. I now use Custom Tags, which made it possible to not have to push a code change whenever we wanted to update which posts were gated. Note that our general guidelines for gating posts are as follows: Top 25-50 threads by visits (reviewed quarterly) Content related to events (always gated) This idea kept the numbers above 1000 a month for a while. Earlier this year, we started noticing the numbers dipping below 1000 a month (our low was 800, I think), so we started looking for new ways to bump that back up. So, we added a banner to remind community members to log in and encourage prospective members. Sometimes, innovation isn’t complicated. Showing a popup on a specific page when the user is not logged in is pretty easy by including the component in relevant layouts. We had been experimenting with a third-party service to disp…ViewsSign in to react to this postComments[Titans] How the Cisco Meraki Community Uses Blogs
2 MIN READEditor's Note: CarolineS is one of Khoros' top Titans, our community of pros who are skilled at building customer experience programs. Now an independent consultant who helps brands get the most out of their community platforms, she shares her experience below of using Khoros blogs to help build the Cisco Meraki community. Take it away, CarolineS! A blog post about blogs! I’m excited to contribute to this new Khoros effort to showcase real-life community examples. Thanks for the opportunity, BlakeH! One of the things I love most about the Khoros Community platform is its flexibility. Sure, it comes with a few standard interaction styles (blogs, forums, knowledge base, contests), but a clever community team can do a lot with these base types. Just the blog interaction style has a lot of possibilities - we have used it to solve a myriad of use cases on the Cisco Meraki Community. For example… Community Announcements This community-centric blog is perhaps our most typical “blog”; we use it to keep our members appraised about contests, member recognition, and platform updates. The layout is that of a standard blog, with a running list of posts. In addition to posting announcements here, we use Marketo to email our members about new contests and select other announcements. (Can you guess, of the two posts shown in the screenshot above, which we sent an email about?) See our Community Announcements blog for yourself here. Service Notices blog Our support team uses this blog to post about outages and other wide-scale problems. They link to these posts from within our product’s dashboard and also in customer email communications as needed. We were thrilled to be able to create this for our support team (with, frankly, very little effort). Hosting these outage notices certainly aids us in our goal of deflecting support cases! Take a look at the Service Notices blog here. Podcast We also use a Khoros blog as a home for our podcast, Meraki Unboxed. Posting the podcast episodes on the community gives members the chance to provide feedback on episodes and to interact with our podcast host. The podcast blog is here. VIP Program Roster / Hall of Fame One of our less-traditional uses of the blog interaction style is our Community All-Stars Hall of Fame. Here, we post photos and biographies of each of the members of our VIP program. We use labels to designate which year(s) they were members of the program, creating a historical record as well as an up-to-date roster. This blog uses the “masonry” layout for a more photo-rich look. You can see it for yourself here. These are just a few of our uses of blogs - believe it or not, there are more! But that’s enough about how the Meraki Community uses Khoros blogs. I’d love to know how YOUR community uses blogs. Please do share in the comments below. Questions? Join the discussion by regis…ViewsSign in to react to this postCommentsAtlas Highlights - February 2021
3 MIN READHello, to all of our Atlas members! Lots of exciting news coming from Khoros this month! But first things first, we want to thank every single person who uses or contributes to Atlas. Our members are the true drivers of success, and we can not thank you enough! ____________________________________________________________________________ Last month Khoros announced that it has acquired Flow.ai, an innovative conversational AI platform for designing and managing chatbots. Together with Flow.ai, Khoros will extend the AI/ML capabilities available to brands for greater self-service and operational agility. Click here to read the full press release! ____________________________________________________________________________ While Community Manager Advancement Day only happens once a year, community management can — and should — be celebrated every day. If you haven’t already, join the CMAD Discussions on Atlas, where you can continue to connect, learn, and share ideas among fellow experts. Here’s to resilient communities and their fearless community managers leading the way in 2021 — representing the best of human and digital connection. Thank you! ____________________________________________________________________________ Following on from the news that Atlas was named a Finalist at the CMX awards, we were also informed that the DCCX team and Tech Support team at Khoros were awarded a Silver Stevie Award for Best Use of Technology and a Bronze Stevie Award for Customer Service Team of the Year. ____________________________________________________________________________ And now for the Atlas content you do not want to miss! Recent Atlas Blogs Some blog areas are limited to Khoros customers only. If you are a customer and unable to access anything, email us at [email protected], and we’ll help. Welcome To Our New Developer Blog API changes that matter to you, Tips & Tricks, and Success Stories with insight into how you can get the most out of Khoros' APIs. Maia Q4 review See what Maia has been up to! Know Your Role: Re-Org Tips to Facilitate Your Customer Needs If you haven’t considered these four reorganization tips, you may already be behind Modernizing Digital Care: Analysis - Part 3.1 We will be breaking down part 3 of this series into 3 small sections. First up, the analysis you should be doing on an ongoing basis. Building Your Recognition Program - Rewards & Recognition: Part 3 Let’s take a look at building a recognition program for your valuable users and superusers. Comments List Syndication - Create Syndicated Network of Discussion This blog elaborates on the newly launched Comments Syndication Feature - A powerful tool to create a network of syndicated discussions. ____________________________________________________________________________ Engaging Atlas Discu…ViewsSign in to react to this postCommentsHow to Proceed with your Brand: US Capitol Crisis
5 MIN READUnimaginable. Unprecedented. Unbelievable. Those are the words still reeling through many of our minds as we think back to the events that took place yesterday. As we try to come to terms with the chaos, we are left wondering what, if anything, should be done across social media and digital channels. Should paid advertising resume? Should a statement be issued? Should organic content still be paused? It’s safe to say that we haven’t re-entered a “business as usual” approach. At this time, it’s incredibly important to monitor conversations that are unfolding on and outside of your owned channels. Sensitivities are high and the likelihood of content being misinterpreted and/or misconstrued is just as high. Given the current climate, we would recommend continuing to pause organic and paid content through the end of the day and then taking a day-by-day approach to evaluate whether or not it makes sense to resume publishing. Knowing that the rest of the month could bring about more sensitivities, it’s important to consider your brand’s place in this conversation — if any. Below are a few things you can do now to adjust your strategy and plan for the future: Understand responses to other brand posts Evaluate how messaging reinforces your brand mission and purpose Leverage social listening to inform your content and response strategy Assess when paid advertising makes sense Establish a moderation rubric Brand engagement and reactions from consumers Over the past 24 hours, there have been several brands that have posted statements about the crisis that took place in Washington D.C., calling for a peaceful transition of power and denouncing the violence experienced at the US Capitol. Generating mostly negative replies, consumers have accused brands of being inauthentic, mentioning “No statements like this, past few years though? #hypocrites,” as well as opportunistic “How do I cancel my card? What happened in DC was disgusting... but so is corporate America looking to capitalize on it.” Additionally, consumers are calling out brands that have the ability to do something about it: “So you’re going to pull PAC money from the lawmakers who enabled this, right? Because I don’t think anyone still has an appetite for performative tweets when you have the power to actually do something.” Before publishing a statement, consider how the message ties into your brand values. While brands may feel pressure to condemn the events at the US Capitol yesterday, the country is still processing and tensions are high. Being quick to publish a statement across your owned social channels may come across as reactive and inauthentic to your community; especially if this is the first time that your brand is entering the political arena. If publishing a statement is something that you are strongly considering, we recommend ensuring that: Your brand was directly mentioned as a part of the events, specifically in th…ViewsSign in to react to this postCommentsAutumn Innovation Launch: New integrations & AI across our entire platform
3 MIN READIn 2020, brands have adapted to shifts in everything from business practices to employee structure to customer expectations. But there’s one thing that never changes, and we’ve seen it reinforced time and time again over the course of this year: the fundamental need for human connection. We’re announcing our 2020 Autumn Launch to help our customers develop this important form of connection with their own customers. Our newest innovations will help brands improve their community management, team collaboration, and customer engagement processes. Here’s what’s new in the platform: The best way to manage all of your communities With new gesture-based scrolling (patent pending) and machine learning in Manage View to reject hate speech, Khoros is innovating on behalf of the people nurturing both owned communities and social media communities. Whether moderating for spam and accuracy or managing for participation and delight, community managers will have the best Engagement Manager on the market today. Learn more here. Shared visibility and coordination between Marketing and Service teams We’re bringing customer-facing teams together with shared visibility and coordination. With Khoros, service teams can take the right action on conversations based on the marketing content that inspired it. Marketing context — like campaign initiatives, plans, and tags — will now inform workflows and automatically route, prioritize, and filter conversations so customers have a cohesive experience with the brand. Plus, all customer-facing teams will see who owns the conversation so they can break down silos and speak with one brand voice. ____________________________________________________________________ What’s new in Khoros Communities Events experiences Our new Event capability with social media video live streaming makes it more rewarding to host events in your branded community. Brands can now also simplify digital events, from the initial creation and promotion to the actual management of the event. When in-person gatherings are limited or restricted, hosting events in online communities can help brands maintain crucial customer relationships. Improved knowledge sourcing and streamlined communication with Slack Our new Slack integration allows brands to connect their community on Khoros Communities in exciting ways. Now, Khoros offers the only solution in the industry for brands to seamlessly communicate and search their owned community within Slack. Learn more here. ____________________________________________________________________ What’s new in Khoros Care Email integration and channel consolidation We’re excited to add email to our repertoire of supported channels in Khoros Care. Brands will now have the ability to respond to inbound emails, and much more, directly in the platform, alongside other supported digital service channels: chat, messaging, social media, owned communities, reviews, and more. AI updates…ViewsSign in to react to this postCommentsSep-Oct Atlas Highlights
3 MIN READHello, to all of our Atlas members! A special thank you to everyone who joined us for Khoros Engage Digital! We hope the experience inspired you to continue pushing for new heights. Lot's of exciting initiatives in the works at Khoros that we can’t wait to share. The Atlas highlights will now coincide with the upcoming Knoros customer newsletter to give our members a spotlight and easier access to essential information resources. Thank you all again for being a part of this community of innovators! ___________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________ Here’s the Atlas content you do not want to miss! Some blog areas are limited to Khoros customers only. If you are a customer and unable to access anything, email us at [email protected] and we’ll help. Instagram Messaging (DMs) now in early access The ability to DM with your customer from within the Khoros Care and Marketing platforms is now in early access. You can read more about how that’s helped one brand here. Khoros Engage Day of Learning: Care & Marketing Recap Thank you to all of our customers that participated in the day of learning on October 13, 2020, before Khoros Engage! *Customer Access* How connections open new business strategies This blog distills the insights from our 1-hour discussion on the topics of connections and business strategy. What's in a name? Reward and recognition can drive a community’s success. Join us as we break down what exactly it means to be a super-user. Slack - Community Integration Bring your community on to your Slack workspace. Read on to learn more about our groundbreaking Slack integration. How We Built It: Author Badges This guide gives a step-by-step breakdown of how you can add a colorful author badge to comments and replies made by the original author of a blog post or message. Modernizing Digital Care: Getting started or expanding This video-format blog covers some of the questions we often get from our customers and prospects about getting started or expanding a digital dare program. ___________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________ Webinars & Events Update Atlas Events is the best place to keep up to date with upcoming events. The experts’ debate: Fuelling your branded community to drive innovation and culture. November 5th, 2020 “A session no one can reasonably miss, and I’m serious here,” ArnaudL said it best, don’t miss this opportunity! ___________________________________________________________________________________________________ Engaging Atlas Discussions Some discussion areas are limited to Khoros customers only. If you are a customer and unable to access anything, email us at [email protected] and we’ll help. Monitoring first posts - Keeping tabs on a user’s first…ViewsSign in to react to this postComments[Titans] Don’t Forget the Cheerleaders! How to Win Over Internal Stakeholders
3 MIN READA few weeks ago, I had the opportunity to watch my niece’s cheerleading championship. First, these are frightening to watch when someone you love is ‘in the game’. The tosses, flips, and catches keep you at the edge of your seat with ‘91’ punched into your cell phone. Second, you realize very quickly the power of having someone on your side, shouting out your name, and proudly sporting your colors. It made me think about how cheerleaders have been critical in the success of every effort in my career. As you can imagine, when I was launching a private unified B2B customer community in late 2020, I knew I needed cheerleaders. As a community professional with over 4 years of experience (and 28 years in business), I’ve found the best way to grow your squad is by following the ABC approach. Acquaint Our organization, Datto, has approximately 2000 people. This is just big enough for there to be people who have no idea we have an online Community. My remedy: Internal PR tour A video My tour included the Sales, Success, Product Management, Business Development (Biz Dev) teams - anyone who would listen. I could give anywhere from a 2 minute to a 20 minute presentation on Community. Two minutes is clearly the biggest challenge. As Mark Twain once wrote “I didn’t have time to write you a short letter, so I wrote you a long one.” First, create the perfect version at the perfect length to present your background, your “why should I care,” and then your call to action. Next, shorten that presentation before you are forced to in a meeting. Be ready to adapt and still get the essential points conveyed to your audience. Finally, create a video to spread your message even when you can’t be present. Make multiple versions to provide each key role the answer to the question “How do I benefit from promoting the Community?” That brings me to the B in the ABC formula. Benefits Cheerleaders need to be given a reason to shout and something worth shouting. This is where benefits come into play. When building your squad, you need to clearly define the benefits to them. The reason to shout depends on your Community. For our company, it positions the employee as an individual our customers can reach out to for great resources. What you shout depends on the team to which you’re speaking: Sales - Shouting Community shows our customers we continue the conversation after the sale. Success - Shouting Community shows our customers they have a place to influence our product and connect with their peers. Product Management - Shouting Community shows our customers that they are engaged to listen to their suggested improvements. Biz Dev - Shouting Community shows we are not just about the occasional in person connection. We want them connecting and learning long after the drinks have stopped flowing. Your reasons will vary - however, you …ViewsSign in to react to this postCommentsAtlas Proudly Adds Pronouns Option to Profile
1 MIN READKhoros is committed to creating an inclusive workplace for all, and that means recognizing the pronouns each of us use. Pronouns are used to refer to a person’s gender, and aren’t always what you might expect just by looking at someone. While not required, using your pronouns on Atlas can be a good way to remind people of your pronouns and continue normalizing discussions around them. Click here for more information on what pronouns are and how you can get used to using pronouns like they/them. Here’s how to include pronouns on your profile today! Update your profile Your profile management tools can be accessed by clicking on ‘my settings’ under your avatar icon on the top right of Atlas. Once on the ‘My settings: Personal’ page, click on the dropdown bar and select ‘Personal information.’ From here, you can add your preferred pronouns. Here are a few that are more commonly used: He/Him/His She/Her/Hers They/Them/Theirs After saving your preferred pronouns, click the ‘Make pronouns public’ link to be taken to your privacy settings. Making pronouns public On your ‘Privacy Settings’ page, you can change who can see what on your profile. To have pronouns displayed on your profile, set ‘Show private information in profile’ to ‘All.’ This option only displays some basic information on your profile including: name, pronoun, bio, friends list, and social fields if filled in. Your email address is not displayed. Now you can proudly display your pronouns on your Atlas profile.ViewsSign in to react to this postCommentsUpdates to Atlas Aug-Sep 2020
2 MIN READNEW Events Beta We have added Events Beta to the Khoros Event’s Group Hub. Head over to the Events area for a list of the Khoros Engage breakout sessions and keynote speakers. Make sure to RSVP and engage with your peers in any comments section! Please note that Events are still beta, more information to come. Community Strategy Discussion Forum The new Community Strategy Discussion forum is now open. Subscribe to the forum to stay up to date on the latest community strategy discussions! Increased Signposting We are adding new signposting components, which are located on the bottom left corner. This is intended to better inform customers of which areas are public vs. customer only. This is not visible on all pages, including category pages with mixed content and some hidden group hubs. Keep an eye out for upcoming posts on the Communities Blog to learn how this custom code was implemented. Blog Label Cloud As part of the team’s efforts to better represent each category’s content, we have introduced a label cloud to the top of the blog areas. The drop-down on the top left allows users to choose between 'Top Labels' or alphabetical. As we continue to work on categorizing content, the label cloud will improve and better represent the available content. UPDATED/FIXED Fixed overlapping rank names on component Worked on by AndyK and AbhishekGu Renamed Tags to Keywords Worked on by AndyK and NoraG Corrected brand colors throughout Atlas Worked on by AndyK, NoraG, and AbhishekGu Updated Atlas Hub Structure Worked on by JamilaR and AndrisG Update contact support page Worked on by AndyK ARCHIVED/REMOVED Retired Facebook login to Atlas Worked on by AndyK Archived Khoros Data API user Group Worked on by AndrisG and JamilaRViewsSign in to react to this postCommentsThe Metaverse and Online Communities: Khoros 101
7 MIN READ“Metaverse” is a term first coined by Neal Stephenson in his 1992 science fiction novel Snow Crash, captured the imagination of emerging generations and has gained unsurprising traction in recent years. From fully digital lives in online worlds, like Second Life, to a plethora of movies like Ready Player One, each provide a glimpse into what the metaverse could mean and how it could play a part in our daily lives. As we’ve seen, the mission, vision, and values that we hold for our futures are the premise of how these new worlds emerge. It’s not hard to find media covering the topic of virtual worlds, they are real, they exist now, and yet there is so much we have yet to see as far as technological developments in this area. The current understanding and experience of the metaverse varies. Although Meta (formerly Facebook) is creating its own “Metaverse” it is only one of many such projects. There is Meta, the brand, and there is the all-encompassing term, metaverse, which essentially means multiple worlds enabled through augmented and/or fully virtual experiences, where people can interact, work, play and more. Brands, opportunities and partnerships are ripe across this ever-growing ecosystem — many organizations are currently building out similar and novel virtual experiences for work, commerce, entertainment and more, across a spectrum of centralized and decentralized systems. As it stands, the metaverse is what we would say is in its ‘prototyping’ phase. Thus, there is so much yet to come, and infinite possibilities in which we can partake. Metaverse and online communities You can’t have a metaverse without community. Think of the metaverse as just like our real-life public and private spaces, except augmented / fully digital with a game-like, fantastical structure. Metaverses are narrative driven and hosted for connection between people, groups, and organizations. And the glue that holds these worlds together and enables a new epoch of collective experiences is the community aspect of them. We can see large-scale examples of metaverses with the recent explosion of worlds like Decentraland, Sandbox, and Roblox. Worlds like these will only become more extensive and are increasing in number over time. Here we will dive into the role of communities in the metaverse and how the evolution of key community considerations provide emerging opportunities for Brands: Enabling a greater sense of meaning Rewards and recognition Ownership Scope and collaboration Social media to social experience 1. Metaverses can enable a greater sense of meaning In contrast to other technologies, metaverses are unique in the advanced sensory experiences they offer through augmented reality and full immersion VR. Avatars let people connect through body language, expressing themselves in real time. With so many added layers of connection and exploration, they come ever closer to real-world-like interactions, …ViewsSign in to react to this postComments
14KViews
6Comments
