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Driving 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…9.2KViewsSign in to react to this post21CommentsApril Atlas Highlights
3 MIN READYour customer experience team is no stranger to attrition — It's a tough gig! But the past two years have taken things to a new level of stress and burnout for your team. It doesn't stop with your frontline either. Leaders and executives, especially in the contact center, are struggling to backfill empty seats and train incoming employees — and they're paying mightily for it. The bad news is that these trends will probably continue, and possibly even increase, in 2022... But you know we have your back. Our latest release delivers new tools that will help you keep employees — and customers — happy for years to come. Read the full Spring Launch blog. 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, click the chat bubble (bottom right) and type Customer Access. The Khoros Customer Newsletter The Ripple has the latest news, updates, and tips from Khoros curated for you! We send resources specifically for your products every first Tuesday of the month. Already signed up but not receiving anything? Your email preferences may be blocking the newsletter. Read more to find out how to make sure you are staying up to date. Marketing Marketing Dashboards: Comparative Date Selector An additional comparative date selector has been added next to the date selector, allowing you to view changes over time based on custom and pre-populated date ranges. Improvements to Approval Reminder Emails To facilitate efficient and timely approvals, we’ve changed how, when and to whom we send the approval reminder emails: Reminder emails will now be sent to each member of the approval team 3 hours before publishing. Approvers will continue to receive reminders until the scheduled publishing time. The author of the post is copied on the first and final approval reminder. A confirmation email is sent to the author as soon as approval is provided. Care (NEW) Khoros Care Foundations The perfect starting point for your training on the Social Response component of the Khoros Care Platform, this course provides a full introduction to the features and benefits of Khoros Care. These videos make reference to a pdf workbook, you can download this from the resources section of this article. Chat more, sell more: How conversations unlock revenue In this on-demand webinar, you’ll see how brands can do more than just support with their chat offerings. Rather than simply allowing agents to answer questions, a modern chat solution can help agents suggest products and upgrades that are relevant to a particular customer. New security settings: Password expiration / Previous Password Restriction We’ve added a new security setting that expires passwords and requires the user to create a new one and an additional requirement that the password must be different from the last 4 passwords used. Communities …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 postCommentsStrategic Services Trend Round Up: Week of July 11th
1 MIN READOn a weekly basis, Strategic Services will be providing a pulse on the week’s top social trends, the latest social platform updates, and important world events. Last week’s top trends included the “That’s my life” trend on TikTok, the “If I text you [insert emoji]” trend on Twitter, plus brands activating on unseen areas of the universe revealed by NASA. Flip through the presentation below to learn more!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 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 postCommentsOracle Cerner’s Kandice Eckhoff: The Pros and Cons of Group Hubs
3 MIN READWhen Blake asked me to write about how our community manages our groups, I was not sure what to write about. We have had groups for so long at Oracle Cerner that we assumed everyone else does too. My name is Kandice Eckhoff, and I am the Product Manager for our Khoros platform, Oracle Cerner. I have been with the company for almost 12 years in various roles and in my current position for six of those years. uCern is Oracle Cerner's collaboration platform used for client-to-client and client-to-associate collaboration on our products and services, ideation, and assists with ticket deflection by providing answers to client questions. uCern was started in 2009 on the Jive platform, and at that time, we let anyone create a group. This was not a good idea. I would NEVER recommend this for a community. We ended up with groups like "Cat Lovers," "<Insert College Name> Alumni, "New Moms," and the like. While the intention at first was good, just getting people using the community, it quickly got out of control. We eventually locked down group creation. New groups are evaluated by our team and created based on business needs. By then though most of the damage was done, and our clients were complaining about search results pulling in random information or stale content. Group owners would leave the company or change roles, and groups were no longer active or responsibly managed, so we ended up with a lot of those. In 2018 we separated associate-only collaboration to help with some of the confusion. During this time, we archived groups, spaces, projects, etc. with no created content or activity within the prior year. Subsequently, when we started planning our migration to Khoros, we again started an archiving exercise to minimize the amount of data we would bring over. We were able to purge 55% of our groups because of this effort. When we migrated, we brought over 2,254 groups. That number has since grown as we have weekly requests for new ones. The need for them varies: private collaboration for specific clients and associates, aligning groups with our products, and associates realizing the need for collaboration on certain topics or markets we are in. As you can imagine managing this number is difficult. Permissions are a nightmare, community engagement is difficult to monitor accurately, and the removal of the "old stuff" surfaced older stuff clients have found inaccurate. In turn, the cycle of constantly curating our content continues. We are repeatedly told no other Khoros client uses groups the same way we do, hence being the group hub unicorn. So how do we manage this many groups? It is not easy. We are currently looking at archiving more inactive groups and realigning our community structure based on feedback we have received. Ideally, we will end up with 1:1 product groups and a couple hundred non-specific groups that remain for topics, regions, or are …ViewsSign in to react to this postCommentsGreat SEO Builds Community, and Great Community Improves SEO
4 MIN READPlant the seeds of a flourishing community with SEO. Just because you built it in the digital world doesn't necessarily mean the people will come. Communities across the digital sphere are dependent on the life-blood of traffic. A thriving community is often based solely on user traffic. Traffic can come from various sources: Twitter ads, Facebook posts, in-app guides, word of mouth, etc. But thanks to the infinite knowledge of Google, chances are high that your customer found your community page through a Google search. According to the website world wide web size, there are roughly 20 billion web pages searchable by google. For reference, if every page contained an average of 500 words, and someone was to read every page at an average pace, it would take them 170,000 years to read every page. 170,000 years ago, humans had only recently started to wear clothing. It's important to remember that roughly 250,000 new web pages are created every 24 hours, according to siteefy. SEO is one of the most rudimentary and genius solutions to cut through billions of pages in this information-dense world. SEO can supercharge your community Ask any digital marketer, social media manager, or even the garage band blogger about increasing web traffic, and you'll hear those three sacred letters; SEO. Search engine optimization is equally complex and simple. There are two types of SEO, on-site SEO and off-site SEO (aka link building.). On-Site SEO is search engine friendly, optimized titles, good descriptions, well-formatted URLs, correct use of H1, H2, and images, SEO titles & descriptions. Off-site SEO refers to actions taken off your website to boost traffic. It could be people sharing your website or getting referred from social media or other services. This aspect of SEO can be slightly troublesome as you will not have the same level of control compared to on-site. However, when it comes to community SEO, if you have done everything right, your users and customers should be working as off-site influencers for your brand. There are a plethora of various SEO strategies in the wild. A great place to start is our best practices article hub here. User content drive SEO more than branding. Community SEO is a massive game of push and pull. You need good SEO to draw new users into your community, and you need dedicated users in your community to continue driving SEO. This idea might feel clear as mud, so here's our Khoros resident SEO and community expert Allison Fasching on why community SEO is vital to success. "The inherent properties of an online community contribute directly to higher SEO value, but it's imperative to understand how search engines work and ensure you are configuring your community in the most efficient way to improve SEO continually. For example, user-created content gets a much higher SEO value tha…ViewsSign in to react to this postCommentsAtlas Highlights - June 2021
3 MIN READHello, to all of our Atlas members! The days are getting sunnier, flowers are blooming, and the world is creaking back into motion following a long, difficult winter. Whether you’re a B2B or B2C brand, the global pandemic accelerated the need to be digital-first, and we’re proud to have helped over 2,000 of the world’s most successful brands make that transition with our award-winning customer engagement platform. We’ve been busily integrating both solutions into the Khoros platform while continuing to expand their capabilities. In our 2021 Spring Release, we’ve got even more good news to share, with updates that will enhance user experience, improve efficiency, and increase analytical power across the entire Khoros experience. Learn about our recent product enhancements and check out what’s coming soon on the Khoros Roadmap. Submission deadline extended Submit an entry If your brand uses Khoros technology to deliver world-class digital customer experiences with strategies and results that others can learn from, share your stories and successes to win Khoros Kudos Awards! 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. 3 Behaviors Thwarting Companies From Culturalizing CX Demonstrating value to each internal partner is crucial for consistent, holistic branded CX - and there are a few common corporate behaviors that threaten the culturalization of CX. Forrester's Daunting CX Prediction and How CX leaders Can Overcome It According to Harley Manning of Forrester, CX leaders who can't prove their value to the business will find themselves on the street this next year. Marketing Roadmap Deep Dive (On-Demand Recording) Review our deep dive into the Marketing Roadmap! Modernizing Digital Care: Change the Conversation Check out the Modernizing Digital Care Atlas Series and webinar. Discover ways to build a new program, optimize your existing program or prepare to grow, while ensuring your teams and tools are focusing on “Customer First” engagement! New Khoros Community: Visible Please join us in welcoming the Visible Community to the Khoros platform! Read on for more details about Visible and the features/functionalities they have launched with. How to calculate 'Cost Savings' within a Community Calculating just how many contacts to your Support Center have been deflected by Community is easy with a standardized formula you can apply via a basic survey and a few simple Community metrics. Webinars & Events Khoros Roadmap Webinar Tuesday, June 8 • Register today! Marketing Advanced Product Webinar Watch Now Why CX programs struggle to demonstrate results Watch Now Khoros Advanced Product Webinars Watch now Call Deflection with Apple Business Chat Watch now En…ViewsSign in to react to this postCommentsAnnouncing 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.ViewsSign in to react to this postCommentsAugust's Atlas Highlights
2 MIN READHere’s the Atlas content you do not want to miss Claim Next and Push Next can be powerful tools, but will your team size benefit from it? Join the discussion from stan2 on whether it’s right for your team and how else to stay efficient. JennyW led the way for this great blog about the new Splunk community. Want your community featured on the next Customer Stories Blog? Let us know in the comments! Show off your hard work! Unsure about how to best apply Labels and Tags in your community? This blog on Labels and Tags may be just what you need, plus all the great comments are filled with examples. Have you met our bot, Maia, yet? Check out this blog all about how this Bot was brought to life, you might end up wanting one for your website. Community Managers, this article gives you a good perspective on the importance of the Success Rate of your Community and a good reason to start defining the strategy and tactics to improve it. We had lots of requests for exactly how we built the Atlas Custom Header, so SuzieH put together this deep-diving article filled with everything you need to know. One of the best parts about Success Rate is that it can be really easy to improve quickly. Here are a few of the best practices we have seen over the last few years. Coming up next on Atlas September 15th we will be opening up the Community Strategy Discussion to all customers. This new discussion area will provide a space for Knowledge Sharing, Community Strategy, ROI, Change Management, Community Successes, Professional Growth, etc. Don’t forget to subscribe to the Khoros Events & Meetups Group Hubs for North America and EMEA! We have begun adding Khoros Engage Events and Keynotes to the new Events Page, let us know which events you will be attending! Top Engaged Contributors Thank you, everyone, for your contributions to Atlas last month! A special thanks to our Top Contributors in August, Wendy_S, CarolineS, StanGromer, Parshant, kgroneman! *Top Contributor's calculation does not include Kudos Received from the Khoros Kudos Award submissions.ViewsSign in to react to this postComments
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