Power of Connection

Why are enterprise communities so often misunderstood, underfunded, and undervalued by the businesses that stand to benefit most from them? In this episode of The Power of Connection, host Nicole Saunders challenges organizations to rethink what community is, how it creates business value, and why community professionals need to change how they communicate its impact to executive leadership. Learn how community can evolve from a simple discussion forum into a broader ecosystem of user groups, customer advocacy, and relationship-building programs. Many organizations still reduce community to a piece of software, a social media channel, or a way to deflect customer support tickets. It’s a narrow view that misses the bigger opportunity. Enterprise communities are a business capability that connects people so they can create value with one another. They generate customer insight, build trust, support retention, inform product development, and help organizations become more intelligent and resilient. With comparisons to running a small city and a living organism, you’ll hear how existing measurement frameworks make it hard to explain the value of relationship-building. Community professionals must move beyond reporting platform activity and explain how their work contributes to business outcomes executives already understand. Hear how AI can help organizations extract insights from customer conversations, why authentic advocacy depends on people choosing to participate, and how real human connection can help businesses build trust in an increasingly automated world. If you're responsible for enterprise communities, customer experience, customer success, or customer engagement, this episode offers a new framework for explaining community's strategic value and earning a seat at the executive table. Key Takeaways Enterprise communities are a business capability, not just a channel. Community connects people so they can create value with one another. Community is bigger than community software. A platform provides infrastructure, but the real work involves relationships, strategy, planning, and creating the circumstances for people to connect. Community touches the entire business. Its influence can appear in customer support, product feedback, marketing, customer success, and customer advocacy. Community's value is often hidden. Many of the activities that make a community successful are less visible than the platform itself. Organizations tend to force community into familiar categories. Treating it as a department, software purchase, or marketing channel can limit expectations for what it can accomplish. Community resembles a small city. Culture and economic activity emerge from thousands of interactions rather than being controlled by one person or department. Customers will gather whether your organization participates or not. They already discuss products and services on social media, Reddit, at events, and in other spaces. Avoiding customer conversations doesn't make them disappear. Organizations must decide whether they want to understand those conversations and participate in them. Community is also a living organism. Human behavior is unpredictable, and the resulting value cannot always be captured by a simple formula. Community ROI matters, but no single metric tells the whole story. Organizations should connect community activities to business outcomes without assuming one measure captures every benefit. Support ticket deflection is only part of the picture. Community may also contribute to customer relationships, advocacy, insight, product development, and retention. Narrow metrics can limit investment. If executives evaluate community exclusively through support savings, they may overlook opportunities that require different resources and measures. Community professionals need strategic influence. Their work should extend beyond platform administration and moderation into cross-functional planning and business strategy. Budgeting and reporting systems can create structural barriers. Traditional organizational models are designed for conventional departments and programs, making community's broader impact harder to communicate. Community makes organizations more intelligent. Conversations between customers can reveal insights that help businesses better understand their customers and products. AI can help extract value from community conversations. New capabilities can make it easier to understand and summarize customer discussions and bring those insights back into the business. Community helps organizations build trust. Relationships develop when customers see that their feedback, needs, and experiences are taken seriously. Authentic advocacy comes from voluntary participation. Community members who choose to show up can provide a different kind of credibility from audiences reached through paid advertising. Community can strengthen organizational resilience. Real relationships and human connection remain valuable as AI automates more business activities. Community strategy should connect to the customer journey. Organizations should consider how community supports different stages of the customer relationship rather than treating it as an isolated program. Activity metrics aren't the same as business outcomes. Increasing posts or engagement numbers is not necessarily the best measure of community's contribution. Community professionals need business fluency. Understanding customer success, product strategy, marketing, executive decision-making, and organizational priorities helps them communicate their value. The goal is to earn a seat at the executive table. Community professionals must explain how their work supports outcomes leaders care about, including retention, customer insight, and product development. Explain community in language executives understand. Describe the business purpose and value of the work rather than relying on industry terminology. AI-generated content raises new questions about trust. As automated content becomes more prevalent, community leaders will need to consider what it means for authentic participation and relationships.  

What makes people come together, participate, and ultimately become a community? If you’re building an enterprise community, understanding the human motivations behind connection will be a huge help. In this teaser for the renewed The Power of Connection podcast, host Nicole Saunders shares how she approached real-world community building and explores the principles behind what works, both online and in person. Let Nicole’s strategy for making new friends show you the ingredients that help relationships develop naturally: Recurring opportunities to see the same people Shared topics of conversation Low barriers to participation Time for connections to grow Whether people are gathering around a shared interest, a customer experience, or a business challenge, meaningful community requires opportunities for people to connect, learn from one another, build trust, and work toward shared goals. Hear why community is especially important in a world being reshaped by AI, changing customer expectations, and rapidly evolving digital experiences. In future episodes of The Power of Connection, Nicole will speak with community leaders, customer success and customer marketing professionals, researchers, authors, founders, and others exploring the future of community and connection. So whether you're building enterprise communities, strengthening customer relationships, or looking for better ways to foster belonging and participation, this show offers a great space to think about what makes communities work. Key Takeaways Consistency creates familiarity. Recurring opportunities to interact help people recognize one another and establish the foundation for relationships. Shared topics make interaction easier. People need something to talk about, even before they know whether they have much in common. Low barriers to entry encourage participation. Make it easy for newcomers to join, get involved, and begin forming connections. Communities need a reason to gather. A recurring activity or shared purpose gives people a natural invitation to participate. Community grows through repeated interactions. Familiarity can lead to conversations, relationships, collaboration, and lasting social connections. Shared values help shape the community. Clear guidelines establish expectations and help attract people who genuinely want to participate. Boundaries can strengthen engagement. Nicole's decision to discourage television and video games during her potlucks kept the focus on interaction between people. Community building requires intentionality. Meaningful connections rarely emerge from technology or infrastructure alone; people need opportunities and reasons to engage. Make inviting others easy. A standing event or clear invitation gives existing members a simple way to introduce new people to the community. Information isn't the whole value of community. People also want to learn from others, exchange perspectives, solve problems, and build trust. Technology changes, but human needs endure. AI and evolving digital experiences may change how people interact, but the desire for connection and belonging remains. Enterprise communities should support real human needs. Customer communities can provide opportunities for people to share experiences, learn from peers, and work through challenges together. Sustainable community requires more than initial enthusiasm. Consistent opportunities, clear values, and accessible participation help relationships develop over time.

When Advania set out to launch its customer community, Senior Community Manager Lorena Seco de Herrera Ortega didn’t have a developer or a background in coding. What she did have was a clear vision for a branded, intuitive experience and a willingness to experiment with AI. In this episode of Higher Logic's “Power of Connection” podcast, Lorena joins Higher Logic’s Paul Schneider to share how she used AI tools like ChatGPT and Copilot to write, test, and debug the code needed to customize and theme Advania’s new community. She walks through specific use cases—from creating branded call-to-action buttons and hover effects to building custom landing pages—and offers advice for community managers who want to try AI but don’t know where to start. Along the way, they talk about: How to prompt AI for front-end community customization Why using AI to code is safe and not as scary for non-coders as you might think The role of AI in community analytics and strategy Why sharing early experiments can build momentum in the space  

Our guest on this episode of Higher Logic’s Power of Connection is Brian Oblinger, a career-experienced consultant around community, customer experience, advocacy, strategy, optimization, and more. Brian’s also held staff positions in both platforms and businesses and talks with us about migrating from social media-based communities to owned communities, and the changes going on in the community space. Topics covered include:   Why companies think social media means you don’t need a community. The elements of social media that drive companies back to an owned community. The biggest challenges faced when transitioning to social to owned community. The three top best practices on migrating from social-centered to community-centered engagement. The right way for community to use social platforms. The two buckets of the metrics that matter for community. How brand-owned communities will evolve over the next few years.   Some Helpful Links: Brian Oblinger on LinkedIn Brianoblinger.com Community Strategy Academy Higher Logic Vanilla

Paul’s guest on this episode of Higher Logic’s “Power of Connection” is Izzy Neis, Head of Digital at ModSquad. For over 20 years, ModSquad has been providing moderation, customer support, community management, social media, and social listening services for all ranges of businesses with a digital footprint, B2B and B2C. Topics covered include: How to build a successful community experience What factors should you prioritize when crafting a community strategy? How to find out what your customers want in a community. How to work with community managers to make sure they’re as effective as possible. The various types of community managers. How to establish baseline and spiking moment experiences in the community. What are the characteristics and skillsets of a great community manager? Some of the most common goals for community. Why your community should be more like Madonna. How to handle angry or critical community posts. Do you need a community if you’re already very present on social media?

Paul’s guest today on Higher Logic’s The Power of Connection podcast is Dani Weinstein, who’s well-known in the community space for running large communities. Dani was on the ground floor in the creation of the Hewlett-Packard social care team, which launched communities that grew to two million members, driving 100 million customers in traffic. He also helped build Domo’s new B2B community, incorporating superfan and voice of the community initiatives. He’s worked on Kaltura’s B2B community and worked on community strategy at SAP. Paul and Dani talk about growing and scaling communities, including topics such as: Is there anything special to know about measuring a large community? Why where community management falls in the organization matters. The four pillars of determining the success of a community. The balancing act of which KPIs are most important to the different parts of the business. Scaling a community globally. The things you might not be thinking about as you get ready to scale your community. The challenges of going from a team of one to an actual team of multiple people. Managing different executives up the chain as the community expands. Helpful Links Dani Weinstein on LinkedIn Higher Logic

In this episode of Higher Logic's "Power of Connection" podcast, Paul Schneider talks with Eric Stieg, Senior Manager and Head of Community at Anaplan. Eric has had extensive experience starting and running communities for many top brands and brings a wealth of expertise to those currently running customer communities. Topics discussed include: What is the “right” KPI for measuring community? The first thing you need to do if you want to see community and engagement grow. How to motivate user generated content. Incentivizing and rewarding super users. What truly effective personalization looks like. How the community can increasingly directly drive business outcomes. Statistical insight on the relationship between customers who stay or leave and their active involvement in community. The argument executives put up against starting a community and the answer for it. Helpful Links: Making Content a Team Sport: Inside Anaplan’s Member-Driven Content Program with Ginger Anderson Ditching the Developer Dependency: How Anaplan Reclaimed Its Community with Higher Logic Vanilla Eric Stieg on LinkedIn Anaplan Higher Logic  

In this episode of Higher Logic's “Power Of Connection” podcast, Paul Schneider talks with Nicole Saunders, Senior Director of Customer Experience Marketing at Coupa, about customer marketing and how community can play a larger role in it. Coupa makes margins multiply through its community-generated AI and industry leading total spend management platform for businesses large and small.  Topics covered include: What does a full, end-to-end lifecycle marketing, customer-led strategy look like? The dynamic between the community team and customer marketing team. The metrics for success in customer marketing. How do you get customers connected so they want to start participating and becoming an advocate? What is AI’s role in community management and customer marketing? How community can expand and play a role in the broader business. What tools can empower community managers to spot and leverage broader opportunities to help the business. How community managers are participating in customer marketing now (and how they aren’t). Tips on talking to your executives so they understand the value community can provide. Where community is headed in the next five years or so. Helpful Links: Prefer to read? Get the blog recaps:  Your Community Is Bursting with Intent Signals—Here’s How AI Connects the Dots The Case for Merging Community and Customer Marketing How AI Is Pushing Online Communities to Evolve Into Industry Knowledge Hubs Coupa Higher Logic

In this episode of Higher Logic's "Power of Connection" podcast, host Paul Schneider chats with Aily Roper, Senior Manager of Customer Education at Bluebeam. Bluebeam provides digital tools for the AEC (Architecture, Engineering, Construction) industry with over three million users and growing. Topics covered include: Scaling customer education. Initial issues typically encountered in product education. Helping customers learn the full capabilities of a product. Facilitating users teaching each other through community. Delivering educational content to wide, diverse audiences with varying ranges of expertise and tech savviness. Being knowledgeable about how, when, and where your audiences work. Getting new users set up right in the product. The right role for CSMs to play in community. The importance of social learning. Selling community up the executive ladder. Helpful Links: Prefer to read? Get the blog recap.  Bluebeam Higher Logic

In this episode of Higher Logic's "Power of Connection" podcast, host Paul Schneider chats with Chris Detzel, Senior Community Manager at ZoomInfo. ZoomInfo is the go-to-market intelligence platform that empowers businesses to grow faster with AI-ready insights, trusted data, and advanced automation.  Topics covered include: Finding the right community manager role. What are the early conversations a community manager at a new company should have? Managing the various stakeholders in an organization. Ways to show the ROI of community to the C-Suite. How AI is going to affect community management. Ways community managers can prepare themselves for the world of AI. Where does and should community sit within the organization? What does community look like in the next three years? Helpful Links: Prefer to read? Get the blog recap. ZoomInfo Higher Logic