Digital Community Leaders - Jeffrey Roe
Jeffrey Roe is an expert in Digital Community. His career started in 2011, as a Social Media & Community Manager at New York-based company 2U. Over the years he has curated a wealth of knowledge, gaining experience at the likes of Graze, Sirius XM, Khoros and Brightcove.
Along the way, Jeffrey became the host at a CMX Connect chapter based in Austin, Texas. Today, he finds himself across the country, heading up community management at DecisionLink and CMX in Tampa Bay, Florida. That’s commitment!
Creating Growth in an Established Community
In our conversation, Jeffrey gives his tips on how to grow a community and build membership, aiming to provide an environment which prompts those members to return. He explains the importance on a business’s perspective to growth, and how the intentions behind growing are really important.
“Don’t be focused on growth simply for growth’s sake. I think that a lot of communities tend to fall into this trap of growth being the only metric to focus on.”
Another method touched on by Jeffrey was about providing value in your community to encourage members to spread the word. This creates an organic growth and a ‘frictionless’ experience, leading to a culture of high retention…
The Importance of Retention
Retention is a huge topic, and one that Jeffrey spoke about with inspiring enthusiasm. He explained to us that it is his number one focus going forward, and spoke about how DecisionLink try to monitor this without an exact metric or formula.
Retention goes hand-in-hand with engagement. If community members aren’t engaged - retention is low. So how can engagement be increased?
“I would say to take a break, take a pause for a moment and double back to the discovery work that you have already done while getting to know your current members. If you did a good job of having that one-to-one relationship and establishing a rapport with those members, then you might be able to hone in on what was (and wasn’t) executed properly to provide value from this community. Did we do it in the way that they wanted us to do it?”
To learn more from Jeffrey Roe, be sure to take a listen to our chat with him on the Digital Community Leaders Podcast. You can also find him on LinkedIn; just search his name and look for - in his words - the guy with the backwards cap.
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