Digital Community Leaders - Laura Roth

We're rounding off the first season of the Digital Community Leaders Podcast this week, and what better way to finish then by hosting expert community leader Laura Roth.

Laura has a vast range of experience, from leading community at corporate giant Vodafone, to working with mature startups. Implementing community strategy and mindset within this variety of organisations, Laura shares some of her best tips and tricks throughout our conversation.

Strategising Across Different Cultures

There was some fascinating insight as Laura chatted about her experience leading community at Vodafone. Detailing her role as 'community member number one', Laura spoke about Vodafone's community strategy, and their mission in trying to become closer with small/medium sized businesses.

This involved working across different teams, functions and countries. Laura explained how working with these teams across Europe added some new elements to her work.

Working at a company of this size comes with complexity, and Laura found that involving people and infusing community across other countries wasn't as straight forward as when at home in the UK.

People from different regions have varying priorities, and there are natural cultural differences. Laura found that she had to take all this into consideration when approaching her community strategies across Europe.

This made for an interesting challenge - and the idea of community cares and goals differing from place to place is a unique thought.

“I learnt a lot about how you can infuse community and add it to other campaigns that are going on. How can you actually get community to be a part of everything else going on there?”

Leading Community Through Freelance Work

After years of heading up community at a number of organisations, Laura is now freelancing as a community and marketing strategist.

With expertise in the B2B SaaS space, Laura works with agencies, tech companies and publishing companies to start a community strategy from scratch.

Laura explained that formulating these respective strategies takes time to put together and evolve - and this comes with some obstacles. Sometimes over the course of these months a business might adjust their goals, meaning the community strategy needs to adapt.

“Sometimes its about how you can grow the strategy from what it is now into something bigger.”

Laura Roth was a brilliant guest, sharing her insight and knowledge really clearly. Be sure to listen to the full episode, available now across all platforms.