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