Examples of Champions / Advocates approach

Hi Ben,

I had 20 Champions and they were such an asset.

I did not have dedicated support engineers or internal moderators to help me.

The amount of Champions can change by your question volume and the internal support you have: I started with 10 and moved to 20 in a year because of unanswered questions - I wanted to increase coverage through recognition :-)

Happy to chat more as needed.

Cheers,

Toby

I would love to join this discussion as well.  I do have an internal champions program at my current community, but have also run a program for a number of different external communities as well. 

Helen

Hi Dan,

I've run many MVP/Champion style programs at several companies throughout the years.  As Toby mentioned, they can be invaluable as the eyes and ears of the larger community, but they can offer so much more than just forum moderation, depending on your needs and the structure of your program.  I have had Champions that were forum mods, content creators/testers, event speakers, product testers, message amplifiers, event organizers, product/brand ambassadors...the list goes on and on.

Over the years I found that nothing motivates them more than rewards and recognition (YMMV depending on your Champions.)  Similar to Toby, I would hold monthly meetings with my Champions to give them a forum to be heard, review data/trends, etc, and to also ensure that they felt close to the company.  And while swag and recognition were always nice, I found the one hook that they found most valuable was something I could provide that no one else could...NDA-covered company/product information.  All my program members were under NDA, which allowed me to set up special presentations from PMs and execs involving new features, upcoming releases and product/company roadmaps, etc.  My members told me over and over that this was the most beneficial feature of the program...and the best thing about it was that providing NDA info didn't negatively impact my budget!

Thanks

Ed Sullivan