Curious how folks keep track of your influencers or even regular answers if you don’t have an official program. I’m always impressed that @HAWK seems to know who to ping. Keeping them in my brain is perilious and the contacts app seems underpowered. Curious how others keep track?
Specifically, how are you tracking knowledge domains and contact counts, etc.
For me it was natural. I read every single thread of the forum, and was a master at using the search field. I could usually track down anything needed, and the backend admin panel also gave me some additional “super powers” that weren’t available to the members.
Sure, this would probably not work if I wasn’t doing this fulltime, or if the forum got a lot more engaged, but at that time it worked for me pretty well.
For some things I’d use the “permanent clipboard” plugin for chrome.
I’m curious to hear other peoples answers.
I use Discourse’s “staff notes” function to make a note of things as they come up.
E.g. here are my notes on Nick Emmett
Then when someone asks something, I run a SQL query across that table and pull out the relevant people. It works well.
Yep, the one I’m working with now is part-time and in the past it was super busy with many members.
Me too!
Uh this is a tough one. I had a similar questions just recently on the CMX Slack channel. We just started a brand new community and I was wondering how best to track people’s “knowledge or interest”. I did not get much as advice, so here is what I know I have done so far. (I am sure there are better methods out there, but at least this I have tried).
In my head 
- I inherited a community many years ago that we pretty established. It was not super active, so it was easy to stay on top of and reading every new question/ comment made. I had about 5 superusers (external) and about 10 internal champions from different departments within the company. So it was easy enough for me to keep them all in mind and know them well enough to know when to pull in who.
Google Spreadsheet - We just started a new community so it’s early days. We keep using the Leaderboard feature to identify people who are the most active. Based on that the CMGR takes notes on people in a spreadsheet that helps us look people up in the future when our community will be more populous. I would add, that as a new beginnings we are DM’ing every new member of the community asking them their interest and what they feel they want/can contribute to the community. overall some will stick in your head as a CMGR and some won’t. I think if you are active on your community and the same people keep contributing most of it will stick with you.
We use Lithium and I know you can make comments in the platform on people’s profiles and their comments, but I am not sure if there is any “lookup” functionality at all.
People can add Interests into their profiles, but a) most people don’t do it b) i don’t know a way to use that as a lookup or report either.
Side note: a) could be gamified for people to fill in, but what’s the point if you can’t run a reporting or lookup function against it.
What platform are you using?
My current community is on an old Taligent Community Server that has a notes field, but no search. I’ve been considering some sort of light weight CRM (highrise or similar), but that seems needlessly complicated. Just seems like something that could really help out CMs. Thanks for your feedback!
Mobilize is a platform with a built in CRM designed to track ambassadors. They have a free plan which allows you to track up to 100 members. Don’t know if that’s enough for you.
I’ve looked at it before, but I’ll go take another look. For now, 100 would be enough. Thanks!
