John Troyer, Co-Founder of Influence Marketing Council Learn how to leverage the community of practitioners surrounding your company's offerings to impact the entire customer journey. Practitioners have spent time and effort mastering your product, and creating a community around them fulfills deep psychological needs. As members of the community help each other, they create various outputs that increase customer success -- things like explainers, tutorials, demos, code contributions, and online and offline events. These community outputs also increase brand awareness and provide powerful evidence to prospects that they can join this powerful group if they become customers. The practitioners in this community don't have to be limited to customers -- your partners and employees can also be effective members. We'll explain the programs and culture needed to turn your program into an engine that creates more and better advocates and influencers.

1. John Mark Troyer
Co-founder, Influence Marketing Council
The Practitioner Community as an
Engine for Advocacy

2. Advocacy: showing vs telling
TELLING SHOWING
“This is a great product”
“Here’s our experience”
“You should buy it”
“Here’s a demo”
“Here’s how to do it”
“Here, let me help you”
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3. What is a “Community of Practice?”
belonging
doing
becoming
experience
Learning
Com-
munity
Meaning
Practice Identity
Joint
enterprise
Mutual
engagement
Shared
repertoire
Dimensions of
practice in a
community
Social theory of
learning
›Negotiated enterprise
›Mutual accountability
›Interpretations
›Rhythms
›Local response
›Engaged diversity
›Doing things together
›Relationships
›Social complexity
›Community maintenance
›Stories
›Styles
›Artifacts
›Tools
›Actions
›Historical events
›Discourses
›Concepts
After Communities of Practice: Learning, Meaning, and Identity, Etienne Wagner, 1998
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4. Community of Practice
• Shared practice = experts, geeks,
enthusiasts
• Sense of community = shared identity,
emotional connection
• Community >> Vendor relationship
• Community >> Employer
• Customers, partners, employees
• Career bet on being an expert
• Community in 2018 is not one platform
• multi-channel, fragmented, online/offline
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Practitioner
Community
Company

5. What do practitioners create?
Blog posts
Tutorials
Demos New Features
Career AdviceCase Studies
Videos
Extensions
Apps Scripts
Q&A
Architectures
Tips
Missing Documentation
Live streams
Podcasts
Contests
User Groups
Meetups
Books Utilities
Sample Data
Training
Tech Support
BeersSocial Media
Chat/Slack
Walkthroughs
Postmortems
NewslettersCommunity Forums Study Groups
Industry Trends
Tech News
Interviews
Open Source Projects
Curation
Collaborative Projects
Best Practices
Webinars
Ideas
Practitioner
Community
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Content that helps others in the community (customers)

6. Buyer Journey
Raise awareness
Education and validation
Risk reduction
Increased innovation
Increased ROI
Direct advocacy
Customer Journey
Onboarding
Learning
Deployment
Expanded use
Overall Success
Retention
Practitioner
Community
Community Benefits on Customer Journey
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Aware Consider Land Adopt Expand Renew

7. Example: Qlik Practitioner Community
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Qlik Branch
Community
Luminary Program
Qlik Nation
From the greater community:

8. Enable-
ment
More,
better
output
Exhibition
Increase
influence
Elevation
More
advocates
Advocacy Engine Program Model
Better at
their job
Better career
Deeper
affinity
Better advocate
Enablement: learning
› Training, Access,
Resources, Accurate
Information
Exhibition: sharing
› Platforms, Promotion,
Visibility, Opportunity
Elevation: recognition
› Celebrity, Role Model,
Goal
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9. Once the
advocacy engine
gets going…
9
Enable-
ment
More,
better
output
Exhibition
Increase
influence
Elevation
More
advocates
Better at
their job
Better career
Deeper
affinity
Better advocate
Creates better advocates
Creates more advocates
Advocates keep the engine
going (the community takes over)

10. Example:
VMware vExpert
Program
• Enablement
• licenses, events, betas,
briefings, networking
• Exhibitition
• blog aggregator, podcast,
syndication
• Elevation
• program name, award &
badges, directory
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11. Practitioner
Influencers as
Advocates
• Domain influencers are
often practitioners
• Established personal
brand
• High in influence via
authority
• Often need
independence from
brand
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Low/No
Influence
Domain
Influence
High
Influence
Low/No
Affinity
Some
Affinity
High
Affinity
Community
Community
Advocate
Influencers
Practitioner
Influencers
Influencer
Marketing

12. Example: HPE VIP Influencer Community
• More 3rd party shares
• More brand affinity
• Content awareness
• Year-round
engagement
• Keep influencers
independent of brand
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Goals with influencers:

13. 3 Key Takeaways
Go beyond references:
practitioners advocate by
doing, helping, building
Gather all practitioners
(customers, partners,
employees) in a community
Enable, exhibit, elevate
practitioners to create more and
better advocates
USE AN IMAGE,
ICON(s), ANIMATED
GIF, VIDEO
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Photo by Tarrant64, modified & licensed via CC BY 2.0

14. Thanks!
John Mark Troyer
john@techreckoning.com
@jtroyer
Kathleen Nelson Troyer
kathleen@techreckoning.com
@dailykat
influencemarketingcouncil.com
@theimcouncil
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