S8E5: Building Community with Chris Catania

Curious about the power of community in event planning? Tune in as Dr. K sits down with Chris Catania, a trailblazer in community development, to explore how understanding your audience and fostering shared values can revolutionize event experiences. This episode discusses the growing significance of community building in events. Chris shares his expertise on creating impactful community initiatives through understanding and valuing one's audience and the concept of shared value. 

Today we are discussing:
Community Building through Events (2:21)
Understanding Your Audience (4:10)
Measuring ROI of Communities (8:33)
Community First Company and Shared Value (16:14)

 Connect with Chris:
https://www.linkedin.com/in/christophercatania/
Community First Company
communityfirstcompany.com/free
Text community first to 33777

Visit the Experience University website for more information!
www.experienceuniversity.org

 
Connect with us on our socials!
Facebook: Experience University
Facebook: Design, Market, and Sell-Out Your Events
Instagram: @kristin.malek
https://www.linkedin.com/in/kristinmm/ 

Transcript

Dr. K:
You are listening to Season 8, Episode 5.

Speaker:
Welcome to Experience University where we aim to educate, inspire, and empower individuals who wish to design transformational experiences. Now, your host, Dr. Kristin Malek.

Dr. K:
Hello, hello everybody. Welcome back to Experience University, Season Eight. We have many incredible guests, interviews, and knowledge this season. I have got with me today Chris Catania, and he is head of community. This is a big thing in the event industry lately—building community. Should we have a specific person dedicated to community, to networking? What are the metrics for that?

Chris and I go back a bit now. Chris is incredible; he's won community leadership awards for outstanding design, community champion, community of the year. He leads initiatives to develop community impact and ROI, mission vision purpose for community teams, leading award-winning community programs. This episode won't be long enough. I feel like Chris and I could talk forever about community. Chris, this is big in the event industry. People are lashing out about it. You can't just reserve a room, give us an open bar, and put a smaller group of people in a room, like e a first-time attendee. You can't just take 40 people who don't know each other, put them in a room with an open bar, and expect them to make meaningful connections. Can you talk to us about community at large, how you see community, cultivating community? We're going to try to keep it at four or five minutes, and I'm going so hard not to cut you off.

Chris:
Yeah. Thank you again, Kristin. It's awesome to be here. Very excited to dive into this. Very close to my heart-topic for a long time. About 20 years, I've been building communities and helping leaders. That's my passion, speaking to them and helping organizations, especially worked a lot with events, event teams. I'm glad you reached out to me and said, "Hey, let's talk about this." I think one of the things you mentioned there about that scenario, put the bar in the middle, it reminded me of something that I haven't said in a while, but you triggered some memories with that. I often tell people that if it looks like good community; it's not organic; it's engineered. Good community is intentional. It's thoughtful, strategic, putting things in the right place. I know you and I have talked about live music, in some cases, when you go to an event, see your favorite artist who's really good at what they do, that artist is really thinking about that entire performance. They're thinking about, “How do we connect the fans, how do we do all these things?” For me, that rings true when I think about intentional community and really value-added community that it's planned, and there's thought into it like a fine meal. You go to a favorite restaurant, sitting down, several courses, that chef is not just pulling stuff randomly; it's there, and it's an experience. Community is no different. It's a fine meal; you can't microwave.

Don't just put a bar in the middle of a room and hope that people are going to find it because some people may not like the bar, and there are so many reasons why that is a recipe for disaster, and it actually can create the opposite of what you want and make people feel disconnected, not connected. So please, if you're listening to this, do not put a bar in the middle of your room.

Dr. K:
So then how do we cultivate it, Chris? Tell us some tips.

Chris:
Yeah. It really goes back to belief, right? If you truly love your, if it's customers that you're bringing together, users of products or whatever your audience is, you gotta fall in love with them, you gotta really be like, “I love them,” and you love them so much that you want to bring them together. Sometimes community can be misunderstood, just the word itself. And I think we could have a whole podcast about defining the word community, which I've struggled with my whole career, and I'm happy to do that. But I think that's a whole ‘nother podcast. But really understanding what facilitation is and your intention should be to bring those people together, and that's what community is because community is understanding that at our core, we're better when we're working together.

If you're wanting to see your audience thrive or your, whether it's customers, attendees, whoever these people are that you want to bring together and build this community with them, you have to understand what they want, what do they want to get out of it? I like to use the phrase shared value. That's at the core of a lot of what I do and figuring out, “Okay. Well, are they here to learn, are they here to make connections? Are they an executive audience where they want to network? Do they want to find out insights, so they could take that back, do what they wanna walk away with relationships. Do they wanna learn technology better?” Like all these different things could be any one of those things but finding out like, what are they like? Why are they there? What's the most important piece for them? And then you build off from there because you don't want to design the events with selfish intentions. And I don’t think that is something that happens consciously. I think that can be something that, you know, you just kind of do because we just have to put the event and put these things on and we're trying to do something.

So I think there's always well-intended purpose. But I think, again, for me, when I think about the best events I've been to, when I look around and go, “Wow! Okay. I'm a community builder and I'm really feeling connected. What did this event, what did this event person do?” And I've been to those events where I take those people on the side. I'm like, “Well, what do you do? Because you're really hitting.” I can kind of nerd out on that.

Dr. K:
I mean, think about it, we met at an event, right? We met at a thought leadership event and we clicked, and we've been friends ever since. One thing that really became clear about community and its role with events kind of happened during COVID. The CMOs, the chief marketing officers, the marketing teams, they really fell in love with events. They just became obsessed with events because events moved online, so everything was trackable. So they could see the engagement, they could see the connections, they could see who was reaching out to who.

Everything became trackable. As we live in a world that's increasing in artificial intelligence, these genuine interactions between real people that happen at events, just shot up in the value scale. So you're sitting there and live events now is the number one way to build trust. I think that was a Freeman report. They've shown it for two or three years. So live events, number one way to build trust and just getting off of potential AI. Hearing how people really talk, being able to look in their eyes. And it's interesting because I think community became so important in this realm when it came to events because maybe historically events were treated a little bit more as a singular touch point, especially in association world. They're like, “OK, we have to have our live event because it's required by our legislatures because of the specific tax code we have” or “We have to have our live event because this is what funds the rest,” though they have memberships, it's really the live event that funded their organization and then during and after COVID.  It's like, “Oh, no memberships are going down, attendance is going down. We need to re-envision all of this.”

And so thinking about community and community as a pipeline. So I'm pre framing this a little bit. One of the struggles that we have in the event industry, I've been to three different events now in the last six months that have all talked about: Do we have a head of networking? What are the metrics used for networking? How do we look at if our event was a networking success? Of course, these event professionals are looking singularly and not holistically in most terms of the community at large and extending before and after the event. So you are head of community, you've been doing this for 20 years, you have all the metrics and I'm gonna dig into them. What kind of metrics are you using for measuring the ROI of communities?

Chris:
Great topic. Certainly, metrics are important in any community strategy or for any leader that I work with. I always ask them, “What are your goals? What are your KPIs?” Then we use the community, in this case, when I'm talking community for the context of this conversation, usually it's a digital online experience, like a forum. In that case, I go, “Okay, well, having this event,” I want to ask them, “what are your goals?” We use an idea of that it's a full-circle experience, meaning that the event is not just a siloed experience, that we want to bring people who are already part of the community, in this case, maybe they're registered members of an online community, into that event and make sure that they're aware of that, connect them with someone. So we really look at the opportunity to take whatever goals they're trying to achieve.

Usually, in my work with events groups, it's understanding that they just want people to come there and learn content or network or things like that. I'm like, “Well, you could do so much more. It's a connective tissue, right?” And I always explain community is like, think of your body, the muscles, bones, and skeleton, all that kind of stuff, the community is the ligaments and everything like that. I try to look at practically the registered attendees, take what data you have of them, whether that's email addresses, all the kinds of things, and then look at the community. For example, we look at who's registered in the community and who's coming to the events, what percentage of them are on the community, who come to the event, and what or not. Then that delta is that first KPI.

I always say, “Well, our mission is to get as many people who are not already on the community or registered, but are coming to the event, registered and aware of the event.” There's this thing I use called the community member journey, and it starts with awareness, then you join, you onboard, then you go into contribution and you go into influence. It's like a higher level of contributing in the community. At that event, our goal is to get as many people aware and into the join stage of that. So I take whatever metrics they have from the event team, against very practical, their first name, last name, email address, whatever there is. And then we just do initial mapping of that and go, "Okay, well, these are the people we need to reach out to," and then we look at the whole events experience and say, "Well, how much can we talk about and what all the areas can we talk about the community to spread awareness? Where can we share an inspiring story from a community member to inspire someone to join? Where can we put a value-added proposition of why they should join at the end of a session?" So that connects with them.

 It's not just thinking a one and done. It's thinking holistically around that whole event experience, knowing that those customers, or those attendees, when they come, they're there for a particular purpose and you want them to know that you want them to belong. You want them to be connected and say, "Hey, it's awesome that you're here. But we have this amazing community. So when the event is over, here's what we want you to do. Here's a great opportunity," and find those current community members and collect stories from them and just basically put them in key places in the event because some events can be very dynamic, like big massive like enterprise events, but something as intimate as a two-day event or something like that, just integrating the stories. But for me, it's looking at the metrics of the events and then seeing how many people you got to join. When I say join, it's registered on that online community because when people are gone from the event, I know from my experience, I need some place to go.
 
How am I gonna connect with those people that I was just there? Sure, you could, there's the LinkedIn thing, and that's happened, and I think that's fine. That's kind of like an ancillary kind of thing. But if you really want to build that community, you want to talk about as much of this virtual community that you've created and get as many people who are there in person to join because what I really help kind of drive home with the event, my event colleagues, is that it's a cycle. You need a virtual community, but you also need that in-person element. You can't have one without the other. And certainly you can, but you're not getting as much value and you're certainly not getting as much the ROI.

Any good leader is gonna, like, “What's the ROI of this? What am I gonna get out of it?” You get maximum ROI when you have an online community paired with your event experience, and you're having both of those work together because if you think about it, when you're at that event, people who are members of the community, they're usually talking about all the great things that they've been sharing online virtually together, and then when you're there in person, you're able to share everything that you've been talking about.

And then when you're there in person, you go to the online and you talk about all the great things and memories, and you can kind of carry it on from what you're there. All the great events I've been to where you're like, I wish this feeling could continue. Yes, I wanna continue it. Well, why not send people to an experience? Like, that's the beauty of the online virtual community.

Dr. K:
And when you have someone who moderates it too, because I'm in plenty of online communities that are not moderated and then those that are, are incredible. Last week, like seven days ago, I started a Facebook group community as a test kind of thing. Like it was totally purely an experiment, and I sent messages to 15 or 20 people, direct messages. I have not posted this publicly anywhere. This is the first time I'm talking about it publicly. And within five days, I had over 100 members. I made one post and it had 68 comments.  It's just the importance of having that community, wouldn't have done anything if I didn't make that post and that community would have not grown without the word of mouth. I sent 20 direct messages. I have over 100 people because people were sharing it with other people and it wasn't public anywhere, right? And then I made one post and it had such great value with all these comments that then people were adding other people. And so it was just a really fascinating experiment that I'm going to continue. And now that I've mentioned it, I have to share it in the show notes.

Chris:
Yeah, that's a great example.

Dr. K:
It is so great and just having that moderated. The reason how you and I know each other is because we were at Thought Leadership and we were in this incredible session about how to share our incredibleness with the world because it's so awesome, and I'm so pumped that you and I are releasing our books at the same time, and when I met you, I was like, “Oh my gosh, your framework is so brilliant.” And your book Community First Company, can you just share a little bit about your framework because I know we're kind of running out of time, but share a little bit about your framework, and how we can preorder your book and where to go and all the things.

Chris:
Thank you. Yeah. Amazing experience. And the book, I've been working on it for quite a while, and it's called Community First Company. It's designed to help leaders who are community-curious, build and sustain communities, in most cases, digital communities. But it can be in person as we're talking here, you need both of those. Remember that. But in the book, I talk about the basic belief has to come from, in the mind of the leader, that the power of community and belonging can transform you as a leader, can be a new way of management. It can transform your company and how you collaborate and how you interact with customers and then it can turn into a competitive advantage. If you're developing this community with your customers, you're developing a deeper relationship with them, deeper sense of connection. That's gold, right? For companies. And then you do that, you make an impact on your industry and then you make an impact on the world. So that's the idea of all that has to happen in the mind of the leader.

And then if that clicks, then there's this thing I call the three Es. And it's the system that I've kind of tested throughout my career, and I found to be true, it's experience, enablement, and evaluation. At the center of those is this idea of shared value. So whenever I'm building community with leaders, I always say, “Well, we don't just build community to build up registrations on this virtual experience. We do it to drive revenue, drive growth, build better products, build a better relationship, build trust with customers, save money, reduce costs, all these different things.” So at the center of that is shared value. So if you look at experience, that basically means that you're looking holistically across the entire company, you're thinking business operations and you're thinking customer experience, customer lifecycle like, “Where you gonna put the community first?” Yeah, like kind of anchor it, and then how is it gonna grow across the company? Community should not be siloed. It is way too powerful to just put off in one part of the company, but you need to start somewhere.

Enablement is the idea that you need to train your staff so they understand what community is, why it's important, and how it fits into their individual role. Then, you also need to enable your customers. If you have passionate advocates for your company, products, or events, you need to give them the tools and access to take your message forward. The evaluation, which we've been discussing, involves metrics. Taking community metrics and applying them to achieve business goals, business metrics. You do this thing called balancing hard metrics with soft metrics. Hard metrics are like numbers, KPIs, up into the right bar charts, all that kind of stuff. The stories are the soft metrics, things that touch the heart, things that say, "wow, that customer was changed."

What's that hero's journey, story arc transformation that person had in the community? If you take those three Es: experience, enablement, and evaluation, put them all together, you're gonna get shared value. But the one thing I've learned is that if you take any one of those out of the equation, it doesn't work. Unfortunately, I've seen how it doesn't work. On the good side, you mentioned all those great moments of having success, words are great. But those awards are symbolism of value that has been delivered, and that makes me extremely happy to do that. Underneath that framework are all the community-building tactics and strategies we talk about. What often happens is that communities get launched and they don't have that three E framework to guide them. They don't have that mindset at the leadership level.

When things get hard in the market or maybe there's some internal pressure to, "Well, the community is not driving value right away in six months," I'm like, "Well, community is a long game, it takes time, you can't microwave it, kind of thing." That's why I get into the book, and I'm really happy to share it and talk about it. I really hope it helps leaders get the value out of this amazing thing we call community and belonging and really just not see it as a silo thing. I hope event leaders who are listening to this see that community can really superpower their events and that you should see it as holistic, create your event experience, but design it in a way where you're gonna send people to something afterward, you know, some kind of virtual experience. If everybody's interested in the book (and I hope you are), you can text "community first" to 33777, and then I'll get you on an email list and a text list to get more info. I got a free download, kind of like a checklist where you can go. Am I a community first company? Am I on that path? Then you can start to do that, and then I'll be sharing updates and tips for that.

Dr. K:
So that's “community first” to 33777, and we'll put that in the show notes. I'm gonna text it myself. I definitely want it for sure, not just to support you as my friend, but just knowing more in depth about your framework, being part of the process at the beginning when you were drafting your book. It's incredible how you've laid out something that seems like a soft skill and put a great framework around it. So 33777 community first, we'll make sure that's in the show notes as well. But if you're listening in your car and driving, then you want to make sure you do so safely.

Chris:
Yeah. You can go to communityfirstcompany.com/free. You can also do that. But I know we love to text, and that's a simple way.

Dr. K:
Okay. Chris, I end every single episode. What's your one key takeaway? We have event planners, event venues, experienced designers, students interested in events, a whole event community across 70 countries listening to this podcast, which blows my mind. So what's your one key takeaway for the wonderful listeners?

Chris:
Man, I’m limited to one? But so many, so many things I would say, one: partnering, measure, and be intentional. Like those three things I know as a community building professional for the last 20 years, I love partnering with events, such an important part of the community building process, there's so much potential. So reach out, if you know somebody who's a community builder who sounds like me or whatever, reach out to them. We love to work with people, especially our event colleagues, and measure what you're doing. So much of what I've seen has not been thought of as measurable. You can measure community, you can measure the impact on your business. Don't believe that myth and be intentional, like you're saying. Don't put that bar in the middle of the thing and just walk away. Be something that, you know, a great experience that's intentional and engineer. Don't be afraid to engineer community because it's really good.

Dr. K:
It's so full circle. You even brought the bar back around. Look at that.

Chris:
Well, it's like I've been there, I know what you mean. My heart is like, “Oh my gosh, I've been there before.” It's hard for me to go to an event and not be like, “Ah,” like this could have been, you know, I really love this and it's just what I do. And I could see we're on the same cloth, I guess in that sense. Yes.

Dr. K:
Is it OK if I put your LinkedIn in the show notes for people to reach out to you directly if they're interested?

Chris:
Yeah. Yeah. OK. OK.

Dr. K:
Well, thank you so much, Chris, for being here again. I could talk to you for hours. It could be your longest episode ever because we're so passionate about this and the value that you've added just with thinking about ROI and measurement in a different way and elongating, you know, the in person and the online, and people say, “That's not my job, right?” So we've got to come from that and you're so great, and thank you so much for your time. I never take it for granted, and I appreciate you so much.

Chris:
Well, thank you. Likewise. Right back at you.

Dr. K:
Yes, absolutely. For everyone listening, we'll have another episode next week. We are talking about all things engagement from a neuroscience brain perspective, which is super awesome. And I'm pumped. So I will see you all next week.

Speaker:
Thanks for listening to the Experience University podcast. Stay tuned for our next episode.