I spent a few days at Salesforce World Tour in Boston meeting with customers and engaging in top conversations around constituent engagement. I was fortunate enough to sit in on the first session of the day, during which Steve Gallagher, CIO of Harvard Business School, discussed HBS’s successful Salesforce Communities rollout to support the lifelong connection and engagement of their executive education participants. In the same vein, Cornell’s Becky Joffrey recently wrote a blog examining why Communities should be the hub for all higher ed constituent engagement. Her blog, along with Steve’s presentation, demonstrates higher ed institutions’ growing emphasis upon driving organic constituent engagement through Communities. Inspired by their collective fervor, I’ve compiled four suggestions below that are critical to the success of any Salesforce Communities initiative:

1. Hire a full-time Community Manager.
   
   It may not seem necessary to have a full-time manager of your community at the beginning, when few interactions or conversations are taking place. Having someone available to moderate discussions, provide customer service and training, and generate conversations when needed is extremely important to the long term success of your community. Don’t rely on your constituents to self-manage the community — they are busy enough with their day jobs!     
2. Your community should be purpose-driven.
   
   Unlike Kevin Costner’s character in "Field of Dreams" who built a baseball diamond in the middle of his corn field, if you build it, they won’t necessarily come. You have to define the purpose of your community and the value it offers constituents. Choose only one or two strategic reasons such as team collaboration, knowledge management, or employee engagement to drive initial usage. Avoid trying to satisfy all users right from the start — if you start too broad, constituents will have a difficult time finding value specific to them from engaging in the platform.
3. Define your metrics for success.
   
   Communities is an awesome platform and will open up a plethora of data points to capture and measure. At an early stage, it is extremely important to define how you will measure success. Is it the number of users using Communities? Or the number of posts or influencers engaged in a defined period of time? Or a reduction in email blasts to the student body? A clear and comprehensive understanding of your metrics will keep you focused on driving users in that direction and increase your likelihood for long term success.
4. Don't shy away from bold visions.
   
   Don’t be afraid to use Communities in bold and novel ways. At the Kellogg School of Management, we considered creating groups for individual recruiting companies. The idea was that each company interested in hiring Kellogg students full-time would own a Communities group in which students could join to engage with recruiters, ask questions, and receive notifications for events. For those in MBA Career Services, giving students unfettered access to recruiters may sound a little scary. Yet, imagine all the data you can collect from these conversations, which could lead to insightful trend analyses on popular jobs and industries.  This could in turn help you to allocate school resources accordingly. Now that's powerful stuff.

Building a community is a rewarding endeavor that nurtures organic engagement and creates lasting connections. But it takes some strategic thinking and initial work to ensure a foundation for long-term success. If you are interested in learning more about how Salesforce Communities can help your institution engage with constituents, take some time to connect with our experts. Or tweet me @ShaneSugino — I always welcome a chat about all things higher ed.