In Before The Lock is a podcast from Erica Kuhl and Brian Oblinger about community, customer experience, and leadership at scale. Listen and subscribe on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Overcast, Pocket Casts, and everywhere that podcasts are found.

Brian Oblinger 12/6/21 Brian Oblinger 12/6/21

🔓 50: The cold start

What you should do in the first few months at a new company where you’re building community for the first time.

Community Industry News
Getting Started:
- Community Launch Guide: People
- Community Launch Guide: Cross-Functional Workstreams
Sponsored by:
- Vanilla Community Predictions 2022: Vanilla and Higher Logic sat down with 22 community management experts to discover what's coming for community in 2022. Together, they worked out ten key takeaways for the coming year. If you run a community, are part of a community, or are debating whether or not to launch one, check out their eBook is for you.
- C School Coaching Track: Taught by industry expert Noele Flowers, this 12 week, small cohort-based-course combines real-time instruction, collaborative work with other talented professionals, work-applicable projects, and 1:1 coaching to help early-career community managers become top-notch industry experts.

Brian Oblinger 11/22/21 Brian Oblinger 11/22/21

🔓 49: Gratitude and thankfulness

Erica and Brian deliver messages of gratitude and thankfulness across the community industry.

Community Industry News:

Giving Thanks:

Sponsored by:
- C School Coaching Track: Taught by industry expert Noele Flowers, this 12 week, small cohort-based-course combines real-time instruction, collaborative work with other talented professionals, work-applicable projects, and 1:1 coaching to help early-career community managers become top-notch industry experts.
- Vanilla Community Predictions 2022: Vanilla and Higher Logic sat down with 22 community management experts to discover what's coming for community in 2022. Together, they worked out ten key takeaways for the coming year. If you run a community, are part of a community, or are debating whether or not to launch one, check out their eBook is for you.

Brian Oblinger 11/8/21 Brian Oblinger 11/8/21

🔓 48: A beautiful call to action

How to understand the motivations of your visitors to create incentives for them to join. That’s not it, though — don’t forget to onboard them properly.

Community Industry News:
Conversion:
Sponsored by:
- Vanilla Forums’ Customer Advocacy Maturity Model eBook is great for companies who want to elevate and grow their customer advocacy programs. It’s an easy way to measure what your advocacy experience is currently like in comparison to others, so you can determine the next steps to make it bigger and more effective.
- Meetsy enables you to Connect your community, one introduction at a time. Create serendipity and unlock the power of networks in your community by enabling your members to easily connect with each other.

Brian Oblinger 10/25/21 Brian Oblinger 10/25/21

🔓 47: A numbers game

Promotion is the #1 driver of traffic and acquisition for communities. Don’t forget to tell people about it.

Community Industry News:
Acquisition / Promotion:
- Community Launch Guide: Promotional Calendar
- “Community is a numbers game.” — Joe Cothrel
Sponsored By:
- Meetsy enables you to Connect your community, one introduction at a time. Create serendipity and unlock the power of networks in your community by enabling your members to easily connect with each other.
- Higher Logic’s Super Forum recordings from all 100+ sessions are available on demand in the Super Forum community. Go get ‘em!

Brian Oblinger 10/11/21 Brian Oblinger 10/11/21

🔓 46: Make learning a team sport

How you can integrate learning and community to drive product affinity, customer happiness, and retention.

Community Industry News:

Community & Learning:

Sponsored By:
- Super Forum 2021 is the largest and most comprehensive conference for executives, community managers, marketing, membership, and customer success professionals who want to connect, engage, and create better customer and member experiences.
- Meetsy enables you to Connect your community, one introduction at a time. Create serendipity and unlock the power of networks in your community by enabling your members to easily connect with each other.

Brian Oblinger 9/27/21 Brian Oblinger 9/27/21

🔓 45: Money on the table

How Sales and Community can partner together to build trust, educate customers, and drive revenue. Yeah, you read that right. Stick with us. You’ll learn a lot.

Community Industry News
Partnering with Sales:
Sponsored by:
- Super Forum 2021 is the largest and most comprehensive conference for executives, community managers, marketing, membership, and customer success professionals who want to connect, engage, and create better customer and member experiences.
- C School will help get hands-on education, mentorship, independent practice, and land a full-time job in community. Don’t take our word for it. Hear from Osama.

Brian Oblinger 9/13/21 Brian Oblinger 9/13/21

🔓 44: Localization = hard

Localization of communities is becoming more common, but it’s more complicated than you think. Erica and Brian walk you through the finer details in a fun role play.

Community Industry News:
Localization Overview:
- Resource: Community Localization Proposal
Sponsored By:
- In the C School Career Track you can become a Community Manager in 12 weeks. Get hands-on education, mentorship, independent practice, and land a full-time job in community (Application Link, Info Session).
- Super Forum 2021 is the largest and most comprehensive conference for executives, community managers, marketing, membership, and customer success professionals who want to connect, engage, and create better customer and member experiences.

Brian Oblinger 8/30/21 Brian Oblinger 8/30/21

🔓 43: The UI of your operational plan

Erica and Brian talk about why you need a community roadmap, how to build it, and how to present it in your organization.

Community Industry News:
- Fhiwa Ndou joined Merit America as Sr. Manager, Community Activation
Building A Roadmap:
- Resource: Sample Community Roadmap
- Resource: Community Headcount & Budget Planning Template
- Brian’s decision making framework
Sponsored By:
- Super Forum is the largest and most comprehensive conference for executives, community managers, marketing, membership, and customer success professionals who want to connect, engage, and create better customer and member experiences.
- C School will help get hands-on education, mentorship, independent practice, and land a full-time job in community.

Brian Oblinger 8/16/21 Brian Oblinger 8/16/21

🔓 42: Ask for 5, get 3

It’s headcount and budget planning season! Follow along as Erica and Brian take you step-by-step through the process so that you can secure the community resources you need to succeed.

Community Industry News
Headcount & Budget Planning:
- Resource: Community Headcount & Budget Planning Template
Sponsored By:
- C School will help get hands-on education, mentorship, independent practice, and land a full-time job in community.
- Khoros Engage has it all — dynamic general sessions, thought-provoking breakout discussions, practical tips, and virtual networking.

Brian Oblinger 8/2/21 Brian Oblinger 8/2/21

🔓 41: It’s not apples to apples

Erica and Brian weigh in on a long-standing contentious debate — Social Media vs. Community.

Community Industry News:
Social Media vs. Community:
- Social Media vs. Community: Why Brands Need Both
Sponsored By:
- C School 201 — For experienced community professionals looking to level up, our 12-week cohort-based experience will take you from individual contributor to leadership-ready.
- Khoros Engage has it all — dynamic general sessions, thought-provoking breakout discussions, practical tips, and virtual networking.

Brian Oblinger 7/19/21 Brian Oblinger 7/19/21

🔓 40: The unsexy reality of launch planning

Erica and Brian dive deep into the tasks required to get a community off of the ground.

Community Industry News
Launch Planning:
Sponsored By:
- Commsor integrates with all the tools you already use, tying your community data together and enabling you to unlock insights, measure impact, and build a community-led company.
- Khoros Engage has it all — dynamic general sessions, thought-provoking breakout discussions, practical tips, and virtual networking.

Brian Oblinger 7/8/21 Brian Oblinger 7/8/21

🔓 39: Standing on the shoulders of a 4-foot giant

Brian and special guest host Holly Firestone celebrate Erica’s birthday by heaping praise, talking about what she’s taught us, and telling embarrassing stories.

HAPPY BIRTHDAY ERICA KUHL!!!
Top 10 things we’ve learned from Erica:

Pickup the phone and call people
Grow your business acumen to succeed in community
Chill out, be Kuhl
Wackadoo, cuckoo, and bonkers are professional terms
Get out of your bubble. Never stop learning
Perfect is the enemy of done
Lead with value. Give more than you take
No one has to lose for you to win
Don’t be afraid to build your personal brand
Being on time is important

Help Erica give back:
- Bike MS - Make a donation in Erica’s name!

Brian Oblinger 7/5/21 Brian Oblinger 7/5/21

🔓 38: More of an AND than an OR

Should you host your community on Slack, Discord, or a purpose-built community platform?

Community Industry News:
Slack vs. Community Platforms
- Forums are over!
- “But one of the things that I think it takes people a while to wrap their heads around is Slack is specifically designed for some group of people who are aligned around the accomplishment of some goal or set of goals, as opposed to we’re all interested in Star Wars or something like that. It’s a lousy social network in the broad, generic sense. It’s a lousy replacement for a bulletin board or discussion. Reddit is better at being Reddit than Slack.” - Stewart Butterfield (CEO Slack), Stratechery July 2020

Sponsored By:
- The CX Confessions podcast from Khoros connects you to voices from the C-suite to share their secrets for creating sensational customer experiences.
- Commsor integrates with all the tools you already use, tying your community data together and enabling you to unlock insights, measure impact, and build a community-led company.

Brian Oblinger 6/21/21 Brian Oblinger 6/21/21

🔓 37: A good vanity plate

How to choose a name for your community. It’s more complicated than you think.

Community Industry News:
Naming:
- Pragmatic Names - right to the point
- Modern Names - fresh and unique
- Emotional Names - good for connection
- Clever Names - fun and playful
- Classic Names - timeless and brand
Sponsored By:
- Commsor has acquired Meetsy, a platform built specifically for creating introductions, connections, and the secret sauce of serendipity within your community.
- Khoros software and services help you win, serve, and grow customers across social marketing, digital care, and branded communities.

Brian Oblinger 6/7/21 Brian Oblinger 6/7/21

🔓 36: The stress test

Soft Launch — the who, what, when, where, and why. Erica and Brian talk through how you can use it to set your new community up for success.

Community Industry News:

Soft Launch:
- Community Launch Guide: Soft Launch
- Bar Rescue

Sponsored By:
- Higher Logic partnered with Community Roundtable on this year's State of Community Management report. Go download the report today!
- Commsor knows that no two communities look the same, function in the same way, or have the same needs. Which is why they announced new integrations to enable Community Managers to bring all their members together in a single dashboard — no matter which platform those members engage on — and connect the dots between them.

Brian Oblinger 5/24/21 Brian Oblinger 5/24/21

🔓 35: Relocating their house

How to successfully (and unsuccessfully) migrate your community to a new platform.

Sponsored By:
- Commsor integrates with all the tools you already use, tying your community data together and enabling you to unlock insights, measure impact, and build a community-led company.
- Higher Logic Acquires Vanilla: Better Together - Combining two, industry-leading platforms to bring human-focused engagement to more people than ever before.

Brian Oblinger 5/11/21 Brian Oblinger 5/11/21

🔓 34: The “S” stands for “Success”

How Customer Success and Community can partner to ignite education, adoption, satisfaction, upsells, renewals, retention, and advocacy.

Customer Success
- Alteryx Use Case Stories

Sponsored by:
- Higher Logic Acquires Vanilla: Better Together - Combining two, industry-leading platforms to bring human-focused engagement to more people than ever before.
- C School delivers hands-on education, mentorship, and independent practice so that you can land a full-time job in community. They are now accepting rolling applications for Existing CMs and Job Seekers.

Brian Oblinger 4/27/21 Brian Oblinger 4/27/21

🔓 33: Everybody wants a purple pony

How to drive product enhancements and innovation through crowdsourced ideation programs with your community.

Community Industry News

Ideation:
Aftershow:
- Tim Tams

Sponsored by:
- The 2021 Community Club Summit is the virtual event for builders and leaders in community-led companies. Join for free on May 11-13 for three days.
- Higher Logic’s new community for products will help B2B companies improve customer experience and success, tailor marketing efforts, build brand advocates, and scale support efforts.

Brian Oblinger 4/12/21 Brian Oblinger 4/12/21

🔓 32: They love it when you say “Agile”

Working with Product and Engineering to gather customer feedback, increase feature adoption, and build better products with communities.

Community Industry News:

Working with Product and Engineering:
- Brian’s Blog Post on Building Product Communities
- “Engineers are not good at dealing with customers!”
Sponsored by:
- Higher Logic’s new options for customer communities will help B2B companies improve customer experience and success, tailor marketing efforts, build brand advocates, and scale support efforts.
- The 2021 Community Club Summit is the virtual event for builders and leaders in community-led companies. Join for free on May 11-13 for three days of content, thousands of attendees, and over 25 speaker sessions.

Brian Oblinger 3/29/21 Brian Oblinger 3/29/21

🔓 31: Relatable pain

Preparing for crises in your community before they happen, acting (or not) in the moment, and recalling some of our most painful/hilarious brushes with drama.

Community Industry News:

Dealing with Crisis in Your Community:

Sponsored by:
- Join the Community Club! Whether you're an experienced community manager, just starting out, a founder building a community-driven business, or just community curious, the club has something for you. Experience the power of community.
- Hivebrite is an all-in-one community management platform that empowers organizations of all sizes and sectors to launch, manage, and grow fully branded private communities. Check out their blog on Guiding your business through a pandemic with the help of an online community