We find, foster, and manage the conversations that build community and convert them into business value.
Outsourced community management that lets you scale. Perfect for forums, Discord, and Reddit.
Human, expert, and built to create connection at scale. Community magic for social channels.
Design, launch, or relaunch a community your business can rely on, with expert consultancy.
The skills, confidence and expert guidance community teams need to thrive.
Design and run programs that turn engaged members into advocates, creators and local leaders.
Turn your community into an always-on, human powered focus group.
Select and setup the best community platform for your business with our expert help.
Find out more about the Standing on Giants team, our vision and values.
From past to present and everything in between.
Meet the people of Standing on Giants
About employee ownership at Standing on Giants
See our current vacancies and learn about our culture.
A business for people and planet, not just profit
Listen to 'A Little Bit Radical' - our top 40 business podcast!
For many Community Managers, online communities are spaces that bring together people who have a similar interest in an activity, a product, or a brand. Those communities are all I was familiar with until recently, before I started working with communities that companies created with the aim to foster more connection and collaboration within some of their teams: internal communities (also known as employee communities).
As I transitioned from working between external and internal communities, a few key differences came to light.
While members choose to join and spend time in external communities, internal communities are usually initiated by leadership for their teams. The members are asked to engage, share, use the community space and integrate it into their existing workload, without necessarily having opted to do so themselves. This difference in intention can make buy-in into the community much more difficult to increase.
Countering this challenge is an uphill battle that can, however, be made easier by finding advocates and cheerleaders within the team; they will help you champion your community project from the inside and inspire their peers to join in.
Moderation is a cornerstone of community management, so much so that we’ve all described our role or been referred to as moderators countless times, for simplicity’s sake. When it comes to internal communities, however, moderation in its traditional sense takes a bit of a backseat.
Everyone in internal communities is, essentially, at work when they engage, so workplace rules apply and there is much less of a risk of inappropriateness or disputes. The flip side of this coin is that many embrace their office persona and might not be as open as you’d want your members to be, which can make the community a bit stale. You can redirect the attention and energy saved from more traditional moderation towards encouraging the members to be more open and authentically themselves.
Internal communities often start as small-scale projects with equally small budgets, meaning there isn’t much space for investing in a dedicated community platform. In the majority of cases, options will lie in existing communication platforms the company already uses and pays for. While convenient due to their established use, understanding and access, these platforms will most likely lack a few key community features that you, as a Community Manager, will dearly miss.
Experimentation and creativity are your friends here: there is nothing you can’t find a way around with a little outside-the-box thinking!
External and internal communities, while similar in many ways, diverge on key aspects that you’ll need to consider during your planning phase, and never lose sight of all the way through your day-to-day management. If you need help with your internal community project, whether in relation to those aspects or others, feel free to reach out to our team! 🙂
