As 2022 comes to a close, there have been many reflections shared about what happened in the community space this past year. Here at HomeRoom, we are believers in learning from the past, but are more focused on what the future has in store for community and the businesses it helps grow and scale. We reached out to community professionals from around the world, and representing many different industries and fields, to share their predictions for community in 2023. Here’s what they shared…
Blaise Grimes-Viort
Founder & CEO, Is The Answer
https://www.istheanswer.consulting
https://www.linkedin.com/in/blaisegrimesviort/
"Web 3.0 will contract, jettisoning its growth objective and taking on board learnings from crypto and NFT communities. While the Metaverse and blockchain technology will continue to evolve, community managers will seek to facilitate smaller groups, getting a clearer handle on how to grow deep and trusting interactions in these new spaces.
Sustainability will become a key strategic goal for much of the web infrastructure and digital platforms. With ever greater pressure on our natural resources, energy consumption from social networks and our continuously growing digital engagements with one another will come under the microscope. This will lead to one or two forward-thinking organisations pulling ahead in transforming their approaches to clean energy use as more of the world’s population come online persistently."
Ayelet Baron
Global Futurist for Humanity
https://linkedin.com/in/ayeletbaron
"As 2023 is the year of relevance, we increasingly understand that community, trust and relationships are foundational to every aspect of our lives. It will be important to embrace community in 2023 to create living systems. More people will want to be part of healthy communities around share passions. And this is an incredible opportunity to build communities where dialogue and connection flourish. Imagine communities where we can connect with people who care about what we care about; sharing ideas and creating real impact. It’s already happening and will only expand over the next few years as more people seek meaning in life and work. It’s time for conscious leaders to integrate communities in the fabric of the organization as it will be a game changer as open communication matters where we’re headed."
Yurii Lazaruk
Communiverse & Community Life Show
https://www.linkedin.com/in/yurii-lazaruk/
https://www.linkedin.com/company/86062215/
https://www.linkedin.com/company/87397819/
We'll still complain that Slack sucks as a community platform and continue using it
Online events will continue growing in numbers, but in-person will recover to a pre-covid level and even surpass it.
More medium-sized companies will listen to their customers by building and using communities.
Samantha Venia Logan
Online Community Architect & Founder
Venia@SociallyConstructed.Online
"I believe that the Online Community Industry's explosion in Web3 and its subsequent implosion of jobs created an obvious agenda for 2023s growth. The industry has an identity crisis now as other industries encroach on the very definition of building a community. I believe the Community space will fight back about what it means to be a community builder. We'll have more specific job specifications and fewer Community professionals doing "all of the things." We'll see specializations take center stage, and to facilitate that, Community Operations as a department will elevate community roles above individual departments. Community Coordinators will oversee team members in individual departments as the community team. We will connect marketing, support, sales, product, and R&D. Further, I think this will happen in parallel with measurement departments becoming oversight departments as well. That's not to say solo-community builders will disappear—we're just going into a period of reorganization."
Adrian Speyer
Head of Community at HigherLogic
https://www.linkedin.com/in/adrianspeyer/
"I have been saying it for years, but 2023, is the year we will see more companies implement it: Community as an integral part of experience. I am starting to see non-community peers understand that community is critical, specifically how it's ingrained into the overall experience. By integrating a community deeply into customer experiences - and this is the most crucial aspect - it becomes the customer keystone. What do I mean by this? Done right, a community will allow prospects and customers to learn faster from peers, find what they need quickly, and network. For companies, this is a win-win as this will enable them to streamline the efforts of teams like Customer Success and Support to be more efficient as economic uncertainty increases."
Regina Walton
Director, Customer Advocacy and Community at Vyond
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/reginawalton/
Twitter: https://twitter.com/ReginaWalton
"As someone who has been in community management for years at this point, my prediction is we'll continue to see the impact that this pandemic has made on business and, in turn, on our profession. People realized the value of communities and that what we do is essential not only to business and commerce but people's well-being."
Evan Hamilton
Director of Community, HubSpot
http://www.evanhamilton.com/community-manager-breakfast/
https://www.linkedin.com/in/evanhamilton/
https://twitter.com/evanhamilton
"As community grows in popularity across the industry, simply connecting people will no longer be a differentiator. Communities will need to have a unique angle and deliver high levels of value, rather than just be a gathering place."
Alexandra Bowen
https://www.linkedin.com/in/alexandrabrower/
Community, meet Privacy. Community managers need to have a collective conversation about privacy.
Online communities allow us to interact in nuanced and creative ways and are strongly linked to our physical and emotional identities. Our online behaviors represent an authentic and curated impression of who we are. Therefore, designing privacy in community experiences protects your members’ digital selves.
When we ask people to sign up and engage in our communities, we are asking for pieces of them. While all of this sharing may help communities, it can destroy privacy. Personal data and attributes that should be handled, managed and understood with the utmost care.
A community that respects the users privacy is a community that is committed to helping users get the most out of their digital and community lives, while minimizing harm and risk to them.
Eric Ross
Website:
Twitter:
Telegram: @eric_web3 Discord: Eric_3.0#3054
"I think that in 2023 we will start to see more paid communities, both social and professional.
The desire for high quality community interactions matched with the growing interest in the Community Management field will lead to great opportunities for those who are able to carve out a section of the social consciousness for themselves. Paid communities will help to ensure that those who do join are at least minimally committed to the experience."
Tim McDonald
Head of Community, HomeRoom
https://HomeRoom.club
https://twitter.com/tamcdonald
https://LinkedIn.com/in/timamcdonald
"As I look at how much the community industry has evolved over the past 15 years, there is still plenty of room for it to mature and evolve. One thing that I believe will happen in 2023 is that the buzzword of 2022, "community-led" will become more defined and understood. It's no longer acceptable to just call your organization community-led, it will come from when the top of the organization believes in community and it becomes embedded across the entire organization and not just within a department of a company. It will take both the community professional and the c-suite to both listen and understand each other in order for this to happen. Most community professionals wish they had more time with the c-suite. Let's hope 2023 will see more CEOs welcoming more time with the community professionals.
The other prediction I believe we will start to see in 2023 is less focus on how large the community is and more focus on the amount of impact the community is creating. This isn't to say the communities can't scale, it's just saying that they will scale with impact and less focus on the size of the community. "
Conclusion
As we move into the New Year, it is always interesting to reflect on what community professionals think will happen in the coming year. We asked 10 different community professionals to give us their thoughts and predictions for 2023. We hope you found their predictions insightful. What is your prediction as we enter into 2023? Share your thoughts with us in the comments below or on social media using the hashtag #2023CommunityPredictions.
