Community Engagement Ecosystem Design (CEED)
Engaging your customers so they’re excited to help you grow your business
COMMUNITY ENGAGEMENT ECOSYSTEM DEVELOPMENT (CEED)
Engaging your customers so they’re excited to help you grow your business
A Community Engagement Ecosystem (CEED) is much more than just a collection of customers; it’s an ongoing, interconnected system where businesses and customers collaborate, share ideas, and co-create value. By fostering these ecosystems, companies open up new paths for growth, innovation, and customer loyalty. This process even creates joy, for both customers and employees! (More on that in an upcoming daily update!)
When customers are actively engaged with your business and with each other, they become more than just consumers—they evolve into advocates, collaborators, and even co-creators of the products and services they love. This enhances their experience and drives sustainable business growth by aligning your company’s goals with the needs and passions of your community.
In this approach, success isn’t just about selling products—it’s about building relationships that benefit everyone. The outcome? A thriving ecosystem where customers feel valued, and businesses gain the insights and loyalty needed to thrive in a competitive market.
THE FIVE ELEMENTS OF A
SUCCESSFUL CEED PROGRAM
1
Sustained Engagement
2
Genuine Presence
Genuine Presence means showing up authentically in your interactions with the community. It’s about being transparent, empathetic, and real, avoiding automated or hollow communications that lack a personal touch. Genuine presence fosters trust, as the community sees your organization as more than just a brand but as a collection of real people who care. This element encourages you to be fully engaged in every interaction, demonstrating that you value each person’s time, insights, and presence within your ecosystem.
3
Vibrant Collaboration
Vibrant Collaboration focuses on creating an environment where members of your community are not just passive participants but active contributors. This means fostering spaces where ideas flow freely, contributions are encouraged, and co-creation is a priority. It’s about creating energy and enthusiasm within the community, ensuring that collaboration is not just productive but also engaging, enjoyable, and beneficial for everyone involved. A vibrant collaboration multiplies value for both the organization and the community by leveraging the diverse talents and perspectives of its members.
4
Honest Adaptation
5
Craftsmanship
Product advocacy at launch: With properly Community Driven Product Development program strategy and execution, the moment you launch you have a fanatic group of product fans who are ready and willing to advocate and promote your product.
User-Centric products: Products designed with the community in mind are more likely to meet the actual needs and expectations of users.
Innovation: A diverse group of collaborators often leads to more innovative and out-of-the-box solutions.
Market relevance: Community-driven products are better aligned with current market trends and consumer preferences.
Enhanced trust: Involving the community fosters trust and loyalty among users, as they feel represented, heard, and valued.
Reduced risk: Continuous user feedback minimizes the risk of launching a product that does not resonate with the target audience.
Increased team satisfaction: Product teams often feel a renewed sense of joy in their work with a group of passionate advocates excited to be part of what they’re working on.
“Having a consistent stream of feedback during the initial pre-launch process was very helpful and allowed us to more quickly fix issues that were identified by community members.”
– Jacy Jackson, Rapsodo Product Manager
WHAT DOES A PROJECT LOOK LIKE?
STRATEGY CREATION
Creating a program concept that addresses the question “How do we find the right people, time this right relative to the product lifecycle and build the right activities for the participants to get to clear and tangible outcomes for the business?”
I’m a “sleeves rolled up” consultant, frequently helping client teams actually execute these programs together with client leads. This means developing content, running events, moderating/facilitating conversations in the online community space the group uses, aligning with executive leadership, and whatever else might come up during the program duration.
Some product development and product marketing teams what to learn what CEED is and how to integrate it with your existing processes. I build small and large instructional programs, content, activities, and playbooks to help your teams get up to speed and moving into execution.
Is this online community building or product management?
Both! Well, really it’s a net new thing. We use techniques and skills from both practices to help create a new way of innovating. Community Engagement Ecosystem Design (CEED) brings together the emotional, authentic customer engagement with the structure and planning rigor of product management to create innovation and advocacy during and well after the product development lifecycle.
How do I convince my colleagues that this is important work?
There are a number of ways we can approach getting internal buy-in and participation, from running small projects and showing results, to inviting colleagues to a meet and greet with customer groups to break through the initial resistance to enlisting executive support to push teams to give CEED a try. It’s all about understanding the politics and motivators involved.
How do we protect our company during this process? Do we have participants sign NDAs?
Protection comes down to a few key issues: how much do you share, how many people do you share it with, and what legal protections do you enact. Big groups may give you more ideas, but in turn create more concerns about those ideas getting out into the wild. NDAs may protect you legally, but may also chill advocacy and participation. The best way to solve for the protection concerns is to create a great strategy for how you’re going to execute a CEED program based on an honest assessment about what true risks actually exist and what is needed to accept or offset those risks.
Will we end up using the same power users over and over?
Not if you build a CEED program with a solid strategy driving it! The goal is not to lean on the same group of advocates
What’s the biggest challenge to successful CEED implementations?
The best way to create and execute a successful CEED program is to remember my mantra: “Everybody goes home happy“. A well designed program considers what makes both the company and the customer group happy, shares openly what those things are, and then works collaboratively and transparently to achieve them. Not to sound like a broken record but … a great well conceived and executed strategy can avoid any friction you might encounter. Or turn those moments of friction into opportunities to build a closer connection with your CEED group.
Is CEED only for physical product companies? Is it only for B2B businesses?
Not at all. CEED methodologies and philosophies apply to any type of business creating any type of product or service. Whether B2C packaged products or B2B digital service, every company can benefit from inserting Community Voice in the Product Development Lifecycle. The real questions is how we will go about doing that based on the methodology above and a strategy build specifically for your business.
What’s the difference between concepts like Product-Led Growth and CEED?
Product-Led Growth (and similar concepts) and CEED are inherently compatible. Where PLG looks at a multi-faceted, multi-team, holistic view of how the company functions, CEED focuses on how to execute certain parts of the PLG approach. Namely, how we engage real users, integrate their Community Voice into the product development processes to both generate and validate ideas, and then work with multiple internal teams to utilize the Community Voice as it relates to their part of the product rollout.
“I had the pleasure of working with Jake as one of the MUPpets – the MINDSTORMS User Panel. He made us feel like we were part of the organization, and helped the LEGO Group reach fans at many events and marketing opportunities. My lifelong affinity with the LEGO brand was made even stronger through Jake’s efforts.
“Jake cares deeply about community, and authentic brand building – that means putting in the time to learn what motivates fans and how to leverage that enthusiasm in a positive way.”
– Ralph Hempel, LEGO Fan and MINDSTORMS User Panel member
While it’s always best to build your Community Engagement Ecosystem Design (CEED) program as early in the product development journey as possible, you can get started at any stage. Using the four steps outlined above, I can help you build and execute a successful strategy that will leave your product team and your customers excited and successful.
While it’s ideal to kickstart your CEED program right from the start of your product development journey, you can begin at any stage. Following the four key steps laid out above, I can assist you in constructing and implementing an actionable strategy and drive execution that will leave your product team and your customers enthused and successful.
Watch the webinar
Hi! I’m Jake McKee, the original Community Guy. Going all the way back to 1996, I’ve played an instrumental role in building online communities and Community Driven Product Development programs for some of the world’s most successful and recognizable brands, including LEGO, Apple, Southwest Airlines, Canon, and H&R Block.
I consult with organizations of all sizes to help solve community and business challenges of all kinds. I’ve co-authored books on social media and community strategy and spoken to and run workshops for audiences of business professionals countless times. I created CX 5essions, a community project that connects senior-level online professionals every month for conversation, connection, and camaraderie. As if that’s not enough community nerdery, I also created a web comic about community management, Confessions of a Community Manager.
