In this episode of the CLG Journal podcast, David talks with Hillary Kleppel, a Community Manager at Otus.
Here are some of the top ideas in this podcast episode:
How she got her role and loves community building: She was a high school math teacher for 12 years. When she left teaching, she was a little bit unsure on what to do next. She landed at Otus, where there wasn’t initially an official community role. She then found a lane to jump into by empowering administrators to gather together, which organically grew into her community role.
Peer-to-peer connection is the future of community: Hillary’s biggest initiative is shifting from information delivery toward more peer-to-peer networking and knowledge sharing. Getting educators to learn from and support each other.
Spending more time on in-person events: Her first foray into events at Otus was full-day, workshop-style gatherings for teachers and administrators in different regions. She is spending more time working on new events and formats.
A novel two-day event format split across two days: A event format we riffed on was an afternoon gathering and dinner/happy hour on day one, then a morning session and lunch on day two. This allows for different types of people socially to learn and connect, and break-up a conference too.
Community drives retention and revenue: Happy teachers → happy administrators → lower churn. Hillary tracks metrics like video views, certification completions, workshop attendance, and renewal rates among attendees to demonstrate community’s business impact.
And much more that you can listen to here!
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Thanks again to Hillary for this conversation, the work you do, and for coming to CLG!
-David and Zach
