Three months ago, we announced the beta for our Champions Program manager, a tool to build best-in-class champions programs with ease. And while we originally laid the groundwork to manage only Champions Programs, we quickly realized that this kind of tool is useful for a number of projects to create communities of practice across an entire organization.Â
We know that community is a team sport, and the best way to get everyone off the bench is to provide them with simple but powerful tools for engaging with the community. So we’ve added powerful new features and tools to empower anyone in your company to build meaningful programs with community members.Â
Starting today, you can use Orbit Programs to create a wide variety of community-centric programs, including champions programs, contributor programs, feedback programs, and more.Â
💜If you’re already excited and ready to try it, you can launch your first (or next) program here.
If you’re curious about the myriad ways Orbit Programs can engage teams across your entire organization to harness the power of community, read on.
As community advocates ourselves, we know that community reaches into every part of an organization. But sometimes it can be hard to get buy-in from other teams or execs when they can’t see the value in it for them, or the process seems confusing.Â
We know that, traditionally, community-driven programs are hard to launch and maintain, since program managers have to wire together many tools (forms, spreadsheets, CRMs, email marketing tools, and more) to operationalize their systems.Â
We know that this complexity means that lots of folks who want to build programs simply never get started, and the ones that do often feel siloed and disconnected from the rest of the company.Â
We built Orbit Programs to make starting and nurturing programs easy, for everyone, no matter what team they call home. Here’s how Orbit Programs can bring your community closer to a variety of disciplines within your organization.
In today's rapidly evolving business landscape, companies are constantly seeking ways to stay competitive, innovate, and connect with their audiences. One powerful strategy that has gained immense traction is the implementation of contributor programs.
Content and marketing teams can easily stand up a contributor program with Orbit Programs to drive user-generated content and code. When you build a contributor program in Orbit, you can:
Using the contributors program, content and marketing teams can unlock untapped potential, letting contributors be a driving force behind your company’s growth and innovation.
Community is at the heart of Orbit, so of course we made sure Orbit Programs will benefit those leading communities.Â
Community managers, developer advocates, and anyone wanting to manage champions and advocates programs can use Orbit Programs to create a great program without having to manage a complex tech stack.
First, Orbit makes onboarding program members a snap. You can:
Using our fully-customizable checklists, you can automate onboarding and our message templates (also fully customizable) will ensure your new members feel personally welcomed to your program, no matter who on your team sends that message.Â
And, because of our Gmail integration, all replies will go directly to the sender’s email inbox, while still allowing everyone on the team the transparency to see where that new member is in their onboarding process.
Learn more about using Orbit to launch and grow a Champions Program.
Getting input from the user community can pose challenges for Product Managers who have limited customer relationships. They also want to avoid relying excessively (or exclusively) on the community and DevRel team for user introductions so, all too often, product teams don’t get as much feedback as they’d like.Â
With Orbit Programs, product teams can discover users for feedback sessions and manage their feedback in a single place. They can:
By streamlining the feedback process, Orbit Programs can help product teams spin up their feedback flywheel, leading to faster innovation and better products and features for users.
When launching a new feature or product, companies often include a beta program signup form on the landing page to collect early interest. These submissions usually go into a sterile spreadsheet and contain limited information - a name, email address, maybe a company name, and sometimes the responses to a few additional questions to qualify the user.
But not all early signups are created equal, and teams typically want to know if an interesting or important person has applied — you may want to prioritize influencers in your industry, those who have a meaningful title at an important or large company, or those who have been active in your community for a long time.
Using Orbit Programs, early access program creators can:
By keeping important context centralized in Orbit Programs, the early access data is easily accessible to everyone in the company in a single view, meaning all of the prioritization assessments can be done quickly and transparently.
Still curious? We wrote our own beta program process (it was so good even we were surprised).Â
For the next 30 days, all Orbit workspaces will be able to try Programs in their fullness. After that date, here's what's available in each package:
Starter
Growth
Enterprise
We’ve only just scratched the surface of how Orbit Programs can be used across an entire organization - founders, engineering, marketing, product and R&D, revenue, and more - and we can’t wait to see what you build with it.Â
What we do know is that by simplifying and streamlining the process to create, grow, and nurture programs, we can help bring companies closer to their communities with meaningful engagement, which is a win for everyone.
So what will you build? You can get started today, or, if you have questions or want to know more, you can join us for our next Orbit Connect, on August 31 at 11AM Pacific.
And as always, we’d love to hear your questions and feedback, so we invite you to join our Discord community at discord.orbit.love.Â
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