New Admin. Who dis?

#1

Edit to add: If you were to re-create the PowerUser program, what would it look like?

Hi. It’s me. The new AnkerPower Community Manager.

I’m here to re-ignite the community and promote some fun around the Anker brand. My areas of influence are charging and portable power, but I’ll be low-key modding for the other Anker brands. You can also catch me on a newly formed, pps-dedicated Facebook group if you’re into that.

In the meantime, I’m here. I’m learning. I’m doing the things Community Managers do, and that includes hearing from you. Got an idea for an approach to re-energizing community? Got a thought on a program we should adopt? Got an opinion burning a hole in your pocket? Share it with me here.

In the meantime, keep those cards and letters coming folks. It’s good to be here.

Selfie
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Juliette

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When will be the funeral of this forum?
#2

Good to have you!

As you have probably figured out, there were many promotions, giveaways, and ways to earn discounts and products in the way of the “PowerDraw”, “Testing Club”, “Power Users”, “Points”, and “Power Bucks” in the past in this forum. Many long time members here were burned by either the lack of opportunites to spend/use those earned items or not being able to participate. Further, burned and disappointed by what I would (my opinion) consider to be “flash-in-the-pan” limited engagement from various admins over the years. I believe by starting off addressing those concerns would go a long way for bringing people back around.

Regardless, I, for one, welcome our new admin overlords, and hope for the best :slight_smile:

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#3

Admin overlord at your service!

I hear you. I agree there have been errors in sustaining programs that benefitted members. In my experience there are a few reasons for this. I think I have the tools to be more strategic in how we serve the community here.

I’m still learning about power bucks, testing club, power users, points … all that jazz.

And I know I’ve asked a member here before for feedback on those program … I’m wide open to hearing what worked and didn’t work for members.

From that, I’ll decide what I can realistically support going forward in terms of energy, tools, operational efficiencies and what brings the best value to members.

And if someone was looking for something to do today … I could really use a primer on those programs. How are they different? Did some of them go by multiple names (please say yes because that’s a LOT of programs!)?

Thanks for hanging out and hanging in with us, @thebassline. I appreciate it.

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#4

I am certainly not an expert, but I can give you a base understanding of some of them. There are much more experienced people in this forum that can give you a better description:

Power User: Link at the top of the forum that currently says “Shop”, has a url that is “www.anker.com/poweruser”. That URL now redirects to the Anker Store, but that used to be an actual webpage. This is where “Power Users”, a title given to users that were designated by Anker to test items (AKA my title under the username), were given the opportunity to give in-depth reviews and post those reviews in the forum, their blog, YouTube, social media, whereever their medium was preferred. However, to be part of the Power User program, it was required that the end user give a review; so it was NOT just a giveaway, it required people to actually give a rip and give it a good test. It gave opportunities to everyday Joe’s to test and review items to give their honest feedback. This, by far, is what I miss the most. Not because of “free” stuff, this gave the opportunities for everyday users to be heard and to give a good perspective of the products Anker produced. This has largely been replaced by Anker sending these devices to Influencers and Professional Testers. This is not ALL bad, it certainly has it’s place. However, you cannot possibly get a real world experience unless you have real world people doing real world testing. I truly miss this and probably the most frustrating part of all of it for me.

Testing Club: Similar to the Power User section, this came after the Power User section dwindled off. It still allowed for testing of devices, however it was much more open to all and requirements changed. Instead of more or less being vetted by Anker, it leaned towards those who has social media connections and presence. It wasn’t required to post to social media, but was HIGHLY recommended, and testing seemed to favor those that did, specifically hashtags and other social media engagements. Rules are here:
https://community.anker.com/testing_club/rules
This died a slow death after Anker moved fully to social media based testers and focused on influencers and professional testers in 2020.

PowerDraw/PowerBucks: The PowerDraw section allowed you to enter for a chance for a giveaway product. You earned PowerBucks by participating in the forum in various ways. I never fully understood this and often confused it with Soundcore’s forum (which is a WHOLE other thing I’m not going to get into), so I’ll leave this to others. PowerDraws stopped in 2021.

Feel free to DM me if you have any other questions or want clarity on any of this. Hope this helps!

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#5

This made me chuckle. I changed it yesterday … in response to a comment (possibly yours!) that said it was a bad user experience. I agreed and I pushed the magic button.

Here are my takeaways:

  1. Testing Club launched after Power User was neglected. Got it. (Also personal thought: Uhhhh. No. No. No.)

  2. Relaunching PowerDraw/PowerBucks program will require the brand to be more clear on the terms of this program both for participation and selection. Got it.

Thanks so much for this @thebassline. I super appreciate it.

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#7

Nice to meet you @AnkerOfficial / Juliette

Some good points and explanations have been made by @thebassline and a few others on supporting topics…

To help get your feet it might be good to check past DMs of issues raised by members who have been here from v2 of the community (now senior members) and also perhaps engage with your moderators who have been essentially unsupported and unresponded to when serious and malicious issues have been raised (both here and on the previous preferred direct messaging app DinkTalk)

This is not intended as a back biting post but as some constructive criticism as past admins (post Louise in 2018-20?) have started well with communication but rapidly went quiet….

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#8

Good thought. In terms of operational efficiency this is a good one.

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#9

I was very fond of the Power User program. It allowed me to test items (these were NOT necessarily “beta” items although I did test a few of those through personal Anker email invites) and give my feedback on them through personal usage and report my findings here in this forum/community. At some point, I believe Anker required one to also post the review on the tested item’s Amazon page which ended up causing issues due to the review being “tainted” in some way because the item tested was not actually purchased but gifted to the tester from Anker for the review. One had to post a disclaimer within their review that the item was in fact gifted to the reviewer and that it didn’t influence their opinion/review.

I personally had no issue with the disclaimer but I think the Power User program was somehow marred by this whole thing.

I never participated in the Testing Club as the requirements were not to my personal liking. Placing too much emphasis on getting the word spread through “social media” was also not to my liking since I do not participate in those common platforms (Facebook, Instagram, etc).

The Power Draw was fun and was a way to spend your earned Power Bucks (that are now sitting, useless) for something interesting to try. The Power Draw should perhaps also have a small review requirement (at least only here in the forum) to keep the forum participation intact and to discourage those with Power Bucks (even a small amount could enter) to get freebies, then leave the forum (never to return) when they got their freebie.

Maybe whatever “freebies” are possibly given away using Power Bucks should also require some type of review (simple is fine here as well, with no Facebook/Instagram “sharing” required) of the item so it’s not just a grab-n-run freebie.

Wishing the best for the forum’s “rebirth” and best of luck to you, Juliette!

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#10

Nice to meet you.

The few old regulars left are of course willing to give you any help.
Some of us (Actually not me :smile:) are absolutely specialists eg @ndalby , @professor …
I mention only a few, because I can not list them all.
Excuse me for this.

But :
The more activity happens now, the more of the “old crew” will return.

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#11

Nice to see you here Juliette

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#12

I should also meantion that I am by far not the most active in this forum (hence my Lv7) and others have much more active over the years; please weigh their opinions heavier than mine. My opinion is just based on when I joined and changes made since 2016.

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#13

Welcome Juliette and congrats on being the new @AnkerOfficial!

I agree with what everyone has said up above. It might seem repetitive, but there are mainly three types of people in this community:

  • SUPPORT: People come here looking for answers about products they own, or are thinking about buying. If they have a device with an issue, they want to hear from other users about the what they can try to do to fix it before reaching out to official support channels at Anker. If they are hesitant to buy something, they might hop on here looking for unbiased reviews or a history of issues found with the product.

  • GIVEAWAYS: These people are the ones that login just long enough to see if there is any contest ongoing that they can throw their name in and then move on to other things. They aren’t necessarily “active” members of the community, but they will jump through whatever hoops they have to make sure they are in the running for the prize.

  • TESTERS/REVIEWERS: In my opinion, these make up a lot of your “core” people. They have been with Anker for many years, and have been active in everything from troubleshooting issues to producing influential reviews. They know what end users want, and have no problem verbalizing their constructive criticism because they aren’t trying to ruin the Anker brand… they are just trying to point out some areas that might need improving.

A lot of users might join the community because of an issue or to enter a giveaway… but the hope is that they will keep coming back and become active participants in posts, discussions, and all the other areas. Finding ways to keep the conversations flowing and the engagement high will be directed by you, Juliette, but rest assured you’ve got a great group of users that will do our best to help you!

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#14

“please weigh their opinions heavier than mine”

No , don’t agree!:laughing:

Its not the "activity"alone that counts.
I know I write more than others.
But often only nonsense and jokes.
Another reason is, I am an old pensioner who has plenty of time the whole day. :rofl:

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#15

@AnkerOfficial,

We all appreciate the interaction and involvement into the community.

I think several have hit the nail on the head. As @Matt_Tabor has stated the support, giveaway stalkers and testers are groups here. I do see the core group here is outside of the testers group.

The core group that is usually are here seems to just like technology and how it is being used. So I feel the core group that are here is due to wanting to get a peek of what is new or what is coming up or to just see what the new product may offer.

As the core group, we potentially like to do what the three groups mentioned here do but we may help out the supporters, but overall like to see or get information about the products…

As @thebassline has on his thread, here is my simple thoughts for following groups for Anker community for you: For Power user- it was created mostly for Influencer and some core groupers (small group) and Testing club- normal folks …

@ndalby had several good points as well. (FYI- I am a mod for the soundcore community)

I do think some additional information on the topic below is needed. A few different assumptions as to what it is specifying. Is it any FCC items, and/or when to mention a new item after it has been been mentioned in different countries (ie can it be mentioned once mentioned or no mention until the global release)? Some potential issues is other social media sites are more or less already stating this info that may be banned on the site.

Now as far as your thread questions…

Unsure as far as how to re-ignite the community other than participation. You can do something new on the site or bring back something old that was done before…

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#16

Good share, @SZak2015. TYVM.

Amazon updated its policy, which seems smart in consideration of their users’ experience and brand trust. Your thought on how that marred the PU experience is interesting to me. I’m going to mull that over a bit. It’s more likely that any reviews we request will be shared on the .com as it’s probably a better developed experience now than it was when we were selling exclusively on Amazon. (Little company trivia there!)

Trust me when I say none of us here are surprised to hear forum users aren’t keen on social, especially the biggies. Me? I’m more invested in Reddit and more interested in mastering Discord use than the others. So I feel ya on that.

I hope the PowerBucks aren’t useless much longer. No idea how I’ll affect that, but it is top of mind for me as I put my proposal together for leadership’s review. I like the idea of a hurdle for entry based on number of PowerBucks. Let’s reward the most engaged, helpful forum members. Y’all’s support here is tremendous.

Thanks for the warm welcome and your notes. Super appreciate ya!

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#17

I 100 percent agree, @Matt_Tabor. This actually mirrors my instinct, so it’s affirming to know I’m likely reading the community well.

Interestingly, at one eComm I worked for, we found that sweepstakes (different from contest or giveaway, higher value) entrants seemed like the in/out non-customers … but they turned out to be among our top customers in terms of average order size. (Different business in so many ways, but it was sooooo surprising.) That said, I think the value in this community is KNOWLEDGE. Hopefully the knowledge share goes both ways. Cheers!

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#18

Juliette in the house!! Welcome :slight_smile:
Let’s revive this place!

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#19

As you and @Duane_Lester both mentioned, the core group does seem to be drawn together by their love of technology and the passion for sharing knowledge with one another. My first encounter with Anker was entering a contest and winning a Roav Bluetooth radio adapter for my car. I got it for free and had a chance to write an honest review on it. That was my first experience in the community. But it was the conversations on technology and sharing of new ideas that really kept me coming back time after time.

Excited for the future and what is ahead!

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#20

More free stuff

More competitions (free stuff)

More testing (free stuff)

More community discussions headed by admin (free speech)

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#21

Also more involvement on the Eufy forum would be great :+1:

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