For years Community Managers have recognized in superusers the ability to create content and to stimulate and support online engagement, either in their own, or in wider reaching communities. Encourage superusers to demonstrate the benefits of increased participation to the rest of the community, modeling that behavior to the wider group.

The Spotify Rockstars program was launched in 2013 with the objective of encouraging engagement in social channels, raising the profile of the community, and rewarding existing positive member behavior within the wider community.

The Autodesk Expert Elite program aims to recognize customers who contribute a significant amount of time, energy and knowledge to assist their support community. They also recognize members that demonstrate a strong sense of leadership and “use an engaging style of collaboration that contributes to a healthy and valuable customer community”.

Optus Australia claim that the implementation of a formalized program has seen the contributions made by those superusers increase by almost 300% year on year.

In 2012 the Hewlett Packard Enterprise superuser program had 140 members who were responsible for generating:

• 250 threads per month each
• A 109% increase in engagement
• 62% of successful problem resolutions
• 60% of all kudos

If we look at some wider reaching examples, Dell EMC Elect look for members who are engaging on Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn and in person at events.

The Magento Masters program pulls data from Meetup.com, StackExchange, GitHub, webinar platforms, conferences registrations, social media, and blogs (both personal and business) to build their recruitment algorithm.