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Category: Community Management

When we talk about community management, what is it that we truly mean?

What is Community Management?

Well, the truth is, the definition has changed a bit over time.

Before Facebook and the true monetization of communities, their management was a lot more on the side of what today we refer to as ‘trust and safety’.

If people were acting up, you kicked them out. If it was a quickie squabble, then you let them back in again, after an hour or a week or whatever. But if they were a repeat offender, then the time-outs got longer.

And if they were a truly horrible person, the bans were permanent. Who was truly awful? Spammers. Racists. Trolls. Anyone who tried to bring down a site or hack it.

A simpler time, in a lot of ways.

What is Community Management Now?

Today, while trust and safety is still vital, the role often splits into a few parts. One role is engagement. This is getting people to talk but also getting them to interact with advertising.

Another role is content. This is making content, yes. But it is also curating content and altering it as necessary. There may or may not be an outreach role, to bring in users and perhaps even to greet them.

For communities where there is art and literature, there may even be a copyright role under the general umbrella of community management.

Gone are the days when all you did as a community manager was to try to keep the inmates from running the asylum.

Community Management – Collection of Users to True CommunityCommunity Management, Drawn to Scale. Freshening, Get Together, Love, Small Things, Without Management, True Community, Party Started, Terrible Netizen, Snakes in the Garden, Circle Game, Look at Me, Good Netizen, Corralling, Wandering off Topic, Facebook versus Forums, Superstar Users, Community Management Analytics, Community Roundtable, Community Management Haikus, Life of a Community Manager, Social Media Job Descriptions, Superstar Users, Community Roundtable 2010, community managers, off topic posts,

Community Management – Collection of Users to True Community

Published by Janet Gershen-Siegel on September 10, 2020

Going From a Collection of Users to a True Community

What is a True Community?

I’ve written at least seven obituaries.

That is, perhaps, an odd thing to confess. But when Jill, Kevin, Paul, Joanne, Olen, Joan, and Mary all passed on, it was up to me to write something, to not only commemorate their lives, but to try to help comfort a grieving community.

I am not saying you will write as many, or even if you will ever write even one. And I certainly hope you will never have to, as they can be gut-wrenching. But it was with the first one – Mary’s – that it became manifest (if it was not already self-evident) that, to paraphrase the old Brady Bunch theme, this group had somehow formed a family.

How Can This Happen to Your True Community (Without the Tragic Part)?

But no one has to cross over to the other side in order for your collection of users to coalesce into a Community with a capital C. The secret is very simple, although many companies don’t want to hear it: it’s going off-topic.

Let us assume, for example, that your community is a corporate-run one. And the product is a soft drink. Corporate tells you to stay on topic, on message. However, your users are saying something very different.

For it is easy, as you’re talking about the soft drink, to slide into discussing foods eaten with it (frankly, for such a community you’d almost have to go off-topic. Nobody but a truly dedicated corporate marketer can talk about a soft drink 24/7). Food slides into a discussion of recipes. Recipes turn into a talk about entertaining. And then suddenly you’re off to the races and talking about family relationships.

Corporate tries to pull you back on topic. Yet your users pull the true community ever further away. And they pinball from family relationships to dating, raising children, and elder care, if you let them.

The Community Manager’s Role

Here is where you, as the Community Manager, can talk to Corporate and forge a compromise. Corporate needs for people to talk about the product, tout it, and virally promote it. And they need people to make well-ranked (on Google) topics about it. Corporate may also realize that they need to hear the bad news about the product as well. The users need to talk.

So make a compromise. Create an off-topic area and move all off-message topics there. And be fairly loose with your definition of what’s on topic. In our soft drink example, the recipes topics, even if they don’t use the product as an ingredient, are still close enough so you can consider them on topic.

Also, don’t be surprised if the corollary is true. Hence topics that begin on message veer off it, even by the time of the first responsive post. That’s okay. Those topics should still be considered to be on message. Because Google is far more concerned with a forum topic’s title and initial post than with its tenth response.

The Benefits of the Off-Topic Section

Don’t be shocked if your off-topic section becomes a large one. And recognize that you and your Moderating staff (if you have one) may need to make on message topics in order to continue creating germane content. But your true community will be talking and the site will be a lively one.

It’s a party that’s going nonstop, your users will stick around and from this you can build a marketing database. And that is one of the standard corporate aims behind creating a community in the first place.

So when your users start talking about life events, such as births, school, divorce, moving, jobs, marriage, children and, yes, deaths, it matters. And when they start supporting each other through each of these phases, it marks a bright line distinction between a haphazard agglomeration of users and a true team of like-minded individuals.

Finally, that team, that family, that army, is what being in a true community is really all about.

Want More About Community Management?

If my experiences with community management resonate with you, then check out my other blog posts about how online communities work.

Community Management Tidbits

Here are some posts about my years in community management, and what I’ve learned.

• A Day in the Life of a Community Manager
† Analytics
• Going From a Collection of Users to a True Community
† Risks of a Community Without Management
• Are Off Topic Posts Ever Okay?

Click to buy Untrustworthy on Amazon

Next blog post

2 Comments
Community Management — Get TogetherCommunity Management, Drawn to Scale. Freshening, Get Together, Love, Small Things, Without Management, True Community, Party Started, Terrible Netizen, Snakes in the Garden, Circle Game, Look at Me, Good Netizen, Corralling, Wandering off Topic, Facebook versus Forums, Superstar Users, Community Management Analytics, Community Roundtable, Community Management Haikus, Life of a Community Manager, Social Media Job Descriptions, Superstar Users, Community Roundtable 2010, community managers, off topic posts,

Community Management — Get Together

Published by Janet Gershen-Siegel on August 27, 2020

Conquer Your Fears and Get Together

Yes, you can—and should — get together! Life online is all well and good. Many of us spend large chunks of our time connected, whether that is via a desktop PC, a smartphone, a laptop, or a tablet. Newer technologies will, undoubtedly, make it even easier to get and stay connected.

But sometimes you’ve just got to say: Stop the Internet, I want to get off!

Of course you go offline every night for bed (er, you do, don’t you?), at the absolute minimum. But there’s more to it than that.

When your community has been around for a significant period of time (say, a year), your users are going to, naturally, be curious about meeting one another. In person. With no screens dividing them.

And this is excellent. It is a sign of the community jelling. You should encourage this. Or, if you like, you can even suggest a meeting yourself.

I mean, why the hell not?

Informal Gatherings

For informal gatherings, there is little, if anything, that you need to do. If you can attend, great! And if you can’t, ask people to take pictures. However, remind your users they should get permission before they take any photographs and post them online.

Furthermore, if there will be minors present, emphasize that photographs of them really should not appear online. Be prepared, if the child’s parents ask, to remove such photographs if they end up on your site. But that’s about it.

Formal Gatherings

Formal gatherings allow for a lot more dazzle. A get together can be as expensive or cheap as you like. Your attendees might wish to reserve a block of hotel rooms, or even a hall. Or you might just need to make reservations at a restaurant.

Or you could think outside the restaurant, and consider a visit to a museum, historical attraction or nature preserve. Your group might enjoy attending, say, a minor league baseball game (it’s often a nominal fee to get your site or company mentioned on the scoreboard or over the public address system. Usually this takes the form of a charitable donation).

Or your users might even enjoy a potluck, or a cruise, or a bowling tournament for fun. They might like to run a 5K race (or just watch) or even attend lectures or form a book group. And they might even enjoy helping to build a house for charity or volunteer at a soup kitchen for the day. The only limits are your imagination and the focus of your community.

Because a forum devoted to young mothers, for example, might enjoy a gathering where they can bring their children. Whereas a board focusing on a hip hop artist might prefer attending a concert.

Get Together Swag

For a gathering (in particular, for one specifically planned and sanctioned by you), it’s nice to bring swag. That is, forum- or company-specific merchandise. Make it free for the taking! Hats, tee shirts, frisbees, key chains, whatever you like.

The young mothers’ forum might like diaper bags or onesies. That hip hop forum might like licensed mix CDs, or special music that they can download.

Just give them the URL and a key or password, so they can get it exclusively, at least to start. And, it’s not a problem if people begin to share the URL and the password. Because you want them to do this.

Gatherings are fun. It’s enjoyable to finally see and get together with people you only know from online. Once you’ve heard their voices and seen their mannerisms in the flesh, you’ll never read their posts the same way again.

Want More About Community Management?

If my experiences with community management resonate with you, then check out my other blog posts about how online communities work.

Community Management Tidbits

Here are some posts about my years in community management, and what I’ve learned.

• A Day in the Life of a Community Manager
† Analytics
• Going From a Collection of Users to a True Community
† Risks of a Community Without Management
• Are Off Topic Posts Ever Okay?

Click to buy Untrustworthy on Amazon

Next blog post

4 Comments
A Day in the Life of a Community ManagerCommunity Management, Drawn to Scale. Freshening, Get Together, Love, Small Things, Without Management, True Community, Party Started, Terrible Netizen, Snakes in the Garden, Circle Game, Look at Me, Good Netizen, Corralling, Wandering off Topic, Facebook versus Forums, Superstar Users, Community Management Analytics, Community Roundtable, Community Management Haikus, Life of a Community Manager, Social Media Job Descriptions, Superstar Users, Community Roundtable 2010, community managers, off topic posts,

A Day in the Life of a Community Manager

Published by Janet Gershen-Siegel on November 21, 2017

A Day in the Life of a Community Manager

Whether paid or volunteer, the life of a community manager tends to be fairly similar. Community management can be a piece of social media marketing and management, but it does not, strictly, have to be.

Most of a Community Manager’s time divides into three different modes:

1. Discussions
2. Nurturing and
3. Disciplining AKA Trust and Safety

Discussions

The discussion piece involves creating new discussions and shepherding them along. Users will not return, day after day, without new content. While the users are, ultimately, responsible for the content in a community, the Community Manager should create new content as well.

This is not always topics as it can also encompass informing users about changes in the site blog (if any) and even a Facebook fan page (if it exists).

This discussion piece evolves as the community evolves. In a community of fewer than one thousand users, content from the Community Manager might be the only new content for weeks! Which…can sometimes be problematic.

As such, it can loom very, very large. But it can also have a much stronger calming effect if other content is snarky.

As the community grows, regular Community Manager contributions should diminish. But there should still be some involvement. Otherwise members may feel the Community Manager is hanging back a bit too much.

It is a community, and that means that the users want to know the Manager(s). An easy and somewhat safe way to do this is by creating discussions.

On Topic/Off Topic

And the discussions need not always stay on topic! Lively discussions can be almost spun from whole cloth if the Manager can get the people talking. An automotive community might thrill to talking about cooking.

A cooking community might engage in an animated discussion about the Olympics. And a sports community could very well bring its passion to a topic like politics.

In particular, if the community is single subject-based (e. g. about, say, Coca-Cola), going off-topic should probably at least peripherally relate to the overall subject.

Hence Coke could branch out into cooking and, from there, into family relationships. Or into health and fitness.

But a push to discussing politics may not work unless it stems from a major recent news item or if there is precedent. And, if you get started with politics, it is hard to put that genie back in the bottle.

Finally, if a member is ill, or has passed on, getting married or having a child, an off-topic discussion can spring naturally and effortlessly. This happens regardless of the community’s main subject matter.

Corporate management may not love off-topic discussions. But they keep a community together, and they help to keep it viable.

Nurturing

The nurturing piece relates to the discussion aspect. However, it tends to encompass responding to and supporting good discussions on the site.

This is especially helpful if the Community Manager identifies top users who are good at making topics who the community likes.

And then nurture them to promote their discussions over more inferior ones.

Use nurturing to encourage newbies. And use it to encourage members who might become superstar users if they only had a little more self-confidence. Give them a track record of support and positive reinforcement.

Welcoming people can get old rather quickly. But there is nothing wrong with a form welcome, whether it is an email or a private message or even a popup. Why not explain where to go to contact a Moderator? Or where to look and even where to report if the site is down?

Another use for a welcoming message can be to link to the Terms of Service and any other rules the community must abide by.

The Life of a Community Manager and Relationships

Nurturing can also take the shape of developing relationships with members. The Community Manager does not have to be friends with everyone, even if the site is very small. However, they should get to know the users.

Private messages (if available), writing on a wall or the like can do this.

Furthermore, the Community Manager can use private messages, etc. to head off potential problems at the pass.

Headstrong members might be wonderful when they write on topics not related to their overarching passion. Or they might respond to a tactful request to tone things down a bit. Or a lot.

The Community Manager can encourage those members to take part in those other discussions. The manager can reach out to other community members. Friendship can help to minimize flaming.

Disciplining AKA Trust and Safety

And this leads me to the disciplining part. It is often the first thing that people think of when they think of community management. That includes things like pulling spam.

It also includes giving users timeouts or even outright suspending them when their activities run against a site’s Terms of Service.

Trust and Safety can also mean checking content to be sure that it fits community standards. Those can be everything from avoiding porn to getting rid of health misinformation.

The Facebook Trust and Safety team, for example, once had the unenviable responsibility to weed through violent and disturbing imagery. Nowadays, that is a task done by AI.

And it also includes shunning and ignoring. These can be extremely powerful. The Community Manager can help to mobilize other users.

But the Community Manager Must Do It Right

An email or private message campaign is almost always a very poor idea. Rather, the Manager must lead by example. Do not take the bait when challenged, unless it is absolutely necessary. But that is rare.

It is the Community Manager’s call when to take it, particularly if personal insults fly.

Often the best tactics include: (a) get offline and cool off. And (b) ask another Community Manager or Moderator to determine if it warrants disciplinary action. And then enforce that if it is.

One thing a Manager should never forget: there is far more to the community than just the people posting. There is often a far larger audience of lurkers, both registered and unregistered.

They are watching events unfold but rarely comment. By leading by example, the Community Manager can influence not only active posters but also the community at large.

Customer Service is Key in the Life of a Community Manager, Even if the Forums are Free and There are no Real Customers

During a typical day, new members register. Also, members lose their passwords, or start and respond to topics. Furthermore, they answer older topics. People engage in private communications (if permitted on the site).

Members may disagree on something and they may do so vehemently. The site may get spam. Or someone might add violent and disturbing imagery.

The Community Manager can become involved as a content creator if content creation lags or goes too far off subject. He or she should discipline difficult members if necessary.

However, generally, a Community Manager’s main task, both daily and over the life of the online community, should be to carefully nurture and shape relationships.

Want More About Community Management?

If my experiences with community management resonate with you, then please be sure to check out my other blog posts about how online communities work, and how to best make them work for you and your organization.

Here are some posts about my years in community management, and what I have learned.

Click to buy Untrustworthy on Amazon

• Going From a Collection of Users to a True Community
† Risks of a Community Without Management
• Are Off Topic Posts Ever Okay?

Next blog post

1 Comment