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Community Management — The Circle Game

Published by Janet Gershen-Siegel on January 14, 2021

Community Management Tidbits – The Circle Game

What the heck is the Circle Game? Er, I do not mean this one. Don’t even think about it.

Forums have cycles, and so do users. That is, there is a start to them coming to your site and joining. But there is also a middle piece. And, inevitably, there is an end.

Community Phases are the Backbone of This Circle Game

There is not a lot that you can do about this. You can, however, stretch out the individual phases.

Discovery

The first phase is discovery. It all starts with excitement. The user has found your forum! It seems huge! The user can never possibly read everything. The whole thing is all too much.

It is heady, and the user may very well tell everyone he or she knows about you. Or, the user might want you all to him or herself. Either can happen.

Nesting

The next phase is nesting. The user makes friends and starts to get into an enclave or two. Enclaves are little groups within your forum, whether formal or informal. Even if your forum does not have actual designated groups, per se, this still happens.

In a community for single fathers, for example, a user might hang around with other users who became first-time fathers after the age of forty. In a folk music forum, a user might spend time with (and follow around) other users from Ohio.

This is perfectly normal – a carving of familiarity in an alien sea. But it does set up the next phase.

Boredom

The next phase is boredom. The community has too much sameness and does not seem to be changing quickly or thoroughly enough, so far as this particular user is concerned. But the user sticks around, however, grudgingly.

Departure

The final phase is departure. Whether that comes with a bang (a user suspension) or a whimper (the user simply fails to sign in any more), is immaterial.

Or, there is a third type of endgame, where the user posts a topic about their departure. This topic can be fond, hostile or even a ploy to get other users to beg that person to stay. Or to get other users to join them in exiting—or going elsewhere.

Do not put it past people to use their departure as a means of gathering friends or fans or followers in some new pasture. They want to start their own, new circle game. But they do not feel like putting in the time or effort to build an audience.

Fighting Back and Reversing the Circle Game

Does it always have to be this way? Well, this kind of a cycle is more or less inevitable.

The trick is to stretch out the first two phases, discovery and nesting, as much as possible, or to have the user cycle back from boredom to nesting again (e. g. to find a different group to hang with).

Or, a positive situation would be if the boredom phase were at least short (and put off) so that the departure phase would not be a suspension. And it would be less fraught with meaning.

Because a user taking leave, no matter how popular that user is, will leave behind less of a hole if they are a part of a 100,000-person forum versus a 100-user community.

How do you do this? By phases, of course!

Discovery, Reimagined

The Discovery phase of the circle game has two essential elements: new users and new topics. Increase both with good SEO and with encouraging as much user participation as possible.

Nesting, Transformed

The Nesting phase can be encouraged and promoted by keeping your community a safe, warm and welcoming place. Having formal specific groups is not strictly necessary for this, but it can be of help if your users are struggling in this area.

And, if you do go with formal groups, ask your users which groups they would like. They might surprise you. And it (almost) does not matter whether a group is terribly active.

It will still serve its purpose, to continue to afford your users with a friendly place within the forum, even if it is small. This is a place they can call their own.

Boredom, Shortened

The Boredom phase of the circle game can be delayed and/or truncated by keeping the twin flows of new users and new topics going. This means more and better SEO, offering new features and encouraging your users to continue adding new, interesting and diverse topics.

What if you simply cannot think of new topic fodder? So try taking a stand on a controversial subject, or ask for comments on a related news article. Or look in your archives, and see if an older subject might benefit from a fresh, new take.

Circle Game Departure, Delayed

Finally, the Departure phase of the circle game can, of course, be put off if the first two phases stretch out. When departure happens, do not ask most users to stay. Unless you have a very tiny forum, this kind of behavior will be impossible to scale.

And it generally does not put off the inevitable for too terribly long. Instead, try to find out from the user just why they are leaving.

Except for purely personal, internal circumstances (e. g. the user just started a new job and has no time for your community any more), there may be something you can learn from and improve on.

And asking why will also give you an opportunity, not to entreat the user to stay, but to let the user know that he or she is welcome to return at any time.

The Circle Game: Takeaways

Your users’ interest in your community will wax and wane. You cannot always do anything about it, but if an effort is made, your users are generally going to appreciate that. And your circle game will go on.

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.

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

• A Day in the Life of a Community Manager
† Analytics (see below for link)
• 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

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… And Facebook for All – Your Home PageFacebook, advertising, account settings, Profile Page Part, Home Page, Working, Facebook, Rest, Facebook versus Forums, Company Pages, offsite sharing, Facebook Page, demystifying Facebook, Facebook Video Ads, Facebook to Allow Users to Login with Less Info, Facebook video ads, Facebook Ads vs. Google, Organic Reach Decline,

… And Facebook for All – Your Home Page

Published by Janet Gershen-Siegel on July 16, 2020

Life, Liberty … And Facebook for All – Your Home Page

Your home page is vital. Log into Facebook, and it’s the first thing you see. It’s your Home Page. So here’s what’s in it. You can divide it into what look like columns.

NOTE: Facebook constantly A/B tests. Features move around, change, are renamed and resized, or disappear all the time. These are rolled out in stages; your neighbor may have a different-looking Home Page from yours. And this is 100% normal.

Home Page Links

So first of all, column one (left side, top):

• News Feed
† Messenger
• Watch
† Marketplace

Then shortcuts; this is a section you add to or subtract from.

Then …

• Explore
† Pages
• Groups
† Events
• Fundraisers
† Games etc.

Your Feed

Then column two (center):

• Status messages on friends’ pages
† Other friend activities
• Anything your friends or the pages you follow are sharing

Column Three

Then column three (right, top):

† Events
• Friends’ Birthdays
† Marketplace
• Groups You Might Like
† People You May Know
• Targeted Advertisements
† A list of friends available on chat (at the bottom)

Let’s start with Column One:

Groups

So this is a list of the groups you have joined.

Pages

These are pages you are following.

Friends

So pretty obviously, this is a way to access your entire list of friends.

Create Group

So you can create groups for any reason. And this includes to support a beloved entertainment figure, promote your business or just complain about people wearing Crocs. So I’ll get into the specifics later.

Games

These will rotate as you access more games, depending upon recency.

Status Messages on Friends’ Pages

So this is the actual News Feed itself. And you can comment on others’ statuses (statii?) or posted links.

Your Home Page Still Shows Other Friend Activities

First of all, you are served everyone’s activities. Facebook can be a tsunami of data. However, a lot is aggregated; you are usually shown that six people joined a group, rather than separate messages on all half-dozen.

Events

So if you’ve got upcoming events and you haven’t RSVP’d, they’ll show up here, but you can jettison them by clicking the x on the right side. Note that you’ll be invited to all sorts of stuff, including sponsored activities and openings by commercial ventures. And RSVP’ing is not strictly necessary. However, as an event organizer, I have to say it’s appreciated so as to at least get a handle on headcount (and know who not to expect).

You need not RSVP for commercial store openings or whatnot.

Friends’ Birthdays

Whether they’ve made the year apparent is their own business. But if they’ve got the month and day up on Facebook, birthdays will show up here. And of course you’re under no obligation to wish people a Happy Birthday, but it is kind of nice.

People You May Know

So this is based upon some sort of an algorithm whereby Facebook looks at things like your current friends list, their friends, your location and possibly also your school(s) and workplace(s). However, I don’t believe the latter are included at this time. So if you have any mutual friends, Facebook lists them as well.

Facebook does not always get this right, or it gets it wrong in interesting ways, e. g. Facebook says I “may know” the spouse of someone I attended High School with. Well, unless I went to High School with the spouse (over 30 years ago), then there isn’t much of a likelihood there.

Hence there are times when this list is bewildering. Hey, Facebook is doing the best it can.

Targeted Advertisements on Your Home Page

Well, they’re as targeted as Facebook can make them. This  apparently has a basis in your click activity, your likes, your friends’ likes and whenever you click on an ad to get rid of it. Again, sometimes Facebook can get this wrong in rather spectacular ways; for example, when I wrote this post originally, it showed me an ad for Toyota. And I have neither owned nor contemplated owning one, ever.

Your Home Page has a List of Friends Available on Chat

It should go without saying that you should never click on links from chatters you don’t know well. And you’re under no obligation whatsoever to answer anyone’s instigated chat.

So a big part of the Facebook experience is not only playing games but also sharing them with others, or sharing status or links. The way you see and can participate in this sharing is via your Home Page. It is, essentially, a bulletin board between you and your pals. But keep your own wall the way you want it. If you don’t want people to swear or argue politics, etc., that is 100% within your rights.

Click to buy Untrustworthy on Amazon

Want More About Facebook?

If my experiences with Facebook resonate with you, then please be sure to check out my other blog posts about the largest social network on the planet, by far.

… And Facebook for All

• Creating a Facebook page
† Working with a Facebook Page
• … Your Profile Page
† Home Page
• Offsite Sharing
† All Your Account Settings
• All the Rest of It
† Facebook versus Forums

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Quinnipiac Assignment 04 – ICM 526 – The Importance of Content Marketing for Community ManagersQuinnipiac, impression management online, virtual groups, persuasive industry, locative media, what is information, role of social media, ICM top 5, strategic planning, defining publics, strategic planning to nonprofits, strategic plan implementation, Center for Science in the Public Interest, Wal-mart, project management styles, future, journalism, reflections, NESN SEO, onward to Quinnipiac, A Day in My Life in Social Media, Viral Videos, Qualitative and Quantitative Analytics in my Life, social media monitoring tools, Media Convergence, Basic Web Analytics, A Crash Course in SEO, Semantic Search, Monopoly, Algorithmic Surfacing, Ambient Awareness, Polarization, Television, Participation, Physician Boundaries, Ethical Dilemmas, Charlie Hebdo, Premium Service, Spiderman, Brian Williams, Dark Patterns, Content Moderation, Big Data, Net Neutrality, Privacy and Big Data, Forgotten, Most Important Role of a Community Manager, Influencer Impact and Networks, Harrison Parrott, Content Marketing for Community Managers, Authentic Brand Voice in Social Media, Best Practices in Using Social Media for Customer Service, Highly Regulated Industries, Sabra Hummus, SWOT and PEST Analyses, Message Strategies, Communication Tactics, Program Evaluation, Continuing Program Evaluation, Strategic Campaign Plan Formatting, RPIE, Biblical Texts, Disruption, Facebook network, Qualitative and Quantitative Analytics, NESN Key Indicators, Writing Ethics, Spiderman, Wireframing, Sabra Hummus, Lonely Writer, Final Project ICM 522, reinvention, Regulation, Position Statements, Formative Research, Creative Obfuscation, Copyleft, Recommender Systems, social listening, POST method, regulation, Ad Astra Community, Persuasive Industry, What is Information, Biblical Texts, Strategic Planning to Nonprofits, Message Strategies, Strategic Plan Implementation. Strategic Campaign Plan Formatting, Center for Science, RPIE, Compare Project Management Styles, Content Marketing for Community Managers, SWOT and PEST Analyses, Ethical Dilemmas, Spiderman, Authentic Brand Voice in Social Media, Social Media for Customer Service, Brian Williams, Wal-Mart, Dark Patterns, Content Moderation, Big Data, Net Neutrality, Privacy and Big Data, Forgotten, How Highly Regulated Industries Can Best Use Social Media, Sabra Hummus, Communication Tactics, Program Evaluation, Continuing Program Evaluation, Wireframing and Paper Prototyping,

Quinnipiac Assignment 04 – ICM 526 – The Importance of Content Marketing for Community Managers

Published by Janet Gershen-Siegel on June 9, 2015

The Importance of Content Marketing for Community Managers

Why is content marketing important for Community Managers?

It is deceptively easy for companies to ‘get on Facebook’ or ‘get a Twitter’, and start pushing content out through a firehose. Companies may even make a splash in the beginning. But it’s unsustainable. Furthermore, it’s not serving customers and potential customers terribly well.

Much like any other aspect of modern business, online content requires strategy and structure. Just having content is not enough. It has to be relevant to fans and followers, and be more than something they will just click on and read. Instead, content is for marketing; it is for getting customers and potential customers into the sales funnel and then bringing them along. This is the case whether the sale occurs online or in a brick and mortar store.

The Content Marketing Institute says –

Content marketing is a strategic marketing approach focused on creating and distributing valuable, relevant, and consistent content to attract and retain a clearly-defined audience — and, ultimately, to drive profitable customer action.

The Numbers Say It All

As Steven MacDonald reminds in The 5 Pillars of Successful Content Marketing, the amount of data being created in two days is more than was created from the beginning of time until 2003. Certainly, that figure is only going to grow. The United States census, in 2012, released an infographic comparing 2012 data on computers and Internet usage with 1997 (when the census first began asking about Internet usage) and 1984 data.

Per the United States census, the percentage of households without Internet has fallen dramatically, from 45.3% in 2003, to 25.2% in 2012. This does not even take into account persons who might not have home access, but are using the Internet at work, school, a café or public library or other such location.

Relevancy

With all of these people online, and all of that content coming at them 24/7/365, the race is less to get any sort of content online. It’s more to get relevant and preferred content to consumers.

A potential customer is being bombarded with Instagram images of their friends’ lunches and Facebook status updates with pregnant friends’ ultrasounds. They get gossipy Tweets about celebrities and amusing Tumblr blog posts about upcoming movies. And they get Pinterest boards with recipes.

Yet somehow, some way, a company’s content has got to compete with all of that.

Buying Reach?

While companies can purchase additional reach and engagement, a more sensible ad spend is to target content more closely to customers’ and potential customers’ preferences and demographics. This is easier and more detailed and better-researched than ever before. It’s due to all of the tracking coding which is embedded in social media.

As Avinash Kaushik has said about digital marketing (a term often used interchangeably with ‘content marketing’ but a bit more general, involving the use of digital devices but not necessarily as fully integrating marketing with content types like in true content marketing) and measurement –

The root cause of failure in most digital marketing campaigns is not the lack of creativity in the banner ad or TV spot or the sexiness of the website. It is not even (often) the people involved. It is quite simply the lack of structured thinking about what the real purpose of the campaign is and a lack of an objective set of measures with which to identify success or failure.

Structured Thinking

Structured thinking and objective measurement can help marketers to create and define success. Content marketing is similar in that it’s studied and planned.

Content marketers don’t just put up any old content whenever. They study the various platforms, as Gary Vaynerchuk strongly suggests. Successful content marketers listen to their audience (there’s that idea of measuring again!). They determine what does and doesn’t work. They post their content when their customers and potential customers are online and listening.

Putting Content Marketing Together With Community Management

Community Managers often must shape conversations online. This is everything from thanking happy users to publicly addressing complaints to being the first line of communications for public relations problems. But that’s mainly reactive communications. Proactive communications from community managers can and should dovetail with company plans. These can be to market to consumers (or to businesses in a B2B organization).

Offering helpful, engaging, amusing, and informative content is the job of the community manager. It’s as much as the soothing of angry online customers is. Posting the right content, when consumers want to see it, can be the difference between a sale and no sale. Put enough of those together, and jobs and even companies can be on the line. The community manager, doing content marketing right, can bring in business. They can help a company retain its customers even in hard economic times.

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