December 2008

One of my biggest frustrations is when I want to communicate with a blogger or web site owner and his or her contact details are no where to be found. If anyone should be easy to reach, it’s the Community Manager.

Make sure the members of your community know your email address as well as hours you’re available to chat via Skype or other means.  Post these details on the company blog, website and community forum if you have one. Feel free to establish guidelines, for instance, if you’re only available during certain hours make sure everyone knows. Having a Community Manager who is easy to reach and talk to is one of the most important things a business can do.

Tagged as: Community, community manager, online community, online community manager

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I have a great Community Manager job to share with you today. KickApps, a New York City based social media application company is looking for someone to lead and manage their community.

Duties include:

• Moderating community forums
• Offering technical assistance
• Assist in creating documentation and tutorials to help community members use the applications
• Identify and develop key relationships
• Liase between the community and KickApps team to bring  back valuable feedback

The right candidate must have great communication skills, know a bit of HTML and CSS (with props given to those who also know Java and Flash), experience in customer service,  and a passion for social media. Sounds like a few people I know!

To apply, see the ad in its entirety at KickApps.

Good luck!

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I have seen and been part of many discussions about community as currency. With reports that brand names are making huge bags of money from their community management interactions, it is no surprise that other companies are starting to test the waters when it comes to the ROI of community development.

In essence, what these companies are trying to do is convert people into fans and then either use them to expand their marketing efforts through unpaid evangelism or into purchasing the product, service from the company or an advertisement.

It seems simple enough, but is it right? Should companies consider their community as a currency?

I have some fairly strong feelings regarding this from both angles. As a person, I am angry that companies would attempt to do this, as it almost seems like a form of trickery. On the other hand, I see why businesses need to do this, and understand why they are so interested in making it happen.

As a human, living on a twenty-four hour per day clock, we only have so much time each day and everything is competing for it. We reach our saturation point early on, and if a company can’t get their message to you multiple times, you’ll probably forget about them and move on to join a community related to another company, product or service.

Whether we like it or not, community is a form of currency, especially online, and the value of that currency is only growing. If you want to be a community manager, part of your job will be to hide the fact that individuals in the community are really just currency for a company to do better than the competition. If that is something you aren’t interested in doing, then you might want to rethink your aspirations.

While not every company is open about this fact, in the back of their mind, they are all thinking it, or they wouldn’t spend the money on developing a community.

Tagged as: currency, exchange rate, money, people as currency, value

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Once you’ve worked for a long time building a community, how do you get it to that next level? How do you promote it and get it more general attention?

It can be hard to promote because it might now have amazing content like other blogs and website that you can use social media promotion methods for, nor will it have a singular brand name that will always draw people in, unless the leader or a prominent community member is well known.

So then how do you promote your community in order to grow it and make it “better”?

There are some simple techniques that can be used, dependent on how the community is structured.

Write a Blog

If you don’t have any content on your community forum that you can easily promote, then start a blog for the community, and begin to place in depth articles on it about the product, service, or company and its usefulness.

Start a Podcast

Hearing someone’s voice helps create a connection, and so an audio podcast can be exactly what a community needs to draw in new members. The barrier for entry into podcasting has been reduced over the last two years, and there are many services available to do live podcasting, which would allow your community to participate in the show.

Contest

A great way to expand your community is to set up a contest. Make prizes for those that are newly registered, or those that get the most new members. This can sometimes exponentially expand your community, but be cautious, as contests can set certain expectations, or bring people that will detract from the community.

Attend Events

Get to where the people you want to connect with are, even if it is outside of your normal niche. If you have a piece of software that could appeal to bloggers, then you should be attending blog conferences in hopes of meeting people that interest you, and would make great additions to your community.

Conclusion

These are just a few of the many promotional techniques available to community managers as they look for avenues to grow the community that they are paid to maintain. Think outside your niche, and your normal techniques.

Tagged as: blogging, contest, events, podcasting, promotion, social media

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Do you really need a community? The short answer to that is, “no”. You don’t need community centered around your blog. You don’t need to build a community around your product. You don’t even need to build a community around your service. Certainly plenty of businesses have gotten by without a community throughout the years, and most of them did just dandy. So no. You don’t need a community.

Now let’s explore what happens when you don’t build a community for your business.

• There’s no effective word of mouth campaign - Certaily you can advertise, but the best way to create a buzz around your product is to have others, who are not employed by you, using, discussing and recommending your product or service.
• Your product or service has no voice.  It’s generic and antiseptic without a human touch. Folks like to be able to speak with humans.
• Your customers are frustrated. They want to chat with live folks or call and have a response instead of a menu. They want to be able to look online and see what others are saying about you.
• Your competition, the one with a large online community, is doing very well while your sales are down. All because their community and community managers have built up a level of trust.
• You don’t have a lively, congenial, helpful group of people gathering together and enjoying each others company to talk about one of their favorite things - your product or service.

So I will ask you - do you really need a community?

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When I was at BlogWorld Expo last fall someone asked me this question, “As a Community Manager, what is more important, talking or listening. Certainly you have to be a good listener, but you also have to be a good talker. You have to know the right words to say for every situation. So what’s more important, talking or listening?”

Before I throw the question out to you, I’ll give my answer. I think anyone can talk and say what people want to hear. Some people can be very charismatic and charming with their words but they don’t mean any of what they’re saying. Listening and truly hearig what a person is saying is a rare gift but an importat one. I think it’s more important to listen, and listen carefully. Talk is cheap, listening is a skill.

Discuss…

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Many Community Managers are fortunate to inherit and cultivate and existing community. Though they will be expected to continue to grow and nurture, the hardest (but to me the most enjoyable) part of the job has already been taken care of - building a community from scratch.

With new websites and services going up each day and new products launching, more and more folks are looking to hire Community Managers to start something from nothing. For me, there’s nothing more challenging and rewarding than building something from nothing. I love watching people first tentatively reach out and then begin full on interaction. When it gets to the point where my community can create discussions without my assistance and interact with each other as they would old friends, I realize I’ve done something right.

I don’t know that I’m a huge community building expert, but having done this for several years with success I feel confident in sharing what I’ve learned with you. Today I give you:

10 Tricks for Building a Successful Community from Scratch

1. Be Welcoming

When you have new guests to your home, you greet and welcome each one, right? Online communities are the same thing. When a new member joins up, be welcoming. Say hello, introduce him or her to the rest of the community and find out how you can help. Just like you’d offer guest towels and clean sheets to someone spending the night at your home, so should you do everything you can to make new members comfortable.

2. Answer Every Question, Comment and Statement

If I was asked what the biggest mistake a Community Manager can make, I’d probably say it’s ignoring the community’s wants and needs. It’s understandable you can’t answer every question sent your way, but if you don’t know the answers, it’s certainly within your power to fine the person who does. Don’t ignore questions or comments because you don’t have the answer. Let folks know you’re looking into it and then find someone who can help.

3. Treat Everyone Like They’re the Most Important Person You’ll Ever Talk To

An important aspect of any community is the ability to gauge the needs of the people who use your services the most. With that in mind, treat every request and bit of feedback as if it’s the most important bit of information you’ve received in a long time. Each and every member of your community is important. The day you forget that is the day you start losing traffic - and reputation.

4. Be Nice

Always be pleasant. Even if you’re on the receiving end of some unfair treatment or an angry diatribe, be nice. Keep your anger in check and respond to the angry missive in a pleasant manner. Don’t kill your brand and your reputation by calling someone a schmuckhead.

5. No, Really. Be Nice. Always

Count to 10. Step away from the desk. Don’t respond or back off let someone else handle negativity if you can’t do so in a pleasant manner. Always be nice.

6. Twitter

I can’t say enough good things about Twitter. Actually, I’m a Twitter addict. Twitter is a great way to direct potential community members without actually having to promote anything. Simply establish relationships with fellow tweeters. Follow people you feel will be a good fit and respond to their tweets. Create a dialogue between other like minded people. Soon they will want to learn more about you and even become members of your community.

7. Blogs

Blogs are an amazing community building tool. Whether you build your own blog or visit other blogs and participate in the comments, if folks are interested in what you have to say they’ll want to follow you where ever you go.

8. Don’t Spam

Visiting social networks and blogs for the purpose of building community is all about relationships. When you get all spammy and talk to people only to promote your links or services it’s a turn off. Get a good mix going. When you’re part of the scene and folks like you, they’ll check out your links. Spend 90% of your time socializing and the other 10% promoting and you’ll see the results.

9. Be Transparent

Don’t lie and don’t hide things from your community. Let them know you have an open door policy and you’ll be as honest as possible. Community is all about trust. If you’re caught in lies or trying to get one over, it will be a long time before anyone else will trust you again.

10. Listen and then Speak

If a member of your community is reaching out to you, listen before you speak. Take time to research the situation from every angle before responding.  Don’t interrupt or accuse. Listen to concerns first. Make sure you have all the details, then respond in a pleasant manner.  The most important part of being a good communicator is to be a good listener.

What are some of your favorite community building tips?

Tagged as: community building, Community Management, community manager, how to be a community manager

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In my Twitter travels, I come across many folks looking to land a Community Manager gig. Can’t say that I blame them, being a community manager is probably the only job (besides blogger and freelance writer) that I actually enjoyed. And so, as a service to our fellow Community Managers, the Community Manager Job of the Day. Today’s job came from Crunchboard.

Community Moderator Wanted

This job is full time in San Francisco. Note: it’s not a telecommute position and they don’t appear to want to be convinced of the reasons you should work from home. Still, looks like a fun gig if you’re in the neighborhood. Here’s a brief description from the ad:

Looking for a super smart, and bursting with energy senior moderator for a super-stealth new online company backed and funded by some legendary billionaires. We aren’t raising money, we don’t need VCs, and we are hiring!

We are looking for a person who can help make our new online communities the place for the owners and managers of SMBs. We believe in making sure the community members are ecstatic with the community. If you don’t believe that is possible or don’t know what an SMB is, this job isn’t for you.

Responsibilities include:

• Answering questions from the community
• Finding folks to answer questions if you can’t
• Making sure the community is feeling all warm and fuzzy
• Keeping track of stats and growth

Read the full details at the orginal ad at Crunchboard.

Good luck!

Tagged as: community manager, Community Manager Jobs, online community manager

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Now that you know more on what is a Community Manager, and have had a crash course on the various “negative” things that might come up in working as a Community Manager (It’s Not Your Fault - But it Is!), why do you still want to become one?

For me, the idea of helping a company and a community interface more effectively and efficiently was a huge draw. I really enjoyed the idea of communicating with the masses to let them know that their voice was being heard, and making sure that it was. Others enjoy the marketing aspects of being a Community Manager, as the job does require a fair bit of skills in this respect, as well as networking, advertising, communications, and more.

One of the reasons that I didn’t stay a Community Manager was because my marketing skills were still very basic, and I didn’t always enjoy that facet of the job. I have always valued transparency, but sometimes transparency can give “the masses” the wrong idea about certain things going on in a company, and the last thing you want to do as a Community Manager is give out information that would go against the goals of the company employing you.

What draws people to community management positions? Is it the balance between networking, communications and marketing? Is it the thrill of helping promote a product, service or company? If the failures and issues of the company you are working for can be a burden to a Community Manager, do the successes then reflect positively as well?

Even though, I no longer work for PicApp, each time they enact one of the suggestions that the community gave them, I still feel a bit of pride. I know that they are listening to their community, and that makes me very happy.

What made you interested in becoming a Community Manager and if you aren’t one already, then is there anything about the career opportunity that interests you?

Tagged as: marketing, picapp, skills, transparency

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