February 2009

Comment policies are a tricky thing. Once we start moderating blog or forum comments, folks cry “censorship!” and accuse us of not allowing them the freedom to disagree. Because of this, many bloggers or forum moderators allow their commentators to basically say what they want until anarchy ensues and their communities become a verbal free-for-all.

In the last few years I’ve managed a couple of succesful communities and I’ve learned some essential truths:

1. My blogs and forums are not the government, and therefore, censorship doesn’t exist.
2. People should show the same respect in an online community as they do when visiting someone’s home.
3. There’s no shame in asking folks to be respectful and remember their manners.
4. There are ways to disagree without resorting to name calling and abuse.
5. Comment policies rock.

My writing community, Freelance Writing Jobs, is generally a helpful community of writers networking with and assisting other writers. However, when they begin to disagree about things such as rates it can get kind of ugly. So I posted a comment policy. It reads as follows:

We don’t like to have too many rules here at FWJ. Rules and regulations tend to scare people away, and we enjoy a crowded sandbox. Without rules we would have anarchy, and we’re not really into that either. So here it is in a nutshell: Be nice and be respectful. Easy, right?

Here’s the deal. When commenting, be nice and be respectful. Before you start yelling censorship and first amendment, let me clarify that you are more than welcome to disagree. We love spirited discussion and debate. Just be nice and be respectful.

Personal attacks, rudeness, vulgarity, spam and all around bad manners in comments will find said comment quietly and unceremoniously removed. If you would like to discuss removal of said comment, take it to email. We will no longer have public discussions and arguments about why certain comments are removed.If your comment is removed, it’s safe to say you weren’t nice or respectful. If you post a comment to announce to everyone we’re evil and removed your comment, we’ll remove that one as well. You’re welcome to talk it over with us in private.

Thank you for your understanding and for being nice and respectful.

You know what? It worked.

As a blogger, there’s nothing I enjoy more than a spirited discussion underneath something I wrote. It amazes me however, that certain grownups can’t play nice. In addition to the aforementioned comment policy, I have my blog network set up so that a new visitor’s first comment automatically is held in moderation.  This serves two purposes

1. It allows me to personally welcome a new member to the community.
2. It allows me to remove an offensive comment from a troll.

Two years about FWJ had a reputation for being a writer’s battleground, today it’s the number one online community for freelance writers. Having a clear comment policy, and being firm about enforcing that policy helped to create a thriving, helpful community. It’s not censorship to ask people to behave.

Do you have a comment policy? What does it say?

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It’s terrific so many businesses are starting to realize there are real people out there using their products and services. And while “community” and “social media” are this year’s buzzwords, some folks still aren’t quite getting it. Even though it’s all about “community” nowadays, doesn’t mean a business should treat folks as a collective or demograhic.

Most customer service or marketing teams treat users or consumers as a whole and solve problems based on averages and groups. It’s frustrating to know the people who we’re trusting for support are reading from a script or have a canned response. Though we’re building communities, each member of that community is an individual and should be treated as such. Toss the the script out and go with your gut, people will trust you more.

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I have a confession to make. I’m technically challenged. When it comes to blogging I can handle the writing end and maybe even a little widget and plugin installation, but when it comes to the nitty gritty, I haven’t a clue. I generally hire people to design my blogs and to handle the issues I can’t.

In November,  I was thrilled to be able to announce I was revamping my popular Freelance Writing Jobs blog from a single blog into a network of six blogs. Imagine how it feels watching a small blog grow into the number one online community for freelance writers? This was a thrilling and scary time for me. At the recommendation of my trusted tech guys, I moved over to a more reliable hosting company. It was a company that came highly recommended, received good reviews and they patiently answered all my questions when I called.

A tale of two servers

A couple of weeks after the move and upgrade, I received a notice from the host. My site is too busy, processes are running and it’s affecting the other websites on the server. Could we look into it? Indeed we could. My tech guys looked into it and fixed the problem. Or so we thought.  In mid- December the host sent another notice.  My blog network is too busy for the chosen plan, I had to move to a dedicated server. This must be done within 24 hours or my service would be yanked. Feeling I had no choice, I paid hundreds of dollars (that I couldn’t spare during the holidays) to get this done. Some of that money, by the way, had been earmarked so I could give my bloggers an end of the year bonus. Sorry, guys. [click to continue…]

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Forgive my absence of over a week. This has been a crazy busy time at the day job! I couldn’t sleep tonight, however, so you wake to find a list of community manager and social media jobs. I’m hoping for this to be a regular feature. I’ve been listing daily leads at my Freelance Writing Jobs blog for almost four years and it goes over well. I’m not sure I’ll be doing this daily, but weekly ought to do the trick.

Something that’s bugging me are all the people hiring community managers as unpaid interns. Trust me, you need experience for this gig.

• Internet Media Manager - Monster Cable
• Community Editor - Meredith – Des Moines
• Web Community Site Strategist – SpermCenter – Los Angeles. (Heh. They’re looking for someone who is hands on.)
• SEM Internet Campaign Specialist – Irvine CA
• Internet Marketing Specialist – Concord MA
• Community Manager - Verity Surabaya – Australia
• Community Manager – Groupon – Boston
• Web Community Editor/Moderator – Barnes  & Noble – NYC
• Yelp Community Manager - Toronto
• Social Media Marketing – Disney – NYC
• Social Media Traffic Manager – Inglewood CA
• Social Media Marketing Manager - NYC
• Social Media Contributor

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Tagged as: Community Manager Jobs, social media jobs

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Here’s a gig where I’m sure lots of folks wish there was a telecommute option. Unfortunately for you, (or fortunately for the folks in these areas) the job is an on-site position in either Omaha or Mountain View, CA.

LinkedIn is looking for a Community Manager. Check out the details:

Job Description

The Group Community Manager can be located in either our Mountain View, CA office or our Omaha, NE office and is the primary resource for LinkedIn’s group managers, helping them build thriving, successful professional communities on LinkedIn. The manager guides and develops managers, addresses problems, represents group managers and their needs to LinkedIn’s product development organization, collects and provides tools and information about effective group management.

Responsibilities:
· Market research & community listening (inbound)
· Company/product education & evangelism (outbound)
· Identify/amplify community cheerleaders (both)
· Support internal customers – Executive team, Senior Management team, Omaha, and California offices
· Drive engagement among managers through online events
· Serve as the primary point of contact and provide best practice guidance in the areas of content and service development, event programming, online facilitation, member outreach, etc.
· Drive to completion, from investigation to delivery, initiatives that use community, social networking, and other technologies to increase community participation, in collaboration with community managers.
· Develop and post interactive content that encourages participation and the development of member-generated content to ensure that the community is achieving its objectives
· Drive processes that encourage member-to-member interaction
· Lead the day-to-day operations of the managed community in conjunction with internal community owners
· Monitor and moderate community participation to ensure that rules of engagement are adhered to
· Assist in the development of the Community platform and ensuring that it meets the objectives of the Community
· Provide tracking and metrics to communicate and validate the Community interaction
· Community Advocate – Actively engaged with community members by representing and building relationships in both directions. Strong listening skills are a must
· Brand Evangelist – will promote events, products, and upgrades to customers and will build trust with the community
· Savvy Communicator – ability to mediate and communicate utilizing various communication tools
· Gathers community input for future product and services – Responsible for gathering the requirements of the community in a responsible way and presenting back to the product teams. Feedback conduit for company and community and sync up the two.

Want to learn more? Visit the job description page at LinkedIn.

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Tagged as: community manager for LinkedIn, Community Manager Jobs, social media jobs

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Every day I do a Twitter search to see who is talking about the business I work for. It allows me to say what folks are saying about us, and also if there are any users or potential users having trouble with the service. If I see someone using our service for the first time or asking questions about how it works, I reach out to them to see if there’s any way I can help. I also find the users who are having a bad experience and see what I can do to difuse the situation. Most folks seem to appreciate the Twitter presence, but I heard from someone today who thought it was a little too “Big Brother” for him.

Now,  regulars to Kommein know I believe businesses should have a heavy web presence. However, the gentleman who was put off by my Twitter trollage had a good point. It is a bit off-putting to know businesses are reading and digesting our comments. Comments we don’t expect them to see.

Here’s the thing, though. The guy threw out the information on Twitter. He has several thousand followers. So if he wanted the information to be kept private, he wouldn’t have told the world, right? And really, wouldn’t you rather know a business had a person on staff monitoring the social network to fix potential issues – it’s better than not getting a response at all, right?

So I’ll ask you. Is it crossing a line for a business to have someone on staff who monitors the social networks…or is it just good customer service?

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