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.
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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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I conduct most of my business online or in person. I find I get results better this way than if I had to navigate around a phone menu to nowhere or die on eternal hold. In the 80′s and 90′s it was all about automation, getting machines to do jobs people could do. Businesses loved it, customers hated it. Now the same businesses are starting to realize it’s all about customer service. Folks don’t want to call a company only to have to press buttons or leave messages. We want to be able to receive immediate answers to our questions and concerns.
This means the return of people skills.
It’s About Enjoying What You Do
Back in the day, way before getting involved in this whole Internet thing, I rocked a couple of corporate gigs. My favorite, by far, was my first “real” job – as receptionist at a busy publishing house. Even though I always considered myself a shy person, I enjoyed directing phone calls and greeting the people who came in to our reception area. My star shined brightly with that job. In fact, there was such major shinage that I was promoted within a year and a half to the company’s circulation department. The first of many promotions, all of which left me completely miserable. I wanted to go back to working with people.
Now I’m not going to get all Up With People on you, but if you want to succeed at community building you have to emit a warm and fuzzy vibe. You have to know how to listen as well as speak. Nothing turns me off more than rudeness and bad manners.
Treat Others as You Would Expect to Be Treated Yourself
The way I see it, I should treat the people in my community the same way I would like to be treated when I visit a business or a community. I want to know folks like me, I want someone to hear my voice and I want to know my concerns or questions will be taken seriously. And yes, I want to have a good time too.
Don’t make your community like the phone menu to nowhere. The best communities are the ones where the team is front and center, participating in community discussions and getting their customer service on. The best communities feel more backyard barbecues than social networks centered around a business. The best communities are the ones folks never want to leave.
How do you treat the people in your community?
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