by Martin Reed on 10 July 2014 in Snippets
An unavoidable cliché: variety is the spice of life.
Something to be aware of as a community manager, though.
Your community learns from your leadership. They learn what the community’s accepted behaviors and norms are.
What you do influences the culture of your community.
Make sure you’re not creating the same type of content over and over again.
More importantly, make sure you’re not rewarding the same type of behavior over and over again.
If you’re always directing the spotlight at community members who are making the type of contributions you want to see in the community, you’ll be attracting more of the same.
Useful and valuable content, no doubt.
But:
When everyone thinks the same, when everyone concedes their opinion to the stronger personalities, when everyone is scared to go ‘against the grain’, your community becomes dull and lifeless.
It’s your job to stir the pot and make sure things stay interesting.
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by Martin Reed on 22 June 2014 in Snippets
If not, quit now.
To be an effective community manager, trust is absolutely vital.
Your employer places their trust in you. Your members place their trust in you.
You need to be able to follow through on your promises. You need to always under-promise and over-deliver. You need to be able to keep secrets (plenty will be shared in a thriving community).
You need to respect privacy and you need to respect the community guidelines you’re responsible for enforcing.
What does distrust breed?…
…Nothing you want in your online community, that’s what.
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by Martin Reed on 6 May 2014 in Snippets
Sometimes your community will come up with (and act upon) their own ideas. Sometimes these ideas will work. Sometimes they won’t.
What I can tell you is this: most of the time, their ideas will work – and their success rate will always be higher than your own.
The reason for this is simple:
When you come up with an idea, you’re making an educated guess at what individuals in your community want.
When members of your community come up with an idea, they’re telling you exactly what they want.
Ignore their ideas at your peril.
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by Martin Reed on 14 April 2014 in Snippets
Let’s boil this right down.
At a bare minimum, all online communities need:
1. A clear, communicable identity and purpose.
You need to be able to keep the purpose of your community short and snappy.
Think elevator pitch – but even shorter.
If you can’t condense the purpose (and benefits) of your online community down into a few sentences, then it isn’t focused enough.
2. To focus on the best.
You should be continuously striving to be the best in your chosen niche.
Your community needs to be able to attract the best members, it needs to create the best content and you should always be drawing attention to your best content and your best members.
3. Appropriate barriers to membership.
Free, quick and easy isn’t always desirable.
You may want to make it difficult to join the community. If you’re running an online community for professionals, you may want to put up an application form (not everyone gets in). You may want to charge an application fee.
Many forget that how you allow people to join your community has a big influence on the type of community you’ll be managing.
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