When a community manager doesn’t know the answer

by Martin Reed 16 March 2012

Questions are vital. Asking questions keeps community discussions alive. Asking questions keeps a community manager in touch with the community. You should never stop asking questions – especially when you don’t know the answer. Recently, a member of Female Forum complained about some of the jokes that were being posted in the ‘Just for Fun’ section […]

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How independent is your online community?

by Martin Reed 19 January 2012

A great community manager can build a great online community. That being said, a community shouldn’t be reliant on one person for its success. Yes, it needs a leader – but it shouldn’t depend on that leader for its daily survival. Here’s a quick and easy way you can determine just how independent your community […]

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Don’t draw attention to your community’s weaknesses

by Martin Reed 11 January 2012

Movie-Vault does a great job at highlighting its weaknesses. Take a look at the homepage; as of Wednesday January 11th, in the left column we see 67 RSS readers and 55 Twitter followers. In the articles section, we are repeatedly reminded that nobody is commenting on the articles -there are four articles all with a […]

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Online communities should highlight quality, not quantity

by Martin Reed 22 November 2011

Woot does a great job with its online community. Not only does the community content appear prominently on the homepage, the site highlights what it considers ‘quality posts’ – only posts it deems to be useful, interesting or otherwise valuable to the community make it to the homepage. Furthermore, when you delve into a product discussion […]

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Creating a mission statement for your online community

by Martin Reed 5 October 2011

It’s impossible to be a great community manager if the community you manage doesn’t have a mission statement. Without a mission statement, how do you know what kind of culture you’re trying to develop? How do you know what kind of content should be encouraged? How do you know what kind of members you want […]

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Hold your horses, community manager!

by Martin Reed 17 August 2011

One of the most important traits of a good community manager is patience. You need to be patient with members, you need to be patient when encouraging relationship building and you need to be patient waiting for conversations to develop. Unfortunately, patience is rarely seen on the list of desirable skills for a community manager […]

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What the English riots teach us about community

by Martin Reed 10 August 2011

The mindless criminality in England has now spread from London to Manchester, Salford, Liverpool, Nottingham and Birmingham. Unrest is taking place exclusively (according to news reports) in the cities. Where are the reports of small coastal communities being ransacked? Where are the reports of cars in rural villages being set on fire? The fact is, […]

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Community members don’t need to be reminded that it’s their birthday

by Martin Reed 3 August 2011

Home Brew Talk is a great online community for those who enjoy brewing their own beer. Unfortunately they’re wasting time when they wish their members a happy birthday. Here’s the email they send: Hello, We at Home Brew Forums would like to wish you a happy birthday today! There’s nothing unique or personal there – […]

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Bring back one community member every day

by Martin Reed 28 July 2011

Add this to your community manager ‘to do’ list – bring back one inactive member every single day. Instead of trying to attract new members, focus on getting existing members to return and contribute. A few ways you can do this: Find a discussion you think they’ll find interesting and tell them about it. Find a […]

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Posting on another member’s behalf

by Martin Reed 21 July 2011

Insomnia Land has a mailing list for those interested in keeping up to date with the latest insomnia news and research. The content of the emails that are sent is exclusive to mailing list subscribers. Sometimes, subscribers who are also members of the community get confused when they want to discuss the content of those […]

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