[Article] Community Manager Reconsidered

[Floris]

Boy, this is going to be a big one .. For XenFans.com I wrote an article for site owners who take their site a bit more serious than average and are in need of a community manager. Here are pointers to consider, explained, and suggested - ready for implementation and discussion between xenfans and you, and you and your team / CM (community manager).

Community Manager Content

# Adding a Community Manager, and getting him/her involved from the first day you run the site.
# Putting your Community Manager in the middle of it all
# When your Community Manager lets things slack
# An active Community Manager and getting the word out
# Sending the Community Manager into the social media world
# Getting the Community Manager ready for the 90/9/1 members
# Posting as a Community Manager

 

[Floris]

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# Adding a Community Manager, and getting him/her involved from the first day you run the site.

If you start a site and you need assistance, consider a community manger. Don't underestimate your community manager (CM). He or she should be involved with the business side of things from day one if you ask me. Being involved with the decision making doesn't just help shape the community but it also means everybody's on the same page.

A CM should know the system they're using, the limits, the mission statement, and the traffic sources that are incoming.

Case testing with the CM is as important as with beta testers, if something's confusing to the team, you can guarantee at least 40% of your users experience the same confusion.

A CM can help prepare writing content, unique content, articles, discussions, and newsletters. Outsourcing this task to a CM allows you to get together and sync the short term roadmap with the team.

Getting a CM early in the process means he or she recognizes what's going right or wrong in the community before the site owner does. Avoiding being blind sided by a revolt, scams or mass trolling is important for the vibe in a community.

Your CM should feel involved with the content writing by third parties, free contributions, paid content or out-of-website content distribution. Establishing a correspondence with authors that contribute to a site helps to indirectly shape the type of content that's incoming. One benefit is that feedback or 'giving pointers' is discussed with a smile rather than with a frown, coming across like you're only complaining.

An easy to ignore and forget factor of a CM is to build a resource of data from various sources in preparation for short and long term content creation.

At the end of the day you have a funnel for data and actions that go from you to the team, to the site, and from the other end, data flowing back in from the members to the team. A CM is not just a funnel for data, but certainly a talking point for the community.

 

[Floris]

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# Putting your Community Manager in the middle of it all

Once the site has started and there's content flowing, data going both ways, there's more to the site than the users know, or that the moderators might realize. And that's what happens in the mind of the CM, the site owner, and those involved. Some times a site needs to monetize, sometimes there is a hidden agenda. Sometimes there are moments where people are scouted to join the company because of their community contributions.

Putting your CM in the middle of it all means that he or she has to integrate, monetize, punish, reward, and handle the members, the content, the data, and everything involved with it. To the point that is in sync with the members, the team and the company. And it's not easy.

Having a set of rules for the CM to understand, a gentlemans understanding so to speak. And a clear set of rules to the community to refer to. It's all important. It avoids confusion and improves communication. There should be freedom for the CM to go offline, without the community falling apart (it won't).

There should be scheduled times where an extra 5 to 15 minutes is taken to discuss what is the most important to the team at the moment, and to discuss what's going on in the community. Remember, the CM is funneling the data flow and helps direct it into the right direction.

 

[Floris]

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# When your Community Manager lets things slack

Things go wrong. Life is difficult. Motivation is tough. Volunteer work doesn't always feel rewarding. Handling with the workload, or the stress of handling annoying users. There are at least 50 more reasons why you as site owner realize your CM is in trouble, and it results in slacking on the job. It happens, accept it.

What are things that can go wrong, recognize the difference between a CM doing a bad job, or being put in a position where things go wrong.

Dumping too much work on a CM expecting them to have it done by Monday morning is simply unrealistic. Make it clear that it's a plan for the short term future, and it needs to get organized. That it seems like a lot, but that it needs to be filtered to what can be used. What I am saying is: Communication, be clear about what you expect, what is needed, what time frame we're talking about and what it means to everybody (company, team, users, etc). The CM should feel the freedom to recognize what is the most suitable for the site, what can be ditched, without falling into stress mode.

Miscommunication is the reason you will feel your CM is doing a poor job, this is your fault.

Not being engaged in conversations, staying out of sight. Not following up on conversations, feedback, complaints. Inability to organize workload and simply giving promises but never following up or realizing them.

That's not your fault, that's just a person that's perhaps in over their head and doesn't realize what it entails to be a CM for a certain site. Consider talking to your CM and ask where the bottleneck is, and limit involvement by properly communicating what you desire, expect, at minimum and create the understanding where the value of the CM is and invite them to utilize this. If you can't get to that point, maybe it's time to shake hands and part ways. Either way, you can consider adding a second CM to the pool and increase teamwork to get results. Sometimes an awesome person works the best in a team, and twice the amount of work seems to get done.

It's about being comfortable with your tasks, so at the end of the day the CM is provoked to pick up the slack and communicate with the community and the team, and slowly through the months get through a workload.

As site owner, you have to be clear, put your foot down, and let everybody know you're the guy or girl running the show. But, that's a last resort, and should only be made aware via 'it is implied'. Realize that unhappy team members, including a CM stepping down takes a bit out of productivity and motivation. And how you and your team acts, how the site comes across, .. is 50% of the vibe in a community.

Recognize the difference for best result. Is it demotivation because of my lack of communication, or is it inattention by the CM? .. There are a handful of questions you can think about before jumping into a serious discussion about the future of the CM on the team.

 

[Floris]

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# An active Community Manager and getting the word out

Boom, you have an idea, a business plan, funding, a site, a budget, growing an idea, prototyping it, and getting a team, a CM, and the site and or business is taking shape.

It's time for case testing and user testing. It's done. Time for a public beta.

Now what?

How do you even get ONE user to realize they might be one of the early adopters for a site that they might still be a member of in about ten years from now, feeling involved, old skool, and a value to the community.

Having an active Community Manager, in the middle of it all, is one thing. Playing it the right way means you're not spamming the world, you aren't black-hat SEO-ing your content to pretend to be the best. But you're growing without having to advertise. Your content, your community, your members, your service, the smile on your face, .. it's enough for word of mouth.

Strategic socializing, talking to the right groups, walking around and putting your hand on the shoulder of the right person for a good conversation will all mean you will get known, published, recognized, and trusted.

Word of mouth can be used against you, so think it through. Discuss with the CM what's going on in the community right now. Maybe sending out a tweet about an article around the same time your users are complaining about secret members that are getting paid (or some controversy like that) might not the right time.

A community manager is a value to the site, and the users.

Those established resources, established interconnections and communications with third party sites, they all help with a positive word of mouth and perhaps a public beta period where a selective group gets included to give feedback about the site prior to launch.

Aggregation of data flow within the ecosystem is one thing, taking a step back and syndicating what's playing is helping with a natural flow of data outside the ecosystem. Creating word of mouth.

A buzz will be created, a hype, a positive vibe, friends inviting friends. Removing limits, processing user feedback. It can all be communicated.

 

[Floris]

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# Sending the Community Manager into the social media world

Having things organized internally means it's time to walk out the door, to the left, and click on the various popular social media sites, and not just Twitter, Google+ and Facebook, but blogs, communities, conferences, media events, and social contacts. Tracking what's going on outside your trusted ecosystem is hard. You can not control the media out there, but you can communicate the positive vibe and have great conversations. Building character is another 25% of trust with your audience.

Monitoring your traffic stream, in and out, is important. Connections are tracked through cookies, retweets, likes and recommendations. Not just from one site, but through a social connection, a group, a complete community sometimes.

A few resources you can consider your CM to use on a semi frequent basis are:

http://hootsuite.com/
http://www.xydo.com/
http://socialoomph.com/
http://infegy.com/socialradar.php
http://www.peerindex.net/
http://synthesio.com/corporate/
http://www.sysomos.com/
http://www.lithium.com/what-we-dsocial-customer-suite/social-media-monitoring
http://www.radian6.com/
http://www.attensity360.com/

These help you organize your social online experience, your interaction with the team and the incoming flow of communication. Help you engage, watch, listen, and learn from what's playing with you, your keywords, your traffic audience, and all of that stuff. If not only for a general impression.

You want to learn your followers, those who have an influence. And build a relationship with them. And you will learn how to engage, and when to take a step back or stay away from a conversation.

Remember though, you can have a Twitter account or Facebook Page for your company, your site. But your CM is a person, an individual. They're the go to point for communication and data flow. A face to it all. Your followers and visitors feel they're welcome, as an individual. And no longer as a number with a unique user id.

You're not there to sell your services, products, and premium membership. You're there to get the word of mouth out, and inject the most of the thought behind the site/company and the mission statement.

There are no direct results with social media, there are however millions of indirect results. And they all count.

 

[Floris]

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# Getting the Community Manager ready for the 90/9/1 members

There are various groups and types of users that visit the community, recognizing them from a distance and realizing the reality of their participation helps prevent misuse of the service, keeps the positive vibe up and it's important for the CM to be ready for the 90/9/1 setup.

Active users, vs community regulars, and passive users. Alongside guests (but since they don't post, not relevant for this post)

Your active users are those that register, read, lurk, and incidentally participate.

Your regulars are those that do that, plus a whole lot more. They feel involved in the community itself, contributed beyond regular and they are there investing time to do good. Such as greeting and helping new users, reporting activity, pushing ideas and giving constructive feedback.

Passive users are unfortunately those who register but have a hard time returning and/or participating.

90/9/1 members is an easy to remember understanding:

Passive members covers about 90%
Active members covers about 9%
And your hard core regulars about 1%

Each group, each type, has trouble makers, trolls, scammers, spammers, but each need to be approached differently. Recognizing which type of member from what type of group you're dealing with will result in a better understanding by the community as to why action was taken against them. And you and your team know better how to moderate them, and how much.

How much of a zero tolerate of trolls and malicious behavior you allow is a per community rule. Choose wisely. Personally I can't tolerate the behavior. I am on my sites for fun. If someone ruins that, we prevent it from happening again. Persistance is key.

It's not an easy job for your community manager, proper communication with the team is important, as important as it is to give the freedom for the CM to take the appropriate steps towards users in the site. Known users, abusive users, or passive.

Various types of moderation has to be considered.

Pre-moderation is where content is reviewed from newcomers, with support or inline moderation actions at the ready.

Moderation is where existing users and their content is crowd sourced by the 1% regulars, as well as the team. And perhaps internally discussed first before any actions are taken.

Post-moderation where existing content is flagged by the community, after the fact. It's impossible for a moderation team and the CM to review every post created.

Other terms of moderation such as self-moderation doesn't apply, who watches the watchmen, right? I believe in a forum it should be clear to the community they can report abuse by a team member to a CM, and that it should not end with fear of their account status being changed to limited or even results in a ban because of moderator abuse. A moderator isn't above the law after all, they're there not to police content, but to help assist members and help keep them in check.

A community manager breaking the rules is a mess, communicate properly where the limits are as site owner, and step in with your veto when things get out of hand. Support your team, but support your community too.

A CM should have the freedom to punish AND reward your 90/9/1 in an effort to change these values to 50/25/25 or better.

 

[Floris]

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# Posting as a Community Manager

Putting aside the social media, the rules, the interaction, being the talking point and everything involved with the community manager position. At the end of the day a CM is there for his or her entertainment as well. Posting, participating, communicating and having a blast - just like everybody else. It just has to be a bit more thoughtful.

Some pointers to consider to create variety.

Create quick polls. Feel out how the community thinks about topics. Their character will show quickly, and you can find ideas for future content.

Discover and discuss events in the world, on the site, and recognize which members have a following and an influence and what is going on in their lives is a great discussion to have.

Creative activities that include pictures. Discussions where everybody is provoked to share pictures within the ecosystem and platform of the site's topic. Or beyond.

Rating content, rewarding content for contribution results in great discussions.

Learn the language. Your users are unique, you can't control them, you can't realllly influence them, and you have to understand what they're saying.

Create focused discussions that result in invested thoughts and indirectly this results in trust, involvement and long term friendships.

Participate in their personal life to a point, go through their social profiles and analyze it. Participate on a friendly level and listen to their stories. The shame of asking silly questions will fall away. 'Can I just ask you quickly' questions will increase and communication with the passive and active members will improve.

Provide your community with activities to do.

Disclose slowly what direction you're going. You don't have to give them your mission statement a 100%, you don't have to disclose what the future holds. But it's a great thing to sneak peak, beta test, and involve the regulars to keep them interested in the future of the site. Their input prevents you from making a big mistake sometimes when changes are around the consider or being considered.

Consider having a podcast, townhall meetings, or events, including meets with the community and the team.

A community should be fun for everybody, allow your community to discover it at their own pace, within their comfort zone and give them room to play and bend the rules.

Bring in professionals to help grow unique and popular content.

Get feedback from the regulars and passive users, go with the silver line and improve on it.

And your community manager plays an important role in all of this.

Good luck with your site, brand, community, or hobby web site. We hope a CM isn't needed, but at the least is being considered. And that community managers realize there's more to it than tell a member 'yes, registration is free step right in'.

 

[Floris]

That's it, enjoy - looking for feedback, suggestions, or even just a spelling error.

 

[melbo]

Wow. I really like this article Floris. Thanks for laying it out so carefully and so well organized. You've given me some things to think about.

 

[Weiyan]

Good idea. Learn something today. Thanks.