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Jun
04

Know When To Step Back

By | community, discussion, issues, manager, members

2 Comments

dont do it!

I've just sat back and watched what could have become an issue, turn into something positive. I observed, I read, and most importantly, I took a step back to see where the conversation was going. If I had stepped in too soon it may have turned out differently and I could have made a bad situation worse. We had a member discussing suicide on the forum. The first post looked worrying and the second post more so. I was watching from the wings carefully, but something told me that my position as the community's … [Read more...]

Nov
16

Sorry – A Little Word With Big Meaning

By | community, complaints, issues, manager, members, Online Community Management

2 Comments

sorry

Let's face it things go wrong - online communities have tech issues, a moderator or a Community Manager makes a mistake. It's the nature of the beast. It's how we handle those situations that count. Do we fix them and forget about them? Do we ignore the community's concerns? Do we brush the issue under the carpet? No, we apologize. As online community managers it's our job to ensure that we create an environment in which members can communicate, and interact with each other. We keep things ticking along - … [Read more...]

Oct
07

Newbie Alert

By | community, discussion, members

3 Comments

How many times have you taken the time to stop and examine your community through the eyes of a newbie? I must admit to having dropped the ball on this of late. I think I had neglected to remember what it was like to feel like a newbie until I started some college classes recently. Everything was new, and strange and I had no idea what was going on. The first day of my International Business class I must have looked like a deer caught in car headlights lights as the professor loaded us up with rules, guidelines and … [Read more...]

Oct
01

A Community Manager Should Never Stop Learning

By | community, manager, members, Online Community Management, participate

4 Comments

I truly am fascinated with the interaction of people online, it's one of the reasons I've been a community manager for almost 10 years. The last 6 months or so I have slowly come to the realization that I am good at what I do, and that the community management knowledge that I have accumulated over the years does have worth. I may not be as corporate savvy as some, but is that necessarily a disadvantage? Instead of having my head up in the clouds I have been down in the trenches getting myself dirty, and … [Read more...]

Jul
02

A Request to the Tech Dept, Please Keep Community Managers In The Loop!

By | community, complaints, issues, manager, members, Online Community Management

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techdept

Note to all techies that oversee online communities. Please, please, please do not down-grade, up-grade, back-up, back-down, change colours, fonts, add, takeaway or generally fiddle with any settings before first checking with, and sounding out, the Community Manager. Then once you've done that, and only once you've done that, you (or the community manager) should announce to the membership that at a certain day/time the site will be down for maintenance. That way we are all on the same page and whilst people may … [Read more...]

Jun
03

Moderators make the world go round.

By | community, manager, members, moderators, monitoring, Online Community Management

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One of the most important tasks for any Community Manager is the selecting and hiring of moderators. If you have a really large community you will know where I am coming from when I say that without moderators your forum/group/community would go downhill fast. A community manager can not read each and everyone of the thousands of posts that are made daily within large communities. It's impossible, there are not enough hours in the day. So as CM's we need to ensure that we recruit the best moderators for the … [Read more...]

May
22

Is there a line between " online community " and " offline community " and where should it be drawn?

By | community, members, moderators, Online Community Management

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A blog that I read today highlighted the topic about online communities meeting offline. Whilst I agree that it is a great idea for members of an online community to meet-up in real life, I'm not sure this works for all groups.Communities that concentrate on shared interests such as cars, bikes, health issues, business, computing etc, etc have a theme in common, and the people who participate would probably enjoy taking that communication one step further by the sharing and exchanging of ideas, and experiences … [Read more...]

May
16

Keyboard Rage. What is it, do I have it, and can it be cured?

By | community, keyboard, manager, members, moderators, Online Community Management, rage

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keyboardrage

You have seen it hundreds of time. You read a thread that your gut tells you is going to get someone's blood boiling. Not so much a troll posting, but more that the topic is one that gets people's fingers itching to type a response ... and respond they do! The conversation gets heated and comments start getting personal, and before you know it there are insults flying around left, right and center. Rather than taking time-out to consider a response, or even inhaling and exhaling in order to try and calm … [Read more...]

May
04

It ' s not 9 til 5

By | community, complaints, issues, manager, members, monitoring, Online Community Management, participate

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It's Sunday morning and I'm answering emails, and private messages from members and moderators asking questions. Online communities don't rest because its the weekend: they don't rest at 5pm, and they don't rest on public holidays, or at Christmas. As an online community manager you have to commit to managing your community 24/7, this role is not 9-5 Monday - Friday.I've been doing this for almost 10 years so for me it's no big deal. In fact, I love what I do. I am passionate about … [Read more...]

Apr
26

You can t be liked, all of the time, by all of the people.

By | board, community, manager, members, moderators, Online Community Management

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I manage a board with over 7 million posts, 105,000 registered members and 25 moderators, and with that many people all interacting with each other I came to the realization many, many years ago that you can't please all of the people all of the time. That's something that not all community managers have come to terms with, and the thought of not being liked all of the time is not something that sits well with them. At the end of the day you have to remember that the board/community is not there for your … [Read more...]