Is He One Of Us?

Is He One Of Us?

Spend 30% of your time working internally.

That’s one or two meetings a day. Don’t waste your lunches sitting alone. Reach out to a couple of people a day and meet up with them. You can meet with more than one person at a time if you like.

How Long To Wait To Allow Members To Respond?

How Long To Wait To Allow Members To Respond?

If you answer the question, others are less likely to answer it.

If you don’t answer the question, the poster has to wait longer for the answer.

In communities with up to 150 questions or less per day, a single community manager can probably answer every question personally.

Use The Fog To Add Personality

Use The Fog To Add Personality

Your replies and direct messages in the community exist in that foggy space between your company’s voice and your personality.

You have vague rules about how the company should speak, but no-one is paying too much attention. This presents an opportunity. Use that fog as a cover to push the boundary a little.

The Legal Quagmire of Online Community Volunteer Programs

The Legal Quagmire of Online Community Volunteer Programs

In 2010, AOL settled a lawsuit brought by their volunteer community leaders for $15m.

The details are worth reading.

The People Closest Know Best

The People Closest Know Best

The same is true with MVP programs. Any metric you establish as criteria for star participants will cause unintended side effects.

Members might answer the easiest questions, create fake accounts to vote their own ratings up, or get others to create questions they can definitively answer.

Every Interaction Is An Opportunity

Every Interaction Is An Opportunity

Every single post is an opportunity to deepen engagement.

This isn’t the same as activity.

Activity is physical, engagement is mental.

Activity is easy to see and measure, engagement is in our minds and hard to prove.

The Problem With Measuring Satisfaction

The Problem With Measuring Satisfaction

If you use a satisfaction feedback score, community managers will only reply to questions when they are sure the answer will be happy.

That’s not in the best interests of the member (or your business).

Who Really Deserves Appreciation?

Who Really Deserves Appreciation?

Human moderators are the web’s worst kept secret. The web would be a cesspit without them.

Machine algorithms help, but it’s a person who takes the flagged content and decides if you should see it.

Moderators endure the worst of society to give us a shot at building communities.

Announcing The Community

Announcing The Community

Grace asks for ideas for announcing a community.

You don’t need to announce a community because no-one is looking for a community. They’re looking to solve their problems.

Subscribe for regular insights