The biggest wins in community management are not ‘sparks of genius’ moments you will have in the shower. The biggest wins come from following and refining a process.
The better the process, the bigger the win.
Our goal in the Strategic Community Management program is to teach you that process.
This process matters. This process stops you getting sucked into day to day minutia which keeps you very busy, but doesn’t move the needle.
A Great Example Of A Big Win In Community Management
One of my favourite examples of a big win is from Riot Games (also students on our course). Riot Games (like everyone in the video-gaming sector) faced a difficult harassment problem.
Most organizations respond to these problems by hiring more moderators and using learning management tools to identify and remove posts incrementally faster. This is classic routine thinking behavior. Riot Games did something completely different.
Riot Games stopped trying to remove content a few seconds faster and instead changed the psychology of harassment among members. In short, they stopped members wanting to harass each other.
The results were remarkable:
“[…] when abuse reports arrived within 5–10 minutes of an offence, the reform rate climbed to 92%. Since that system was switched on, Lin says, verbal toxicity among so-called ranked games, which are the most competitive — and most vitriolic — dropped by 40%. Globally, he says, the occurrence of hate speech, sexism, racism, death threats and other types of extreme abuse is down to 2% of all games”.
The answer itself (sending a timely reminder in the right colour within moments of the negative post) isn’t revolutionary. Any of us could implement that idea within a few weeks in our community.
The magic is zeroing in on that one specific intervention among the thousands you could test to solve the problem.
To zero in like this you need a process that combines data and psychology. Very few people do this today, yet it’s your best source of your biggest wins.
In almost every single goal you have for your community right now (getting more people to join, participate, share knowledge, answer questions, take action etc…) there are big wins like this waiting to be uncovered.
If you follow the right process you can unearth these big wins.
It’s far more exhilarating to work towards big wins that move the needle than the next piece of content in your calendar.
Thus far 53 people from around the world have joined us on our Strategic Community Management course to learn how to do that. They want to ensure they are spending their days working towards a big win that matters.
I hope you will join them and us on the Strategic Community Management course.
My team and I would love to work with you.
