Not everyone in the community will agree who the expert is.
Calling one member an expert on a topic will provoke a backlash from
members who disagree with the expert or covet the expert role for themselves.
You see this in TripAdvisor often.
The solution is to turn the expert roles into community elected roles.
This is community manipulation at its finest. Instead of debating whether the
roles are a good idea the debate turns to who
should be the expert.
Every six months members can put themselves forward as an expert for a
topic within the community. The rest of the community can vote on who they
think should be the expert.
Now members compete to share their best expertise, experts debate
intensely on different topics (step in if this gets personal), members invite
their friends to join the community and vote for them. Meanwhile, growth and
activity keeps going up.
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We’re now accepting applications for our Professional Community Management course (Sept
30 – Nov 8). This is an online course that will teach you how to apply proven,
reliable, science to build bigger, better, and more active communities. If you
want to learn more, click here.
