Community Manager Basics

Community Manager Basics | Version 1.0

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Table of Contents

Introduction Being Authentic Onboarding New Members Dealing with Trolls Choosing and Managing Moderators Keeping Users Engaged

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Introduction The following guide covers five key aspects of community management. It has been written for those new to community management, but there may be some concepts or strategies the seasoned Community Managers may wish to try.

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Being Authentic The most important part of community management is you, the community manager. How will you interact with your community? The community manager position is relatively new but should be taken very seriously. A community manager is on the front lines and has to wear many hats ( PR, support, moderation, crisis management, etc.) and also be savvy about different online tools. Then there is the whole aspect of community interaction. How should you, as a community manager, interact with your community? How will you present yourself? The best philosophy, or way to approach the role of community management is to be yourself. People can read through the phoniness or creepiness of a corporate voice. The importance of ‘authenticity’ cannot be overstated. Even though your end goal might be to increase sales or customer satisfaction, it will be an uphill battle getting people to join you in building an active community if your persona is that of cold corporate drone. People are smart and will not want to spend time on a community run by robots. Find a voice that lets you be yourself while still representing your employer’s brand. A good community manager can interact with people in a way that is empathetic and personable while always being consistent with the brand’s objectives, culture, and policies. One of the first things you will want to do as a community manager is to spend time on your profile. While it might seem like a small thing, your profile sends an important message to the community. Choose a username that is either your real name, a nickname or something playful. It’s weird to talk to Acme Inc or make a close connection with Admin #4. In conjunction with a real name, choose an avatar that shows your personality. No one wants to interact with a company logo. Make it a clear photo, or something that showcases your personality. Obviously, in a business community, a headshot might be more appropriate than a shot of Mickey Mouse. The choice of avatar is the visual representation behind your words, so choose wisely, and in keeping with the kind of community you hope to have or build. When it comes to noncommunity forum profiles (like on social media), if you decide (or are required) to use a corporate logo as an avatar, make sure people can tell who the person is behind that logo. You need to make it obvious that it’s people interacting with people. So while you avatar pic might be a logo, sign your posts with a name and link to a page that has community manager profiles or bios. Once you have an authentic profile, you will want to ensure your “community voice” is real. Keep the marketing speak or corporate words out of your posts. You want to ask questions, be curious and listen. Most importantly, you want to ensure that the content you share provides value. Sure sometimes you need to share information for your company, but you can also post a funny photo or maybe even an insight or two (that you are allowed to share). Who doesn’t want to feel like they are getting the inside scoop or being asked for ideas about how to make something better?

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Finally, engage with others in a real way. Try to reply to people when they mention you. Introduce members to others who may have common interests. Think of it like a big cocktail party and you are the host. You will want to make sure everyone is having a good time with a cold drink and something good to eat. You cannot just sit in the corner and listen to your MP3 player. Your job is to keep things moving but you will eventually want it to get it selfsustaining, so helping people make connections will increase stickiness. Remember, a community is full of members who are real people, with other places to be. You want to be real and make it enjoyable. So be honest, be yourself and build a twoway dialogue that is real with your community. So in conclusion, begin by being authentic, so you are starting on the right foot.

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Onboarding New Members Onboarding new members is one of the most critical responsibilities for a community manager. The more activity in your community, the more valuable it becomes. Getting people to participate and come back depends greatly on those initial experiences. The following are some tips to help you with the onboarding of new members. #1 – Make sure new members get a welcome email with a call to action. When new members join your community, consider sending a personalized welcome email and ensure that it includes a clear calltoaction. For example, encourage them to update their profile with a photo, or update other details, such as their hobbies. The time to get people engaged is right from the start, as they are only new members once. #2 – Follow up with new members after a few weeks. If they don’t update their profile, or are not engaged in the community after one or two weeks, it might be worthwhile to reach out again. For example, you can ask if there is something you can do to help them get started. #3 – Setup a thread for new members for introductions. Encourage new users to introduce themselves to the community and suggest some things that they can share about themselves. Consider creating a new thread or category entitled “New to the community? Introduce yourself”. #4 Setup a thread or category for new member (newbie) questions and forum rules. A “Get Started” category can be great place to to include your code of conduct and FAQs. #5 – Share the inside scoop on how the community works. There is how the community literally works – the things you can do with the software, and there’s things like rituals, how moderation works or seasonal events that are a big deal. #6 – Recruit your super users or volunteer moderators to help out with onboarding. There’s nothing worse than a first time poster’s question going unanswered or first time comment going unnoticed. Posting somewhere for the first time is a big deal, encourage your regulars to pay attention to first timers and give them a pat on the back or +1 a question if it goes unanswered. #7 Get feedback on community improvements and suggestions for the onboarding process from your new members. After the second or third month of membership, you might consider an email survey or a poll in your forum. Ask them what they like or dislike about the community, or invite them to share suggestions on how you can make the onboarding process better. Asking for feedback to make things better is a great way to ensure you are doing the right things in keeping your community healthy and growing. #8 Measure to identify future volunteers from your new members. Keep an eye on the

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community stats of members and identify new members who are still highly engaged after 4 to 6 months. Consider approaching them about getting involved further, for example, writing blog content or volunteering to join the welcoming committee to engage right away with your newest members. These are only some tips to assist you in increasing and growing your community, but there are certainly more that can be done.

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Dealing with Trolls Your community is humming along, and all of a sudden, an individual joins who takes personal pleasure in disrupting your community. It may be inflammatory remarks, attacking others for no reason, or simply taking an extreme contrarian view on every topic to drive everyone nuts. Unfortunately, it also means your community may have a troll problem. Civility and logic pretty much go out the window with trolls. They are not in your community to build relationships, to add to the discussion, or be friends. They have come solely to cause mayhem. So what can a community manager do? Below are three tips we have seen to be effective when dealing with trolls. #1 Identify properly, but never name someone a troll If you realize you have a troll problem, or an individual is being a troll, don’t call them out as a troll. Not only will you give them the attention they seek, you could be wrong and make someone who wasn’t really a troll, feel like they need to live up to that label. Keep in mind that trolls are different than someone who makes a oneoff controversial comment. A troll is someone who comes to your community to cause disruption across your community and revel in joy as others fall into their trap. If you do identify an individual as a troll, advise your moderators and keep an eye on them in case you need to take further action. #2 Do not engage with the troll in direct confrontation You often hear “don’t feed the trolls” and if your community has a websavvy audience, they should already be familiar with this advice. The thought behind this advice is responding to the antics of trolls encourages them to continue to be disruptive. Trolls will purposefully not listen to logic and they don’t care to abide by your forum rules. If you see people in your community engaging in verbal wars with trolls, remind them that ignoring an inflammatory comment is the best course of action and explain how they can flag future offensive posts. Finally, don’t be shy to delete or close discussions that cause your community harm. #3 Use the moderation tools at your disposal. If a troll starts to become a major disruption and won’t respond to friendly warnings, it might be time to use some of the forum software moderation functionality. While some may think banning the account or blocking an IP address is a good enough remedy, it’s not the effective solution it once was. It’s easy for a banned user to reregister under a new name. Usually all it takes is a new email address. Even an IP address ban is not perfect. Many modern ISP’s (Internet Service Providers) use dynamic (ever changing) IP address and it’s easy for a troll to use a proxy to get around any ban you have in place. So what is the best plugin or addon? Most forum software has a feature that lets you mark a

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member as a ‘Troll’. This makes them invisible to everyone but themselves. The point of these plugins is to make the troll waste their time, posting away, while your community continues on, completely unaware. Once a Troll gets bored, because no one is interacting with them, the hope is that they will move on to another target and leave your community alone. By socalled “freezing them out”, you can avoid situations from escalating out of control and the community can become almost selfsufficient at combating trolls.

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Choosing and Managing Moderators One day your forum may grow to the point that you may want to consider adding moderators to help manage your community. A moderator (or Mod) is a member of the community that can be given privileges beyond normal users and can be a Godsend if you are swamped with community management tasks. Some of the powers a moderator can be given include: pinning topics, locking discussions, deleting or moving posts, issuing warnings or even banning members. In short, a moderator becomes your representative in the forum, enforcing your community rules and being your eyes and ears in the forum. For this reason, you really need to make sure you choose the right moderator and manage them correctly. But how can you select the right person in your community? Below we have come up with some tips for choosing (and afterwards managing) moderators. We hope that they come in handy. Choosing A Moderator Since choosing a representative for you and your brand is crucial to the community, make sure you take the proper time for your decision. Regardless of how long you take, discussions about who should become a moderator should be done in private, either via email or personal message. Talking publicly in your community about moderator selection will only add drama to your life that you don’t need. Besides keeping the discussions private between you and the selective candidates, here are some traits and questions to think about when selecting a moderator:

● Have they been campaigning to be a moderator? The best moderators tend to be ones who are reluctant (but willing). Be wary of anyone asking or contacting you for a position as moderator.

● Do they understand your goal or mission of the community?

● Are they passionate about the topic?

● Do they actively participate in the community on a regular basis? Over an acceptable

timespan (more than 6 months)? It’s not so much post count, but do they visit on a regular basis without being prompted.

● Are they someone who reports violators of rules of the community to your team? (i.e.

do they flag posts, or do they walk by and ignore issues).

● Do they tend be eventempered in their behaviour and their responses, including rational with the irrational and patient with the new?

● Do they follow the rules themselves? Might be a bad idea to select a moderator if they

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don’t follow your rules.

● When they add comments to a discussion are they detailed and full of insight, or are most of their comments monosyllabic?

● Are they well respected by others in the community ?

● If you have an existing Mod team, will their personality fit in with the rest of the mod

team? When selecting a moderator, you may want to ask other moderators for their opinion (if this is not your first pick), or from others within your company that may propose an interesting selection you might have missed. Managing Moderators Once you find the right moderator, you cannot put your community on autopilot and hope your new moderator “gets it”. The moderators are your representative in the community, so it’s important to train them, but also share your expectations with them. The end goal is to ensure consistency with how they moderate the community. Here are some things to consider when it comes to managing your new moderator:

● Create a space for moderators to chat in your community among themselves and you.

● Encourage them to ask questions, seek guidance where they want clarification.

● Monitor their actions and correct where necessary by providing polite constructive feedback.

● Make sure they share with you major decisions like when they delete content, close a

discussion or ban a user.

● You still have the duty to moderate, but in your role as a community manager, you will want to ensure consistent application of the rules.

● You may also wish to create some moderator guidelines, not only because it will help

them, but it will help you if your community continues to grow and you need more moderators.

● Some communities use a probation period to make sure new moderators capture the

right tone.

● Take proper time to review how they are doing and provide feedback.

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Rewarding Moderators Being a moderator is usually a volunteer (unpaid) role, but that does not mean you cannot reward them in other ways. Make sure to say thank you and encourage them in private and public. Involve them in discussions about the future of the community and listen to their suggestions.You might consider sending them some swag or the occasional gift. Sometimes even a small thank you card in the mail can go a long way in making people feel valued for their contributions. Final Thoughts Nobody is perfect. Sometimes in spite of your best intentions you might choose the wrong person to be a moderator. Do not be afraid to remove a moderator if you made a mistake. Leaving a bad moderator in your community can cause damage to your community and even worse, member morale. Act quick and fairly. If you’ve tried to correct their behaviour and things have not improved, sometimes it’s just time to move on. Do not discuss the issue in public as much as you may be tempted and don’t be shy to try again. With the experience under your belt you will get better at not making the same mistake twice.

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Keeping Users Engaged Community engagement is more than just increasing pageviews or the number of registered users. You need to look at member actions. Does your most active user list fluctuate or is it only one or two members who dominate? Do users return after their first visit and engage with the community? Do you have lots of lurkers but few posters? These are the kind of things you will want to tackle to keep users engaged. Below are some tips to help make that happen. 1- Create an email newsletter to highlight content in the community.

A great way to keep users in the loop, and have them come back to your site, is by simply letting them know “what's new”. Email software like MailChimp, is super easy to use even for people who are not design experts. It’s also a great way to highlight discussions, topics or events occurring in your community. Over the month, you can bookmark discussions, or keep a draft handy to remember what content to include. With the newsletter you can also reward engaged members. For example, a community for small business owners could award a member with the highest number of karma points a free banner or ad slot in that month’s newsletter. Regardless of how you approach what content to include, the goal is to pique user interest, so they come back to the community and participate. 2- Choose a Forum Software that has email notifications that bring users back to the community. Choose a forum software that allows users to get email notifications. In Vanilla, for example, when a user is mentioned in a forum post, they will get an email telling them that they were

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mentioned. This is on by default. In the email, the actual comment is not included. This is to drive the mentioned user back to the community and engage with the poster. 3- Enable social media sharing, but use social media content to direct people back to your community. Social media networks are a great way to engage users and bring their attention to community content that may be interesting. There are two ways to use social media for community engagement. For inbound purposes, I have found Twitter to be most effective. It’s a great way to share a discussion with your followers and invite them to comment. To be effective, you want to make sure to invite new (and existing) users sign up and follow you on Twitter. Include your Twitter handle on the initial email to members, when they join your forum, and include it in your monthly newsletter. If you use your community as a support tool, you can also gently remind users to engage in the community.

Some brands use Facebook. This can be tough, as discussions might happen on Facebook, and not on your community. If you do use Facebook, encourage them in the message to discuss things in the community. Also, if you decide to employ this strategy, enable social logins on your community platform so new users can easily create an account to engage. As an outbound strategy, make it easy for users to share content from your community. Enable simple Twitter or Facebook share buttons, or use a service like ShareThis. 4- Use gamification features, but tie it to something meaningful. Use your community platform to reward positive behaviour. One way you can do this is by creating unique and creative badges, but it can also be by tying positive engagement to special

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privileges earned with karma points. Some of the perks you could give include, access to a special insider category, or ability to add a signature in their posts.

5- Have a content schedule and plan to create content worth talking about. Especially when you start out, ensure you or your team have a plan to post content that creates discussion. Focus on interactions by always thinking about why members should care to engage. Maybe take a contrarian point of view or include a poll.

The goal is to get people talking. Ask opinions, solicit ideas, collect suggestions. In short, ask for users to engage with you. Always think about how you can get interaction and avoid just publishing great reading material. Summary Keeping users engaged takes work, but using a combination of email marketing, gamification, social media and great content, you can encourage your members to keep engaging with you.

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Community Manager Basics

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