Community Manager Tips

Community Manager Tip: Meet People in Person

3 Comments

For those of us who manage global online communities, meeting people in person isn’t always easy. However, it is important to find ways to meet people in real life whenever possible, and we should be careful not to underestimate the value of making these real world connections. Last week, I attended LinuxCon where I gave a presentation about the MeeGo Community and did more demos than I can count, but the real value of the conference was in the conversations that I had with community members.

Some thoughts on why this is so important:

  • You put a face to the name and start to build better relationships with people.
  • People will provide different feedback in person and will often talk more frankly about community issues that they would not be comfortable putting in writing in a public forum.
  • It’s fun! These are people that you have something in common with and you can have some really interesting conversations with people and make new friends in the process.
  • I return from conferences refreshed with new ideas that come from having conversations with people outside of the typical daily routine.

Additional Reading

Part of a series of community manager tips blog posts.

Photo by Aaron Hockley of Hockley Photography.

sxsw

Want to see me talk about RSS Hacking at SXSW?

1 Comment

If you want to see me speak at SXSW, you can comment and vote on my session before 11:59 CDT on Friday, August 27. Here’s how SXSW panel selection is weighted: 30% popular vote (you!), 30% program staff and 40% advisory board, so I’ll need some votes before they will accept my session! Here are the details about my proposed session so you can decide on whether to vote for it.

Hacking RSS: Filtering & Processing Obscene Amounts of Information

Information overload is less about having too much information and more about not having the right tools and techniques to filter and process information to find the pieces that are most relevant for you. This presentation will focus on showing you a variety of tips and techniques to get you started down the path of looking at RSS feeds in a completely different light. The default RSS feeds generated by your favorite blog or website are just a starting point waiting to be hacked and manipulated to serve your needs. Most people read RSS feeds, but few people take the time to go one step further to hack on those RSS feeds to find only the most interesting posts. I combine tools like Yahoo Pipes, BackTweets, PostRank and more with some simple API calls to be able to find what I need while automatically discarding the rest. You start with one or more RSS feeds and then feed those results into other services to gather more information that can be used to further filter or process the results. This process is easier than it sounds once you learn a few simple tools and techniques, and no “real” programming experience is required to get started. This session will show you some tips and tricks to get you started down the path of hacking your RSS feeds.

elsewhere

Blogging Elsewhere

Here is a summary of links to my posts appearing on other blogs over the past couple of weeks.

GigaOM’s WebWorkerDaily*

MeeGo*

*Disclaimers:

  • GigaOM’s WebWorkerDaily: I am a paid blogger for the GigaOM network.
  • MeeGo: I am a full-time employee at Intel and contributing to MeeGo is part of my job.
Community Manager Tips

Community Manager Tip: Role Model Good Behavior

1 Comment

Last week’s community manager tip about how members notice everything is part of why community managers need to pay close attention to how we behave in our online communities. Members notice everything, and they watch the community manager and other leaders in the community to determine what types of behaviors are appropriate and expected in the community. Every community operates with slightly different norms and expectations, and we need to be careful to role model those behaviors that we want to see in our members.

Here are a few things to think about. Are you encouraging behaviors you want to see from others?

  • Do you try to be as helpful when people are asking questions as you expect from other community members?
  • Are you careful to remain calm and not fly off the handle when things get intense?
  • Do you use language that is consistent with what you expect others to use?
  • What techniques do you use to help redirect people to keep the discussions on topic?
  • How do you deal with difficult community members?

Additional Reading

Part of a series of community manager tips blog posts.

Photo by Amber Case used with permission.

Community Manager Tips

Community Manager Tip: Members Notice Everything

1 Comment

You can’t get away with hiding anything in an online community; community members will notice even the smallest things. While this is true in communities of every size, it is especially noticeable in large communities with many members. People are often under the mistaken impression that they can post something in a wiki or other content system, and as long they don’t link to it, no one will be able to find it. However, we have these things called search engines and recent changes pages where people can find everything. This is especially true now that everything seems to have an RSS feed or email notifications, since many users choose to have changes, like new web pages or wiki recent changes feeds, pushed to them to review whenever they have a few spare minutes.

This creates some interesting challenges and advantages for community managers:

  • Advantage: Posting information early, especially in a wiki, gives you a place to collaborate with others and make the document better. Don’t worry about trying to hide things – get them out in the open early, and let people help you improve.
  • Advantage: People will also notice spam quickly, and if you make it easy to report spam, you can keep the community spam free.
  • Challenge: Once the information is out there, it is public. Deleting data on the internet is a myth, since it is cached, mirrored and in RSS feeds, and removing information from your community is likely to cause more negative responses than leaving it alone.

Additional Reading

Part of a series of community manager tips blog posts.

Photo by Keven Law used under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 2.0 Generic license.

elsewhere

Blogging Elsewhere

Here is a summary of links to my posts appearing on other blogs over the past couple of weeks.

GigaOM’s WebWorkerDaily*

MeeGo*

*Disclaimers:

  • GigaOM’s WebWorkerDaily: I am a paid blogger for the GigaOM network.
  • MeeGo: I am a full-time employee at Intel and contributing to MeeGo is part of my job.
Community Manager Tips

Community Manager Tip: Nagging as an Art Form

1 Comment

I often tell people that nagging is a big part of community management. Yes, you could call it by some other nice names, “encouraging”, “managing”, “asking”, “requesting”, but the reality is that it can seem a lot like nagging. As community managers, we stay focused on what the community needs, and this often means that we need help from others to provide information, blog posts, technical details and more.

Yes, the term nagging seems a little harsh, and this is probably more like project management, but the end result is to get people to do something without making it seem like you are nagging, so here are a few tips:

  • Provide context for what you need to help people understand why what you require is important.
  • Manage your tasks like a project with a roadmap, and give people due dates and reminders.
  • Offer to help if possible. Sometimes people are unfamiliar with community technology (blog software, wikis, mailing lists, etc.), and offering your help the first time to get them started can make them more comfortable and self-sufficient later.
  • Have backup ideas and keep in mind that not everyone will deliver on time no matter how many times you ask / nag, so it can help to plan for a little extra knowing that not everything will be ready when you wanted it.

Additional Reading

Part of a series of community manager tips blog posts.

Photo by Flickr user Elliot Brown licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 Generic license.

Community Manager Tips

Community Manager Tip: Value of Waiting

1 Comment

Most community managers keep a close watch on their online communities to be able to respond quickly, but really good community managers know when to respond right away and when to wait. If something is truly wrong, you should step in immediately to let people know you are working on fixing the issue, and when someone has an urgent or quick question, responding right away can help a community member get through an issue and back to being productive. However, there are many times when waiting and watching can be the best strategy.

Here are some times when you might want to wait:

  • For less urgent questions, wait to see if another community member responds. This gets more people participating and active in the community.
  • When someone is attacking and highly critical, a response from the community manager can seem defensive or self-serving. By waiting, you might find that other, more neutral community members come to your rescue. You can add more details later, if needed.
  • During controversial discussions, it can be useful to wait and let other people weigh in with opinions. If the community manager responds too early, you can shut the discussion down rather than learning where people stand.

Additional Reading

Part of a series of community manager tips blog posts.

Photo by Flickr user Vincent van der Pas used under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 2.0 Generic license.

conference

Techniques for Monitoring Online Communities: WebVisions Video

1 Comment

Our WebVisions panel about Techniques for Monitoring Online Communities was just released on video thanks to the wonderful team over at Strange Love Live.

I’m a little biased since I was moderating the panel, but I thought it went really well thanks to the amazing people who were part of the panel: Marshall Kirkpatrick, Justin Kistner and Nathan DiNiro. These three have some awesome tips and techniques that they shared during our session. Enjoy the 60 minute video!

Open source, research, and other stuff I'm interested in posting.