Policies, guidelines, and governance provide the framework and boundaries for your community, but moderation is where those policies are turned into day-to-day management. Direct moderation is the day-to-day interaction and management that signals to members what gets attention—both good and … [Read more...]
Community Best Practices: Architecting the Community that Meets Your Needs
By now, countless organizations have learned the painful lesson: “If you build it, they will come,” only works in the movies. But there’s a related lesson that is a core tenet of community management. How you build it—the shape of the community you create—drives whether the community meets your … [Read more...]
Community Best Practices: Creating an Action Plan
From values, to members, to tactics. Formulating an action plan for your community is where the rubber begins to meet the road. Your action plan highlights how you are going to make this community effective on a day-to-day basis. It needs to take into account the organizational environment in … [Read more...]
Community Best Practices: The Benefits of Starting Small
If you are starting a community today – you are both blessed and cursed by history. Years of research and community development today offer more advice than ever on the best practices of community. But the growth of online communities generally can also set expectations that new communities should … [Read more...]
Best Practices for Selecting a Community Platform
Q: What's the difference between buying a new home and selecting a community platform? A: One is a major expense, fills you with angst and forces you to move all your stuff. The other changes your address. Joking aside, we tend to approach the selection of a new platform like we would a new … [Read more...]
How Can I Use Gamification for Community Engagement?
By Shannon Abram, Relationship Manager at The Community Roundtable. Gamification is a hot topic in TheCR Network, and among community managers at large. In fact, – nearly half of our surveyed communities in the State of Community Management 2014 employed some form of gamification (and more than … [Read more...]
If you run a community, don’t think like a website on metrics
By Ted McEnroe, The Community Roundtable As we continue to slice and dice the data from more than 200 communities for the State of Community Management 2015, we know that one of the most viewed pieces of the report will be the engagement profiles - the percentage of members who are lurking, … [Read more...]
Our Community Superheroes Share Their Superheroes, Part 3
By Ted McEnroe, The Community Roundtable Today we wrap up a three-part series on the community professionals whom we dubbed as Community Superheroes in the recently-published Community Manager Handbook: 20 Lessons from Community Superheroes - and the people in their work they consider … [Read more...]
Our Community Superheroes Share Their Superheroes, Part 2
By Ted McEnroe, The Community Roundtable Last week, we shared with you a little added information from The Community Manager Handbook: 20 Lessons from Community Superheroes. In the back of the handbook, we list the people that the 20 community professionals we interviewed for the handbook would … [Read more...]
Stakeholder engagement, governance and preschool
By Ted McEnroe, The Community Roundtable “What do you want for breakfast?” you ask your 4-year-old. Answer A: “I don’t know. Answer B: “Pie.” (Not a great answer at 7 a.m. – also “Candy.” Or “Mac and cheese.”) Answer C: (Silence.) Do that once and you realize that in order to get results, you … [Read more...]
