best practices Archives

CMGT 101: Moderation in Online Communities

March 26, 2018 By Jim Storer

Note: This content appears in a slightly different form in our ebook: CMGT 101: 17 Community Leaders Share Their Secrets for Success.CMGT 101 is packed with engagement ideas, governance tips, career advice, and more from community leaders working at innovative organizations like CA Technologies, Aetna, Electronic Arts, SAP, Pearson, Akamai, and Atlassian. Download the ebook here for free.

Jerry Green is a Community Strategist at The Community Roundtable. He shared his best practices for moderation in online communities.

Why is it moderation important to the overall health of an online community?

A well-moderated community provides a welcome place for members and guests. Good moderation builds trust among the members and ensures that the community is a safe place to engage. Once assured that a community is safe, users will feel comfortable sharing and the quality of the engagement improves.

Moderation in Online Communities Tip #1: Do welcome new members to the community.

This is especially important when launching a new community. Acknowledge new members, reiterate the purpose of the community and encourage them to participate.

Moderation in Online Communities Tip #2: Do show members how to participate.

Give new members a list of three things to do. These can include: Read the guidelines for participating; like a post, you value or enjoy; search for a topic of interest; respond to a post you can contribute to.

Moderation in Online Communities Tip #3: Do be sure you understand the question or issue.

Before you respond to a member’s post, read the post again. Especially in a customer support community, it’s important to show that you understand the question and are genuinely interested in assisting. Too often I see a member respond “That’s not what I was asking. Did you even read my post?”

Moderation in Online Communities Tip #4: Do establish clear guidelines for participation.

Your guidelines should focus on encouraging the behavior you’d like members to exhibit in addition to discouraging the conduct that is prohibited. Be firm and consistent in applying the guidelines to all members. When dealing with undesirable member behavior, use the guidelines as justification for corrective action.

Moderation in Online Communities Tip #5: Don’t be a robot.

Respond in a sincere, personal voice. Some community moderation platforms provide the functionality of selecting a pre populated response. Avoid using “canned” responses unless volume necessitates it. Even when you’re using an automated response – take the time to make sure it is in the tone of your community so it won’t feel robotic (unless robots are your thing. In which case: be-boop-boop.)

CMGT 101: Building Narratives in Your Online Community

March 19, 2018 By Jim Storer

Dina Vekaria is a Community Manager at Pearson. She shared best practices for building narratives in online communities.

Why should community managers focus on building narratives in their online community programs?

At Pearson, the world’s leading learning company, we have incredible stories. Vlogs (video blogs) are one way we are telling those stories and building our brand. We use our most effective storytellers, our employees, to share our vision. The vlog posts to our community, YouTube, LinkedIn, and Twitter.

Do Plan in Advance

Plan three months of vlog content in advance. By knowing what you are covering in advance, you can begin to ask colleagues for contributions with plenty of time to compile and edit the content.

Do Control the Narrative

If you’re the vlogger, storyboard or script the vlog from start to finish, right down to where you’re going to insert your colleagues’ sections. This way, when you record your part of the vlog, you know what you’re saying and can even film future vlogs in advance. For January 2018’s vlog, I storyboarded the entire vlog in November, assigned sections to my colleagues, and filmed my sections prior to going on leave for the holidays. This was great for two reasons: I got to enjoy my holiday and, more importantly, the vlog was posted on time.

Do Strive for Diversity

The purpose of my vlog is to highlight our Pearson employees, so I include our people in every single vlog. Consider including colleagues who may not normally have a voice, because they work remotely or are on a team you are unfamiliar with. Ensure you’re inclusive of colleagues from all over the world. If they’re comfortable, have your colleague speak in their first language as that helps show how diverse your workplace is.

Don’t Be Afraid to Get Started

If you want to vlog and don’t have filming or editing skills, don’t let that deter you. I knew very little about filming and editing, but everything I have learned so far is from using free resources, like YouTube. There are thousands of videos showing you how to produce a video and, as long as you are committed to the project, the rest is easy enough to pick up. It doesn’t have to start off polished, you work towards that, one vlog at a time.

Don’t Be Afraid to Let the Real You Shine

A vlog is a way to showcase the personalities of the people you feature, including yourself. Don’t be afraid to be yourself, even if you get a little silly; include the silly in the bloopers at the end. Be your authentic self and allow the colleagues you have highlighted to be their authentic selves, and nothing but good can come from it.

Happy CMAD 2018 – Community Management Advancement Day

January 22, 2018 By Hillary Boucher

HAPPY CMAD 2018, EVERYONE!

I’m going to be honest – CMAD is one of my favorite days of the year. While CMAD started out as Community Management Appreciation Day, we like to imagine it has evolved into something more – community management advancement day. Because really, what shows more appreciation than saying, “we see you and we want to help you get to where you want to be!”?

We started brainstorming a way to celebrate CMAD 2018 that would both highlight some of the amazing community management leaders we know and provide a tangible asset for community professionals everywhere to enjoy. Thus, CMGT 101 was born. We worked closely with 17 community leaders to get their advice on specific topics, like member retention, effective engagement, community UX and more and compiled this ebook: CMGT 101: 17 Community Leaders Share Their Secrets for Success.

We could not have published this ebook without the thoughtful contributions from:

Lori Harrison-Smith, Steelcase
J.J. Lovett, CA Technologies
Aaliyah Miller, Aetna
Patty McEnaney, Envestnet
Monique van den Berg, Atlassian
Jerry Green, The Community Roundtable
Kirsten Laaspere, Akamai
Jay Graff, JM Family Group
Marjorie Anderson, PMI
Jerry Janda, SAP
Dana Baldwin, Electronic Arts
Dina Vekaria, Pearson
Judi Cardinal, Akamai
Lisa Allison, Analog Devices
Heather Ausmus, Ciena
Chris Catania, ESRI
Stephanie Field, Carbon Black

You can head here and download your own copy of CMGT 101: 17 Community Leaders Share Their Secrets for Success and check out the best practices that this amazing group of community leaders shares.

If you are a community professional please know that we do appreciate you, and all the work that you do every day to advance the world of community management. If you aren’t a community professional – what you are waiting for? Quick – find one and thank them!

A final shout-out to ALL the community leaders in TheCR Network – we only highlight 17 of them here, but there are hundreds more who inspire us daily and it is immensely gratifying to get to work alongside them.

Happy CMAD!

Working Out Loud and Community Management

November 14, 2017 By Rachel Happe

Note: This post was originally published here.

Working out loud (WOL) is essentially any behavior where you share your work transparently with a network of people.

That network can be as small as a work team and as large as the Intranet. From my perspective, it is the act of sharing done with the intent of soliciting feedback, providing value to others, or building relationships with people beyond your current network.

My work out loud journey started in January of 2008 with my first work-related blog,The Social Organization. Initially, I wrote mostly for myself, to work through my thoughts. I soon found that it, combined with Twitter, was the best way to find people who cared about the same things I did, which allowed me to build a strategic network that made me smarter, supported my work, and enabled my success. I would never have started The Community Roundtable without first having that blog.

Like my experience working out loud, it can be done in many places and it doesn’t need to happen in within the boundaries of a community. However, I would argue that it is much more effective when it is done within a community.

Communities create a shared context and, when done well, increase the level of trust between members. That increases a few critical things:

Relevancy and resonance of what is shared
Likelihood and quality of validation and feedback
Percent of people who feel comfortable sharing
Complexity or ambiguity of what is shared

Because of this, great communities create spaces where deep conversation and innovation happen – or in business terms, it increases the value generated from working out loud.

So what is the role of the community manager in working out loud?

Simon Terry said it quite succinctly: community managers are the architects and agents of strategic value. They ensure working out loud is easy to do and is rewarded with peer recognition and response. That sounds easier than it is in practice but it is the role of community management in a nutshell.

Why is this so complex to actually do? Because it requires:

Developing a shared purpose and value that is compelling and attracts people aligned with that purpose
Ensuring people are welcomed and acclimated into the community
Developing both value-gained and value-added ways for members with different personality types to participate
Creating strategic triggers that ask people to engage in ways that are just a little more involved than they do already – moving them up the engagement and trust curve
Measuring the breadth and depth of behaviors across the community and adjusting or realigning the approach as behaviors change, the culture of the community matures, and the purpose of the community evolves
Developing peer leaders as advocates for different stakeholder perspectives
Moderating and modeling the language of engagement to ensure people feel supported, even when they are challenged
Ensuring the community sponsor or host understands and realizes the value of the community’s outputs
Managing platforms and channels to align with strategic goals and member needs, to make key behaviors as easy as possible to do

Community management is often seen as a tactical role with member engagement as the primary responsibility. Done well, however, it is far more strategic and responsible for creating the conditions of engagement; building trust in a scaled way, and developing a culture that is agile, engaged, and innovative. A big part of creating the conditions of engagement is supporting individuals on their work out loud journey and helping them understand what possibilities it unlocks for them personally.

It is why I believe that the future of all leadership and management is community management. It’s not about what we do ourselves – but what we support and enable others to do.

Dos and Don’ts for Happy and Healthy Community Moderation

November 13, 2017 By Jerry Green

We all know that a community manager’s to-do list can be daunting, if not paralyzing, at times. But what about a community moderator? Community moderation can be just as demanding.

For several years, I was the one and only official member of the community “team” for a large company. Among my many responsibilities was community moderation, so I got a firsthand view of what went into successful moderation and balancing the community management workload.

And while I could have written a few hundred pieces of advice, I’ve narrowed it down to ten you need to have a happy and healthy community (and moderator).

DO welcome new members to the community.

This is especially important when launching a new community. Acknowledge new members, reiterate the purpose of the community and encourage them to participate. (Check this great new member case study.)

DO show members how to participate.

Give new members a list of three things to do. These can include: Read the guidelines for participating; like a post you value or enjoy; search for a topic of interest; respond to a post you can contribute to.

DO establish clear guidelines for participation.

Do be sure you understand the question or issue.

Before you respond to a member’s post, read the post again. Especially in a customer support community it’s important to show that you understand the question and are genuinely interested in assisting. Too often I see a member respond “That’s not what I was asking. Did you even read my post?”

DON’T be a robot.

DO be empathetic.

Always remember that the member you’re responding to may be justly upset and they’re looking to you for assistance. You represent your brand in the community and sometimes the brand will have done something wrong and the consumer is looking to you for help.

DO leverage analytics to evaluate your community’s content.

Example: Check frequently searched terms to see what your members are looking for. Make sure those topics have appropriate content posted and tagged accordingly.

DO acknowledge and nurture your Super Users.

It’s amazing how much support a small group of passionate, dedicated advocates can contribute. A quick note of appreciation, thanks or congratulations can go a long way.

DO use key word filters to screen all posts.

Key word filters can be used to screen obvious issues like profanity but they can also be used to alert you of potential issues. I’ve used them to search for potentially volatile political discussions, product issues and dissatisfied clients.

DON’T feed the trolls.

Every community has them. They’re only there to stir the pot. Deal with them calmly and within the guidelines. Depending on their behavior you can ignore them, warn them or send them away. (Here’s another great post about conflict resolution in communities.)

Language of Engagement Guidelines

October 30, 2017 By Rachel Happe

I am lucky to work with some of the best community managers in the world and over the years, we’ve learned a lot together about how to encourage and inspire engagement. Interestingly, the most valuable engagement requires a focus on both high-level community strategy and how it is translated into policies, governance, and guidelines while also maintaining a micro-focus on the tone and wording.

What I’ve noticed over the years is that perfection is the enemy of engagement – and that, more than anything, is difficult for people to accept. In our culture and our organizations, we are so often judged when our grammar is poor, when we don’t do the research to answer our own questions and when we say something perceived as dumb because we lack experience…. ironically all the things that encourage engagement in communities.

What we’ve found is that engagement is often prompted by someone in need – and often arrested by authority. In many ways, the language of engagement runs counter to the language of business.

When you are trying to engage – instead of trying to explain – we have found some of the following practices encourage engagement.

Do

Share an opinion or disagree by using phrases like ‘In my experience…’, ‘My perspective is…’ or ‘From my point of view’ – this signals that there is room for other people to have a different perspective or set of experiences and opens the dialog in a way that is respectful, even though you disagree. This is critical online because others cannot see your body language.
Give people the benefit of the doubt and assume good intent – often, even if the intent is not exactly positive, by assuming good intent you will help the other person to engage in a constructive conversation vs. a confrontational one.
Use pictures especially in unexpected ways. Instead of simply writing ‘Have a good weekend!’ include a link to a picture of a beach, or a cocktail, or something else you know the other person will be doing. Why? Getting the other person to smile will give them a positive association with you, your message, and your interaction.
Use emotional markers whether those are exclamation points, emojis, or emoticons. This can seem silly but, when people can’t see your body language these markers help them understand your emotional position. When you seem open, friendly, and excited they are more likely to engage with you.
Be aware your digital body language. How you respond and in what frequency matters.
Ask questions and be curious. Even if you have just answered a question, there is no need to close the conversation – follow-up and ask why the person is asking or ask for additional clarification – you might be surprised that what they need is not the answer to the question they asked but a different thing altogether because they didn’t really know how to ask the question they needed answered.
Be open-ended – suggest that something ‘might’ or ‘could’ work – unless you are speaking about a technical, urgent or specific thing where there is a clear correct answer and even then, it is often best to get a subject matter expert or peer to be the definitive voice.
Ignore a conversation. If you are a community manager or executive, once you step into the dialog you can very easily shut it down because of your perceived authority so ignoring the conversation may be the best way to encourage engagement.

Don’t

Use absolutes, deflections, or judgment words like ‘no’, ‘but’, ‘should’ and ‘you [are wrong/should/think]’ unless you really have to. All of those words and phrasing can have an arresting effect on conversation and make people more defensive than they would otherwise be.
Be more declarative than you have to be. This is tough – in business, we are encouraged to be declarative and assertive but the more we complete thoughts and arguments, the less room there is for other voices, especially if you are an authority figure.
Add fuel to fire. Always verify what you are hearing before you pile on to good or bad news.
Assume you know what another has experienced or is feeling – ask and don’t judge.
Make promises you can’t keep. Listen, acknowledge and ask questions but do not try to solve problems that are beyond your control or make promises that are dependent on others before you’ve confirmed that it’s possible.

What other techniques do you use or you’ve seen used effectively?

Want to increase engagement? Welcome new community members… and then follow up!

October 26, 2017 By Rachel Happe

One of the most consistent findings in our State of Community Management research is on the impact of new member programs on getting new members to engage in a community. It makes sense – having someone welcome you, give you some ground rules on behaviors, give you a tour of the community, etc., makes new members more comfortable, and you’re more likely to dip a toe in a new community if you have ideas for how to do it.

But then what?

If you’re like many communities – you don’t follow up again to see how the settling in process has gone. But maybe you should.

Making a second contact with new members a short time into their community experience substantially increases the likelihood they will continue to contribute and correlates with still higher engagement. The difference is exceptionally notable when it comes to the number of inactive members – communities with formal follow-up programs for new members see inactivity rates that are 15-20 points lower than those communities that don’t follow up.

So what can you do?

Contact the new member after a certain period of time to see if they have any new questions.
Contact them after their first post or other significant activity and see if they were satisfied with the response or had other questions.
Contact them to see if there is anything you can help them find/solve.

Reaching out tells them that the community has their interests in mind at a time when maybe they are a little more settled in a new place than they were on day one. And it may just keep them involved.

Community Management FAQs – What is community strategy?

August 1, 2017 By Jim Storer

What is community strategy?

A successful community strategy integrates social tools and methods with business goals and processes. A good community strategy also aligns an organization’s goals with member needs setting you up to succeed in both keep engagement high and provide ROI.

We recommend using the Community Maturity Model to help in building a community strategy. Below are some of the primary tasks for building a community related to each competency of the CMM:

Strategy

Define the business objective
Articulate the community purpose, from the members’ perspective
Assemble research to help build your business case
Complete competitive audit – what competes for members’ attention?
Build a business case
Calculate and secure investment required

Leadership

Find or develop executive sponsors
Determine what executive and stakeholder education is necessary
Calculate and secure investment required

Culture

Articulate cultural limitations and opportunities
Assess willingness and aptitude for change
Determine if specific training or change management initiatives are needed
Calculate and secure investment required

Community Management

Understand the community management approach needed, based on business objective and member characteristics
Define roles and responsibilities
Calculate and secure investment required
Assign roles and responsibilities

Content and Programming

Define content and programming needed to reach the business objective
Determine gaps in available and required content and programming
Calculate and secure investment required

Policies and Governance

Assess current policies
Amend or develop policies as needed
Audit current governance – or lack thereof – of social media and collaboration environments
Develop a governance model
Calculate and secure investment required

Tools

Determine required tools – software, applications, templates, and guides
Audit current toolset
Calculate and secure investment required

Metrics and Measurement

Articulate primary value that will enable business goal
Articulate secondary value
Determine metrics for executives, operational management, and tactical management
Assess ability to capture metrics
Build capacity to capture metrics, as needed
Calculate and secure investment required

Community Triage: 5 Common Community Management Problems

July 18, 2017 By Georgina Cannie

Lesson 1 for the day: Do not put a plastic cutting board in the oven.

Lesson 2: Do not grab with bare hands to take it out.

My recent life lessons brought me to the ER waiting room to watch triage nurses in their element. As each patient arrived, they took their vitals, assessed their symptoms and sent them to the appropriate area of the hospital, based on their most likely diagnoses. Some patients with quick-fixes were “fast-tracked”, others were sent to the ER Doctor and still others were transferred to specialty departments in other areas of the building.

While waiting to be treated it occurred to me that so much of what TheCR team does is Community Triage. Community Practitioners come to us and share the challenges their networks are experiencing. From there we identify the most likely diagnosis and point them in the right direction for help – whether it be connecting them with key members of TheCR Network, visiting their organization to host a workshop, or offering them one of our hundreds of professional resources.

Here are the top five most common symptoms our team sees, along with potential causes.

No Engagement

Think of this symptom like the common cold. Every community lives through it at some point. Learn to identify the risk factors:

The Shared Purpose of The Community Does Not Resonate. If the purpose of your community was dictated by your organization, and does not reflect user buy in, members have no reason to participate.
Stage Fright. When members feel self doubt about their contributions, they are likely to just skip them altogether.
No Community Manager. Ships without a captain never get far. Communities with no community manager, or a community manager who has a dozen other job responsibilities outside of the community, are unlikely to be lively.

Lost Engagement

So you are cruising along with steady engagement and then it drops off. What happened?

The Content or Programming has Become Stale. Do you want to eat the same thing for dinner every night? Neither does your community. Engagement may drop if you do not adapt your content to shifting needs and interests.
Dissatisfaction or Distrust. Did someone break the “What happens in community, stays in community” rule? Did your organization remove a beloved member? If so, your members could be giving you the cold shoulder because you lost their trust.
Competing Channels. The cool kids might be sitting at a different lunch table. New, competing ways to achieve the shared purpose and value of the community group will often divert engagement.

Unanswered Questions

When you have engagement in your community, members are comfortable asking questions, but no one will answer them… it’s about as irksome as a fresh paper cut. Here’s what could be happening:

No SME’s. Communities need members with varied areas of interest and expertise. This way, everyone becomes both a question-asker and a Subject Matter Expert in their own way.
Jargon. Have you ever had a Doctor tell you you are suffering from “Dyspepsia”? It means you have an upset stomach. So why didn’t they just say so?! If your members are asking questions full of jargon, the terminology may be confusing others who would have otherwise been able to answer.
Consumption Culture. If you have touted community solely as a place to receive value, members may have been conditioned to take from the community, and less inclined to add to it.

Faceless Community

Can we keep this anonymous? If your community is devoid of profile pictures and bios, it may be a sign of a few issues:

Lack of Connection. In many communities, members view the space as a resource hub, not as a place to make connections with others.
Lack of Trust. No one wants to be spotted in the rough part of town. If your community has picked up a reputation as being a poor use of work time no one will want to show their face there.
Lack of Investment. Do your members consider themselves members? Are you sure? Users who want to “just drop by” are unlikely to commit with a profile picture.

Unorganized Content

Messy communities distract from your shared purpose and frustrate members who are looking for a particular item. There are a few reasons your surgical field could be tough to keep sterile.

Poor Architecture. If your site isn’t intuitive, it is no wonder things never get put away correctly.
Too Many Sub Groups. Too many choices make for bad choices. Your members might be logging content in the wrong places due to confusion.
No Community Manager. Or an under-resourced community manager. If you don’t have someone to dictate taxonomy and guide content into the correct channels, don’t be surprised when things get cluttered.

What are the most common symptoms your community comes down with? How do you diagnose and fix them? I’d love to hear your thoughts.

Need to take the temperature of your community? Learn how a Community Benchmark can help!

Why Build an Editorial Calendar for your Community?

April 12, 2017 By Jim Storer

One of the most common questions we get from members is, “How do I increase the value and the volume of member engagement?” This challenge persists across all community types, sizes and use cases. One way we’ve found to increase audience engagement, in terms of both quality and quantity, is to implement an editorial calendar for your community programming.

Earlier this year Georgina Cannie shared some best practices for creating an editorial calendar with members of TheCR Network. In addition to the practical tips she outlined, she also gave a great overview of the benefits of building and maintaining and editorial calendar. I wanted to share her great advice here, for any community managers considering the process.

Stability + Freshness

When you implement an editorial calendar you formally introduce a cyclical timeframe into your community program. These program and content anchors provide increased familiarity and stability to your members. Now, they know what’s going on, what to expect and when to expect it. Since the topic of each cycle is shifting and different collaborators are used, you can create a space for fresh content without confusion. Consider the success of widespread reoccurring events – like the popular Throwback Thursday (#tbt) on social media.

Don’t Reinvent the Wheel

By maintaining the same time and program structure in each editorial cycle, your community team (or you!) doesn’t have to create fresh content plans each week. A program template has been designed and content is plugged into it, which allows the community manager to focus on the value and the curation of the content itself.

Listening + Response Channels

By implementing this structure, the behavior of catering to passing member interests is no longer detrimental to the community effort or the community manager time due to positive reactivity. The shifting topic cycle is the perfect excuse for a community manager to act on community listening and plug-in what members are asking for without disrupting the entire framework. While it might seem like a lot of work in the beginning, an editorial calendar actually frees up your time in the long run to provide better content to your members.

Do you currently use an editorial calendar in your community program planning? What benefits have you found to introducing this structure into your day-to-day community work?