community manager Archives

CM Spotlight AMA Archive: Patrick Hellen, CloudLock, Inc.

November 5, 2014 By Jim Storer

By Shannon Abram, Relationship Manager for The Community Roundtable.

When we invited Patrick Hellen, the community manager for CloudLock, Inc to be our October Community Manager Spotlight we knew we were in for a treat. When HE requested the webinar format be an AMA we knew it was ON. In this 30 minute event Patrick shares his unique perspective on community management while also sharing best practices for job hunting in the community management world.

We ran out of time at the actual AMA and Patrick didn’t get to answer all the questions we received. He was nice enough to send along his answers to even more community questions!

At this new role you’re building community from scratch. Tell us about that experience.

Overall, it was pretty straightforward, but it was intense. I started off by fully building an RFP, while I also built my inner support system. Before I had a single electron of community built, I had talked to, interviewed, and recruited people to help with set up, configuration, reporting, content creation, etc. This was actually the most important step – to fully ensure that I had a support system, and a pre bought in, internal group to help with the community once it was up and running.

From there, it really was just configuration and building. That ended up being a breeze once I had that system in place.

What are your community management resource must-haves?

Pocket – to save articles that I think are interesting and that I can reference later, Tweet deck – to keep in touch with peers and contemporaries, and a few communities – Salesforce’s success one, the CR, Community Geek, and Reddit.

What is the one thing you wish you knew when you were just starting out in community management?

That there’s a hell of a lot more data management involved than I expected, and that if someone doesnt have community built into their goals or job description, you can pretty much guarantee that when the push comes to shove, you get dropped off the TO-DO list pretty easily.

Thus, my initial support push at my current gig.

What do you do when your community goes “quiet?”

Panic.

Generally my initial push for quiet communities is to ask members for something. A subtle reminder that membership is not a receive info only type system, but does require their input and communication to survive.

So, Polls, questions, feedback requests, etc.

Check out the full archive for more:

This content has moved inside The Network.

Patrick Hellen is the community manager for CloudLock, Inc – a cloud security company just outside of Boston, Massachusetts. He currently runs CloudLock Connect, a customer only collaboration community. Most recently he worked for Rapid7, where he managed their SecurityStreet Community.

He’s an unabashed Twitter addict, plays far too many video games, reads nearly constantly, and considers the internet to be mankind’s greatest invention. Follow him at @patrickch, and say hi.

Our Community Manager Spotlight Series is a behind the scenes look at the diverse world of community managers. View the complete archive here.

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Looking to connect with community peers like Patrick? Join TheCR Network and pull a chair up to the table of the smartest community professionals.

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Friday Roundup: Happy Halloween, Community Managers

October 31, 2014 By Jim Storer

By Shannon Abram, Relationship Manager at The Community Roundtable

Happy Halloween, community managers! While we toyed with the idea of having a costume contest for the best “community manager” costume this year, we decided you are a too varied and vibrant bunch – so just image us saluting you with a mini Snickers bar! The announcements kept on rolling this week as we introduced our newest content program – #ESNchat mini decks.

If you aren’t familiar with #ESNchat it’s a weekly Twitter chat (every Thursday at 2pmET) that connect enterprise social network practitioners and community managers around the globe to discuss relevant community topics. You can find more info about the new mini decks here or check out the complete archives and upcoming topic schedule. We’d love to have you join us next Thursday!

We hope you have a happy and safe Halloween if you are celebrating this weekend. We’ll see you back here on Monday!

Our favorite community manager news and links from around the web:

Free Community Manager Webinar Alert -Join Community Roundtable and Jive as we dig into the community manager role. Tuesday, November 18th at 10am PT/1pm ET. The webinar will share results from. The Community Manager Salary Salary research, which aims to bring more awareness to what community managers can expect in their career and what hiring managers should know to grow effective community programs.

The Psychology of Online Comments – Several weeks ago, on September 24th, Popular Science announced that it would banish comments from its Web site. The editors argued that Internet comments, particularly anonymous ones, undermine the integrity of science and lead to a culture of aggression and mockery that hinders substantive discourse.

A Reading List for Community Managers

Say Hello to New #ESNchat Mini Decks – With a month of #ESNchats under our belt we are excited to share the first of these new content initiatives –#ESNchat Mini Decks. While the weekly Storify recaps are a great, totally immersive ESN experience for those that may have missed the chat, or an attendee who wants to double-check something that was shared, they can be very long (often weighing in at over 200 tweets) for an #ESN newbie to dive into.

5 Best Practices for Building an Online Customer Community – So you’ve decided to build a community. Congrats! As an unbiased (cough, cough) Community Manager myself, it really is an excellent way to work closer with your customers, provide excellent information for your prospects, crowdsource improvements to your products, and ask for feedback in real time. It’s a little daunting to start anything from scratch, so here are 5 quick best practices to help get your Community up and running in short order.

TheCR Network Sneak Peek: October 2014 Wrap Up – Oh, October, with your foliage, pumpkin spice lattes, and your community programming. It’s a great time to be a community practitioner and we’ve had a busy month inside the TheCR Network. Here are a few samplings of what’s been going on: 10 Content Curation Techniques for Your Online Community (Roundtable).

JiveWorld 14 Presentations are live – If you missed JiveWorld14 last week you can check out the presentations online.

New community manager and social media jobs:

Social Community Manager – DoubleDown Interactive – Seattle, WA
Community Manager – Ignite Social Media – Cary, NC
Community Manager – InfoScout – San Francisco, CA
Community Manager – Birmingham – Yelp – Birmingham, AL
Social Media Community Manager – JeffreyM Consulting – Bellevue, WA
Community Manager Intern – Attivio Inc. – Newton, MA
Community Manager – AlienVault – AlienVault – Austin, TX
Online Community Manager – Sony Computer Entertainment of America Inc. – Los Angeles, CA
Social Community Manager – IGT – Seattle, WA
Social Media Manager – French West Vaughan – Raleigh, NC
Technical Support and Community Manager – Localytics – Boston, MA
Community & Customer Success/Support Manager – TapAnalytics – San Jose, CA
Senior Manager, Digital Marketing – Starz Entertainment, LLC – Beverly Hills, CA

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Introducing the Community Manager Salary Survey 2014 Infographic

October 23, 2014 By Jim Storer

By Shannon Abram, Relationship Manager at The Community Roundtable.

If you’ve been reading our blog for the last year you know we love a good infographic, which makestoday’s post extra exciting. We are thrilled to share the first data from our newest research platform, the Community Manager Salary Survey 2014, via this new CMSS 2014 infographic: Careers in Community Management.

We surveyed more than 350 internal and external community managers, strategists and directors for this first-ever survey, asking them to share information including their salary, their expertise and responsibilities, their experience, and their career path. The infographic was released Wednesday night during JiveWorld14. (Jive Software is sponsoring the infographic and upcoming publication of the survey data.)

The infographic represents the first research results from the Community Manager Salary Survey 2014. It highlights the salary range for internal and external community professionals, and illustrates the demonstrable career path for those who want to use their skills and experience in more strategic roles. Rachel shared her perspective earlier today:

“The new research highlights a number of what were unproven truths in the community space and adds new insights. It makes clear that community management as a discipline has matured to the point where not only are there great, well-paying jobs to be had, but there is also a clear career path for career professionals.”

You can head over to the official CMSS 2014 Infographic page to download the entire high-res infographic and sign up to be notified when the full Community Manager Salary Survey is released later this year.

Careers in Community Management

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Free Jive Webinar

Join The Community Roundtable and Jive as we dig into the community manager role.

Deep Dive into the Community Manager RoleEvent Date: Tuesday, November 18thEvent Time: 10am PT/1pm ET

The Community Manager Salary Salary research aims to bring more awareness to what community managers can expect in their career and what hiring managers should know to grow effective community programs. This new research from The Community Roundtable takes a comprehensive look at community manager roles.

Learn more >>

Help – I’m a lone wolf community manager!

October 14, 2014 By Jim Storer

By Shannon Abram, Relationship Manager at The Community Roundtable.

One of the most common frustrations we hear about from community managers is that they feel isolated from the rest of their company. Often, community managers sit on a communications or marketing team, sometimes they even reside inside an IT department – and all too often it is easy to feel like they are an island inside their organization.

Today I wanted to share some best practices for those lone wolf practitioners out there. It’s important to recognize and embrace your status as a one-person team and these strategies can help.

1. Take Time to Rest

This might seem counter-intuitive but social media professionals, especially lone wolves, must take time for themselves and disconnect from the community in order to recharge their batteries. To not take that much needed time could result in burnout. It is very healthy and very necessary to occasionally disconnect – and this time away from your community will result in both a fresh perspective when you return, and renewed energy for tackling challenges.

2. Set Up Processes to Monitor, Track Metrics and Share Your Successes

It is crucially important to keep track of community activitiy and share these findings with key stakeholders. Deciding on the metrics (which can be simple at first, especially for the lone wolf practitioner) that best reflect your objectives and then sharing those successes with executives and key lines of business is imperative. Do not be afraid to share those successes that align to organizational goals and help move the needle. The more you can show the community as being globally relevant and impactful the more your programs will gain increased internal traction and support.

3. Ask for Help

Just because you are the only person at your organization with the title “community manager” doesn’t mean you have to go it alone – asking for assistance from colleagues, executives and even outside experts can be a huge source of help for you and energy for your community. When developing new programs and projects, solicit community contributions from other staff members and be explicit about assigning ownership of tasks. Here we use the word “assign” purposely because when you ask people to do something specific, the likelihood of them saying “no” drops. Figure out what it is that people like (whether it is other staff or community members) and suggest something that matches those interests. This will increase their likelihood to participate and give you much needed help.

Are you a lone wolf community professional? How to do maximize your impact when operating solo? We’d love to hear your best practices and advice for other individual community contributors.

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Need community support but operate as a lone wolf at your organization? TheCR Network provides resources, expert advice and a network of community peers that is unparalleled in the industry. Learn how TheCR Network can help you go from lost lone wolf to lean, mean community management machine today!

3 Tips for Building Your Community and Social Media Team

August 21, 2014 By Jim Storer

This is a guest post from Sarah Price, Community and Social Media Programs Lead for Google Glass and member of TheCR Network.

Managing a community team or hoping to someday? Your community managers, forum reps and social support agents will be the face and voice of your brand. Here are a few tips for building a strong team you can trust.

1. Think Big Picture

Despite the title of this post, don’t think of your team as “the forum team” or the “social media team.” Forums and social media are just technologies. Instead, think about how you fit into your department, and your department’s and company’s goals. Is your team part of marketing? Then you might be a retention marketing team: focused on keeping the customers you already have. Perhaps you are part of support operations? You might be a scalable support team, since community is usually more scalable than 1-to-1 phone or email.

Of course your team is likely a blend of marketing, support, PR, HR, legal, and more, but the point is not to limit yourself to the tools and platforms you use. Social media might be new to your business, but the underlying concepts, like building brand trust, aren’t. Staying focused on the big picture will help you set more meaningful business goals, such as leads generated or customer satisfaction, rather than number of likes or shares. It will also help you frame your roles, prioritize desired skills, and make hiring decisions.

2. Create Skill Synergies

Your team requires an incredible range of skills to be successful. They need to be dedicated and empathetic: if they drop the ball with the wrong customer, a PR nightmare could ensue. They need to have detailed knowledge about your industry and be oriented towards customer service, so they can solve issues. They need to be strong project managers to handle the myriad of details that go into administrating your community and social media properties. They will be writing content, so they need to have creativity and an endless pipeline of ideas and inspiration. There will be an onslaught of operational tasks to react to, which they need to balance against strategic work to take your community to the next level, requiring excellent time management, problem solving, and strategic thinking. And don’t forget about good judgment – they will be representing your brand. It is a very rare person who has all of these skills (and if you find them, send them my way! just kidding). So build your team with diversity and balance in mind.

If you have the luxury of making more than one hire, hire someone who is more creative and someone else who is more strategic; one who is a natural people person and one who is good with details. Pay close attention to team fit: will these people work well together and leverage each others’ strengths, or are they so different they will drive each other crazy? If your team is small and you are just hiring one, choose someone whose strengths are different from and complement your own and your peers’ rather than someone who is just like you. And if you’ve inherited your team, identify their complementary strengths and fit them to projects.

3. Lead with Trust

Trust is paramount. Not only do your customers need to trust your team – you, your peers, your manager, your cross-functional stakeholders, your company all need to trust them, too. Strictly require a few characteristics in every team member: willingness to get their hands dirty, a genuine love of helping others, strong writing skills, and demonstrated good judgment; they don’t have to know how to handle every situation but they need to know when they’re in over their head so they can get help. These characteristics are critical because they are the ones that build trust and allow ownership. They need to love what they do, but they also need to feel empowered. Because let’s face it, community managers face some pretty brutal stuff: trolls, flame wars, angry customers… and every mistake they make is public. Ownership will help them get through. Do quality checks, run operational metrics, hold them accountable to their goals; but don’t scrutinize every post or second-guess every decision. They’ll want to do some things differently from how you would – let them! They’ll learn from their mistakes or they’ll show you a new perspective. Of course help them prioritize against the business goals and take a stance on important issues (that’s your job as their manager and leader) but let your team take risks where the stakes are low to moderate. Put their successes above your own, show off their accomplishments, and help them build key relationships; they will have important insights to share and need cross-functional trust, too.

What are your tips for building your community or social media team and managing them to success?

About Sarah: Sarah has worked in the community and social media space since 2008, both for support operations and also for marketing. She has transitioned through several individual roles, including community manager, and now leads community and social media programs for Google Glass.

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TheCR Network helps members like Sarah connect with peers and community experts and provides actionable templates, research and programming. Learn how TheCR Network helps community managers every day.

How can I be a more productive community manager?

August 6, 2014 By Jim Storer

By Shannon DiGregorio Abram, Relationship Manager at The Community Roundtable.

This month we’ve been discussing community management hiring topics, including what traits a hiring manager might look for in a potential community manager and things an aspiring community manager can do before they are hired to be the best possible fit for a community role. Today I’d like to change gears and talk about a challenge that everyone – not just community managers – face: how to be more productive.

Being more productive isn’t a task you can add to your list – it requires a change in your work habits. We spend a lot of time at TheCR talking about the power of forming habits – and how hard that can be for even the most disciplined person. You’ve probably heard the old adage that it takes three weeks of consistent behavior change to form a habit. Or is 27 days? Or 66 days? Turns out I couldn’t find any conclusive evidence on the magic timeframe that turns a chore into a time-saving, productive habit. I did however find a lot of really helpful advice on ways to encourage behavior change and productive habit forming.

The Happiness Project author Gretchen Rubin has an upcoming book focused on habit formation – Better Than Before, and she sums up the entire book in just 21 sentences. The whole post is worth reading, but this list showcasing the four pillars of habits really jumped out at me:

Pillars of Habits

Monitoring: You manage what you monitor, so find a way to monitor whatever matters.
Foundation: First things first, so begin by making sure to get enough sleep, eat and drink right, move, and un-clutter.
Scheduling: If it’s on the calendar, it happens.
Accountability: You do better when you know someone’s watching–even if you’re the one doing the watching.

If you are looking to affect behavior change (namely, being more productive at work or at home) this list is a great place to start. The concept of monitoring habit change strikes me as especially valuable since through the act of deciding what to monitor you are defining and documenting the change you’re looking to see.

Another great resource for anyone looking to form better habits and change their behavior is John Stepper. John blogs about the power of working out loud – a concept that goes hand-in-hand with the accountability pillar above. Inside TheCR Network our community manager Hillary has started a weekly working out loud thread based on the concepts that John advocates. Each Monday, Hillary and our members share their top priorities for the week. This speaks directly to the monitoring and accountability pillars of habit forming, but it has an added benefits for our members as well. Since Hillary can now see what each member is focused on she can better provide resources, research and connections to help each person tackle their week. Working out loud doesn’t just help make sure you are more productive by helping you focus on forming better habits, but also connects you to the community you’re working in.

Finally, I wanted to share this great post from Forbes on productivity hacks. Being conscious of intended behavior change is important, but having the resources and tools to help you be more productive is an important piece of overall success as well. Forbes outlines seven strategies to help you maximize your productivity, and they apply especially well to the role of a community manager where you are not only wearing many hats, but possibly expected to be in multiple places at one time. Their list includes “let your phone go to voicemail” and “set specific times to check your email.” Obviously, each of these tips had to be applied to your specific role – you might have the type of job where not answering the phone when it rings is unacceptable, but the list does provide a starting point for time-saving habits that might boost your productivity.

Have you undertaken any habit changes this Summer? We’d love to hear any tips you have for affecting positive behavior change and being more productive as a community manager.
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Looking to take your career in community management to the next level? 92% of members agree that TheCR Network supports and advances their personal and professional goals. Learn how our research, access to peers and experts, targeted content and exclusive concierge service can help you achieve your goals.

Community Manager Spotlight: Ask Me Anything with Hillary Boucher

July 30, 2014 By Jim Storer

By Shannon DiGregorio Abram, Relationship Manager at The Community Roundtable.

Last week we hosted our first AMA (ask me anything) webinar with Hillary Boucher – like your typical AMA we asked Hillary questions that our audience sent in (either ahead of time, or in the stream), but unlike a typical AMA this was not just a chat – we held a live webinar so Hillary could provide a little more color on some of the questions that were meatier. As usual we’ve archived the event here in case you missed it (or loved it so much you’d like to relive it again!)

In addition to the questions Hillary tackles in this webinar (including “What fun or creative ideas have you used to drive member engagement?” and “What do you do when your community goes “quiet?”) we had a handful of questions that we ran out of time and didn’t get to answer. I chatted with Hillary after the event and have her answers to these extra questions included below the archive:

This content has moved inside The Network.

And now the bonus questions!

Q: What’s one lesson/aha you’ve learned from a member in the past year?

A: Be prepared for anything on a live virtual event with your community. I was facilitating a call and we lost our presenter. Poof! She was gone. I did my best try to stir up some conversation while we waited, but it was rough. One of the participants is an expert facilitator and she jumped in and requested that we go around the call and answer a question having to do with the topic at hand. Obvious to me in hindsight, but harder to implement without having thought it through head of time. I have now added “what will I do if I lose my presenter” to my list of preparations for calls!

Q: Who is one famous non-cmgr person (celebrity/historical figure/fictional character) you’d love to have as a member of the network or as a roundtable facilitator?

A: Rosa Parks. I’ve always known her story, but was recently re-engaged with it while reading The Power of Habit for a book club inside the network. The author is talking about how to initiate large scale behavior change and points to her as an example because she wasn’t the first person to refuse to move seats in that place and time, but she was a well-networked person providing the optimal connections needed to trigger large wide scale behavior change. I’d love to have her in to discuss how she built and managed relationships with such a large network with so many diverse stakeholders because as community managers that’s exactly what we need to be doing.

Q: How do you see the future of community management?

A: The role is becoming more operationalized. We don’t need to play guessing games any more but can build off each others’ work and the research we are doing at TheCR. As we have a more experienced pool of community professionals moving into leadership roles we will see a more community minded approach coming from the C-suite which will allow community programs to be better funded, more successful, with bigger, built out teams. As a result I think the role will become more specialized based on the needs of the team.

Q: What features are current social media tools missing that could be useful for community managers?

A: I don’t manage social media tools professionally so I’m not the best person to ask that question though I imagine if we asked this one on Twitter we might get an earful. As far as community platforms: I would personally love to see a tool that was user friendly enough for a non-techie community manager to be able to customize with a built-in crm for member management and built-in customizable email notification system.

Q: What vendor/platform do you use for weekly “newsletter” – is it automated or is this manual via email?

A: Right now we use Constant Contact and it is a manual email I spend 2-3 hours on weekly. It’s also the main trigger we use to reach out members on a weekly basis.

A big thanks to Hillary for being our first AMA guinea pig! Stayed tuned for more AMAs in the future.

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Did you know that TheCR Network members work with all kinds of communities? In fact, about 25% work in either internal or external communities and 50% work with both! No matter what kind of community you work with membership in TheCR Network will save you time and improve the quality of your work by connecting you with peers, experts and curated information. Learn how joining TheCR Network can improve the work you do.

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How do I get started in community management?

July 24, 2014 By Jim Storer

By Shannon DiGregorio Abram, Relationship Manager at The Community Roundtable.

To celebrate the launch of our first ever community manager salary survey we’re going to spend July and August focused on community management as a career. (Haven’t taken the survey yet? Please do – it is quick and your responses provide invaluable insight into the real world of community management!)

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This week we’re discussing what it takes to get started as a community manager. Whether you’ve just graduated and are looking to dive right in, or making a mid-career move into the world of community management you might be unsure of what the best plan of attack is.

Just like last week I asked the TheCR team, members of TheCR Network and our Twitter network what their best advice would be for someone looking to get started in the world of community management.

Several members of the TheCR team have worked as community managers and they had some great advice to give:

Jillian Bejtlich: My best advice is to make sure folks understand what they’re getting themselves into. It can be one of the most rewarding and demeaning jobs all at the same time. Try to aim for communities you’re naturally passionate about (for example, mine is technology, animals, and the outdoors). You’ll find it’s easier to be yourself and a CM at the same time!

Jim Storer: Join a Fortune 500 company’s public forum, preferably for a product you use and/or are familiar with. Become an active member and connect with that Community Manager. Develop a public Twitter list of CM’s and actively read what they share and interact with them.

Next, I opened up the question to TheCR Network. I had a fantastic chat with two community managers from a Fortune 100 telecomm company. They each had some practical advice for new community managers:

Should be knowledgeable and comfortable with all kinds of social media, not just the Forums
Should understand the importance of Social in today’s world, how customers want to be able to talk to companies on social media and get their issues resolved,
Should understand how companies want to be able to engage with their customers on Social Media to promote their products and build loyalty
Definitely learn to double check any post before you hit “send.” Lots of vultures swirling around waiting for a social media faux pas to screen cap and send all over the internet!

I think every blogger and social media practitioner needs to take that last bit of advice to heart!

For my last bit of research I asked our Twitter friends and as usual got excellent advice from the crowd:

Finally, I’d be remiss if I didn’t point any potential job seekers in the direction of our resources. You can always find our annual State of Community Management research here and it’s a great starting point to see how community management is evolving and what skills to focus on. Our community manager profiles and community manager spotlight webinars provide exclusive inside looks into the lives of other community professionals.

Oh, and don’t miss our Community Management Fundamentals deck to get some great ideas.

Community Management Fundamentals from The Community Roundtable

Are you looking for your first community job? What are you focusing on in your search? If you have tips for fellow job seekers please share!

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Have you taken the Community Manager Salary Survey 2014 yet? Your insights into your role are invaluable as we document and define community manager best practices across industries. The survey is short (15 minutes) and we’d love to hear from you. Take the survey now.

What is the most important trait when hiring a community manager?

July 16, 2014 By Jim Storer

By Shannon DiGregorio Abram, Relationship Manager at The Community Roundtable.

To celebrate the launch of our first ever community manager salary survey we’re going to spend July and August focused on community management as a career. Whether you are just getting starting in the community management field or have been actively practicing community management for years we have something for you.

Recently we’ve been thinking more about what it takes to be a great community manager. Certainly you have to love people – but what else makes or breaks a successful community professional? In the SOCM 2014 we highlighted the many (MANY) roles and responsibilities that a typical community manger is tasked with. With everything from creating content and monitoring community activity to managing and recommending technology there is a wide array of skills that a community manager needs to have, but is there one special trait that a hiring manager looks for when filling a community role?

I threw the question out to TheCR team, TheCR Network and to our Twitter friends and wanted to share their responses with you.

First I asked the other members of TheCR team to weigh in. We’re a small but diverse group, some are currently community managers, or were in a past life. Other have participated in the hiring of community professionals. Here’s what they had to say:

Jillian Bejtlich: The ability to communicate in a variety of scenarios and tones. The same person needs to have the ability to be awesome, humorous, authoritative, potentially harsh, and empathetic.

Maggie Tunning: I have a few in mind but going to go with empathy – to be able to understand, respond to, delight, etc members. Not sure if it always plays out this way, but empathy may also help them be adaptable/flexible.

Rachel Happe: Diplomacy (and the even temper that goes with it). If you over-react, under-react or get into fights it’s just going to be a disaster.

Next, I opened up the question to TheCR Network. Two long-term community professionals weighed in with different, but excellent responses. The first shared this list of skills – it’s hard to narrow it down to just one!

Teaching , especially online
Writing or general communication
Business strategist — big picture
Event organization
Collaborative
Creative
Inclusive
People-oriented
Ability to manage up and down the organization

And the second provided this great insight:

“As I am developing various skills the one I find hardest to share with others as the roles grow and expand is finding the voice we want to present to our community. So finding that ability in someone to be the voice or continue as the voice would be an asset.”

Finally, I asked our Twitter friends and received many awesome responses. Here are some of my favorites:

Do you hire community managers? Is there a special skill or trait that we missed? Are you a community manager and want to weigh in? We’d love to hear from you!

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The Language of Engagement

June 24, 2014 By Rachel Happe

By Rachel Happe, Co-Founder of The Community Roundtable.

Having a well crafted community strategy and roadmap is critical to enabling effective outcomes, but translating that strategy into your engagement approach is equally critical and often overlooked. People tend to communicate in online communities they way they do elsewhere and that can often be the wrong approach.

What’s the problem?

In most business communications the emphasis is on being declarative and crafting a well thought-out and complete thought. Whether that is an email, a presentation or a press release, we try not to leave things unsaid or vague. But the enemy of engagement is perfection. The more complete your thought, the less other opinions and input is needed. Complete and perfect communications are a transaction, not a conversation. However, this is what is expected in traditional business communication and it creates a major barrier to collaboration.

When you communicate in a community, everything you thought you knew about communication is often wrong. The people who tend to get the most engagement use a writing style that is modest, imperfect, inquisitive, solicitous and often vulnerable. This approach tends to make people with a business or management background squeamish. The other challenge community managers have is that these attributes can, when used the wrong way, lead to a passive tone. This is also not good because the organization’s perspective and voice is lost and the community could move in a direction that is no longer productive to the business.

If this sounds a bit like a catch-22, it’s because it is. One of the skills of a great community manager is riding the fine line between being solicitous in general interactions and firm when it comes to the community boundary conditions.

Here are some of our recommendations on how to shape your language of engagement:

Be careful about using absolutes – always, never, no, yes.
When expressing an opinion (which I think is important because differences are where innovation and change come from), use phrases like ‘In my experience’, ‘I have found’, ‘I think’ and ‘From my perspective’, which allow an opening for others and encourages others to share their experience and perspectives.
Use ‘but’ and ‘should’ sparingly. ‘But’ arrests a conversation and takes it in a different direction, implicitly judging another comment as incomplete or misdirected. ‘Should’ is often used when telling someone else what you think they ought to do, which is a dynamic of control vs. engagement.
Use ‘you’ and ‘we’ carefully for similar reasons – they can subtly indicate control over ideas and people.
Be curious and ask a lot of questions, even if you think someone’s question has been answered. There is often more to the story that leads to better understanding and sometimes, a different answer.
Consider using emoticons – not necessarily all over and not 10 in a row – because online it is hard to decipher when a comment is meant in a friendly or a confrontational way, and emoticons help establish tone. The same goes for exclamation points.
Be aware of digital body language – both your own and others. Pam Moore has a great list of ways you can indicate or decipher intent.
Be careful about validating or spreading either a good or bad rumor before it can be confirmed. This can get you into trouble very quickly and it is a human instinct to want to solve problems and spread good news, so it’s particularly important to be aware that as a community manager you are an authority figure that adds fuel to a fire. Use that power carefully.

What would you add to this list? What do you avoid? What do you actively try to do more of?

Do you disagree with anything on this list? Please share in the comments.

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