Defining community management – a starting point
5th January 2009, 01:47 pm by Matt Rhodes
I came across this video from Scott Drummond from Sports Hydrant in Australia when it was posted in the Online Community Manager LinkedIn group. It was filmed at a Barcamp session in Australia last year, where Scott is presenting about what an online community manager is and how to define community management. This video, Scott’s approach and the discussion in the room fits very really well with our attitude to promoting community management.
The video is worth watching and it’s great to see the discussion that people have when they try to define the role of community manager.
Three points from the discussion really struck a chord with our experiences of managing communities and our theories of what makes good community management:
- The community manage has an important connector role – sourcing information from people who use the product and bringing it to the brand so that they can improve it. This is not just the role of online research communities, but a real benefit you can get from all communities.
- You need to advocate the community within the organisation, and also advocate the organisation within the community. You translate what goes on in the community and make it relevant for the organisation and different people within it – you can explain to a CEO why the community is important and show the value they can personally get.
- You need to be a trusted and transparent source within the community. I see too many communities where the community manager is face-less, has a generic name and never really interacts with members. Honesty and transparency are really important online and your community manager should be a member of the community like any other.
Community from Ben Grubb on Vimeo.
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Some more reading
- Social Networks vs. Online Communities vs. Panels
- When physical and virtual worlds collide
- Another example of good use of video in online communities
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Tom Vanlerberghe:
Matt,
)
5 January 2009, 3:49 pmGreat video. Is seems like a lot of companies who want to create an online community or be active in it make the mistake of handling it in a ‘mass media’ kinda way. They engage for 50%, thinking they’re engaging 100% and are disappointed by the results. They can’t figure out what they are doing wrong because in their point of vue, they’re not doing anything wrong.
And in a way they’re right, they can’t be held accountable for not knowing what to do… (except maybe hire you guys
grtz
Tom
Jenni Beattie:
Great post re the importance of good community managers.
The Beeline Labs Tribalization study from 08 looked at why so many online branded communities had failed and lack of good com mgt was one part of the equation. Others were: lack of clear objectives and the ‘built it and they will come’ attitude.
Cheers
14 January 2009, 10:07 am