Community Management Tweets From November 2011

For some reason, I have seen a number of great blog posts on community management over the last 2 weeks and have added them to my Twitter stream.  Maybe people are finally starting to realize that community management is an integral part of social media and customer experience?

To make it easier for me to find these resources in the future, I am consolidating all of my recent community management tweets into a blog post.

Enjoy!

5 Essential Traits for Community Managers by @stuartcfoster in @mashable…http://ow.ly/7y8ZW

10 Community Manager Tools You Might Not Know by @Renee_Warren ow.ly/7vsdf

Online Community Managers: When Community Should Be About You — from @Kommein ow.ly/7vsaR

4 Ways to Make Your Professional Online Community More Fun | by @Joshua_D_Paul in @B2Community ow.ly/7mP6O #gamification

Fire Your Marketing Manager and Hire A Community Manager – from @armano in- Harvard Business Review ow.ly/7ksFc #socialmedia

The Future of Online Community | by @vdimauro in Social Media Today ow.ly/7eoHP - look for specialized private online communities

Altimeter: The Two Career Paths of the Corporate Social Strategist. Be Proactive or Become ‘Social Media Help Desk’ « from @JOwyang - ow.ly/7t1bi

“My Chapter on #Gamification: From Behavior Model to Business Strategy” – a wealth of resources from @mich8elwu ow.ly/7xf4O

Games, gamers and business strategy… In CIO.com #gamification m.blogs.cio.com/cio-role/16614…

My Best Community Management Blog Posts

I was trying to find a blog post I wrote about community management 2 years ago, and realized that I really had to search to find it. So, I decided to write a blog post that consolidated my best blog posts on this topic to make it easier for me (and my fans) to find these posts.

Adding Gamification to Your Community

This post discusses how to apply gamification and game mechanics to a community site.  It is interesting to see gamification now being applied in a marketing/website/community context, because many marketers and community managers have already been using these techniques to build engagement for several years.  I am more than willing to jump on the gamification bandwagon if it helps push the boundaries for other marketers and community managers.

The Importance of Active Community Management – Proved With Real Data

This post is probably my most popular community blog post and it proves what happens when a community goes from active to passive (or no) management. Using real before and after statistics from the Catalyze community, the statistics are a compelling look at why active community management is so important.

Community Managers and Quarterbacks

In this post, I compare the importance of quarterbacks to a winning football team to the importance of an A+ community manager to a successful community – and ends with the question of “So are you willing to accept mediocrity for your community manager?”

Looking for An Example Community RFP?

In the spirit of social media transparency, I have attached an example of the actual RFP that I used 2 years when I started the community process to develop what eventually became the Catalyze community. One of the vendors who responded to our proposal noted that it was one of the most complete and comprehensive proposals that they had seen.

I made a couple of slight updates to the the RFP, but for the most part I would use this same RFP if I were looking for a vendor today. Feel free to use the example as a template or to give you some ideas for your own request for proposal. I have left blanks where there was proprietary information, but for the most part the template is generic.

Four Community Ideals

I was asked to participate in an interesting collaborative project called the Project 100 which was started by consumer marketer Jeff Caswell.

My four community ideals include:

1. Be transparent
2. Be personal
3. Be compelling
4. Be omnipresent

So, What Do Community Managers Make?

I participated in the Forum One Online Community Compensation Survey in July2008 and wrote this post with the results. While the post is more than 3 years old, the content and insights are still relevant today.

My Social Media Job Description

This is a follow-on blog post that is my most popular post and it provides what would be my ideal social media position. I think the responsibilities should be stated in fairly broad terms without getting into specific tools or techniques. I also don’t like job descriptions that specify a number of years of experience. Instead, a social media expert should be able to point to his body of work – through his blog, his Twitter feed, his LinkedIn profile or Facebook page – and that should be sufficient proof. Finally, a list of key attributes is essential to get an understanding of the candidate’s personality.

While this post does not relate specifically to community management, the person you want to fill your community manager position should have these same characteristics.

The Importance of Regular Community Communication

One of the most important tasks that a community manager needs to do is to regularly communicate with his members. When I was managing the Catalyze community, I accomplished this by sending out an email newsletter every 2 to 3 weeks.  The frequent contact is important from many different angles.  It keeps the community in the front of each member’s mind and reminds them that there is value in the community.

What Are the Characteristics of a Great Community Manager

This post summarized a live chat hosted by The Community Roundtable and introNetworks from August 2009 and included these panelists:

• Jim Storer (@jimstorer) from The Community Roundtable
• Rachel Happe (@rhappe) from The Community Roundtable
• Howard Wahlberg (@howardw) Member Services Director for the National Science Teachers Association
• Amber Naslund (@ambercadabra) Director of Community for Radian6
• Mark Sylvester (@marksylvester) CEO of introNetworks

What Are the Characteristics of a Great Community Manager

The Community Roundtable and introNetworks hosted a live chat that covered this topic today.

Webchat Participants

The speakers included the following:

• Jim Storer (@jimstorer) from The Community Roundtable
• Rachel Happe (@rhappe) from The Community Roundtable
• Howard Wahlberg (@howardw) Member Services Director for the National Science Teachers Association
• Amber Naslund (@ambercadabra) Director of Community for Radian6
• Mark Sylvester (@marksylvester) CEO of introNetworks

There was tremendous activity on Twitter during the call and you can find this thread by searching on the #introchat tag.  Some of the more interesting tweets included:

• @keithburtis title means little, substance is everything…. need to link Social Indicators back to Boardroom speak
• @eyecube Care for a community, don’t *manage* it
• @maddiegrant The best community managers are people who care about people
• @MsMizz As community manager, ur looking for ur “cheese heads” the ones that are so engaged & passionate that they’ll put a cheese hat on
• @mrshasten Importance of a community manager: it’s like weeding the garden. You can’t just set up a community and neglect it
• @JohnMLee Great point from the Community Manager Webinar: Communities don’t want to be managed, they need to be nurtured
• @P_Lussier Community mgrs need to be “accessible & approachable; intensely human,” says @ambercadabra
• @SocialGeekMe being a community manager is not a “this is not my job” type of job.
• @spoonmovement #introchat – @ambercadabra says that being a community manager is “not for the faint of heart” and that it’s a hybrid of many disciplines
• @AdrianMabry Comm Mgr role follows 2 analogies – the ‘iceberg’ and the ‘duck’ analogies. Lot’s of activity that just isn’t glamorous

Several great links were discussed during the chat as well:

• The Community Manager Role Unplugged by Buzz Canuck
• The Ultimate Community Management FAQ by Amber Naslund
• What Defines a Community Manager by The Community Roundtable
• Importance of Active Community Management by Tom Humbarger

Jim solicited book recommendations at the end of the call from each of the participants and here is the short list:

• The New Community Rules: Marketing on the Social Web by Tamar Weinberg
• Six Pixels of Separation by Mitch Joel
• Linked: How Everything Is Connected to Everything Else and What It Means by Albert-Laszlo Barabasi
• Groundswell: Winning in a World Transformed by Social Technologies by Charlene Li and Josh Bernhoff

The recording of the chat is available at the introNetworks website and the slides are on Slideshare too.

The Importance of Regular Community Communication

One of the most important tasks that a community manager needs to do is to regularly communicate with his members. When I was managing the Catalyze community, I accomplished this by sending out an email newsletter every 2 to 3 weeks.  The frequent contact is important from many different angles.  It keeps the community in the front of each member’s mind and reminds them that there is value in the community.  Your members are generally busy with other tasks and its easy to forget to regularly check the community site.  Regular communication also drives members back to the community as shown in the graphic below taken from Google Analytics which depicts daily visits to Catalyze from January to July 2008.

Community Visits - January to July 2008

You can definitely see from the spikes in visits (highlighted by the red arrows) when I sent out my bi-weekly community newsletter.  The number of visits on the days when I sent out my newsletter were 2 to 3 times higher than the normal daily average.  I was also getting fairly decent open and click-thru rates, averaging 30 to 40% open rates and 30-50% click-thru rates.

I used Constant Contact as my email vendor.  I found it very easy to use and the price was reasonable.  For example, the tiered pricing runs from $15 per month for 0-500 email addresses to $50 per month for 2501 to 5000 addresses.  I found it pretty simple to create my email newsletters in Constant Contact and would definitely recommend it to others.  (Interestingly, I have been hearing a lot of commercials for Constant Contact on both NPR and during the MLB Playoff games.)  Constant Contact also has a survey module, but I never had a chance to use it.

Communicating regularly does take some time and effort.  I estimate that I spent from 4 to 6 hours per newsletter.  For me, the process started with downloading the latest list of names and emails from my community site and uploading them to my email vendor.  Then I had to compose and test the email newsletter.  In my case, the first time I set up my email template took some time to get the format and color scheme right.  After that, I was able to start with the previous newsletter and make modifications on the fly.

And here are some pretty good practices that I recommend:

• Communicate frequently – every 2 to 3 weeks is a good rule as you don’t want to inundate your community members with too many emails.
• Include links to the latest content – I would generally try to highlight an upcoming webcast along with the 5 or 6 links each from the latest blog posts, library content and forum discussions in every newsletter.  I also had a ongoing link to sign up for the LinkedIn and Facebook groups.
• Check and re-check the email – most email programs will let you preview the newsletter or send out a sample email.  I would definitely recommend that you are super-meticulous with your newsletter.  Since you are blasting out your message to a number of people, you do not want to appear sloppy or have any links that do not work.
• Re-post online link to newsletter - most email programs also let you create an web version of the newsletter.  I would use then post this link on Twitter (using the Catalyze Twitter account) and on LinkedIn and Facebook.  You never know where your members will find the link and you need to make it easy for them to find it in their favorite social media hang-out.
• Send email out on Tuesdays or Wednesday – I found that my email blasts were more successful if I scheduled them to go out first thing (8am Eastern) on a Tuesday or Wednesday morning.  Most email programs will let you prepare an email and then schedule it for later delivery.  This is a great feature if you are going to be traveling or on vacation, but still want to send out a regular communication.
• Review your stats – Your email program should have an analytics package.  Make sure to regularly review your bounced, open and click-thru stats to make sure your message is getting through and that it is resonating with your community.

I’d love to hear experiences from other community managers on their experiences with email newsletters.

So, What Do Community Managers Make?

I participated in the Forum One Online Community Compensation Survey in July and the results were just emailed to me last week by Bill Johnston who coordinated the survey.  The research was sponsored by Mzinga, Solution Set and the Online Community Research Network.

Here are my take-aways from the report:

Wide range of salaries - The survey showed a wide range of salaries for community manager positions.   The low-end represents volunteers, part-time staff and people in start-up environments working on developing communities.  While people earning more than $125,000 represent only 16% of total respondents, my sense is that this is the sweet spot for companies that are serious about social media and community strategy – and recognize that these are the salaries that the people filling these roles will command based on the depth and breadth of their experience.  (see my Community Managers and Quarterbacks blog post for more information on that topic.)

Derived from Forum One Aug. 2008 Report on Community Compensation

Disparity of experience levels – The report pointed out that people with less than 3 years of experience accounted for 34% of the total, people with 3-5 years of experience accounted for 19% and people with more than 5 years experience accounted for 47% of the total.  The Forum One conclusion was that “the body of respondents generally represents a senior and seasoned body of practitioners. The dip in responses in the 3yr to 5 yr range likely represents the general waning of interest in online community during the 3 years after the Internet bubble.”  I also think that the large number in the under 3 year category represent employees who are getting involved in community at companies that are just entering the experimentation phase with community and social media – and that these employees had related jobs in marketing, but not specifically community jobs, before getting involved in community.  That is definitely my situation.  I was involved in various product marketing, product strategy and consulting roles before getting assigned a project to develop and launch the Catalyze community.

Variety of job titles – There are a wide variety of reported job titles in the survey including:

CEO, Managing Partner, Community Manager, Director of Community, Director of Product Management, Manager, President, Community Host, Intern, Moderator, Intranet Coordinator, Professor, Social Media Strategist, Social Media Manager, and VP of Community & Social Media, VP of Interactive Development, Director of Knowledge Management, Executive Director, Head of Communities, Social Media Evangelist and VP of Marketing

This may be a self-serving comment, but I think we’ll be seeing more titles like the VP or Director of Social Media and VP or Director of Social Media Strategy as the space matures.  These titles describe how social media is the overarching description of what’s going on and that online community is just a component of a larger strategy.  There will always be community manager roles, but they will report into the Social Media and Social Media Strategy positions.

The entire Community Manager Compensation report can be purchased for $295 from the Online Community Research Network.  You can also download some free research from the Online Community Report website.

BTW, I am in the market for a “sweet” social media strategy and management position.  Check out the About Tom Humbarger tab above if you want to hire an A+ social media person.

Confused About Community Registration?

Confused About Community Registration?

Communities walk a fine line when they are trying to get people to register for their site.  On one hand, community managers and sponsors want to know as much as possible about each member as possible.  On the other hand, most people are reluctant to part with their data or do not have the patience to complete a long registration form or submit to an arduous process.

The bottom line is that you don’t want your registration process to stop people from joining your community or start out their community experience on the wrong foot.

Some of the easiest registrations include just an email address and password.  While that is simple for the enduser, it does not provide much in the way of member demographics.

In the community I used to manage, we started out with a very onerous registration process.  Prospective members had to complete 15 required fields and after pressing the enter button, we would send them a confirmation email with a registration code.  Many members never received their registration code and others were stymied by the process which limited our conversion numbers.

In the end, we knew that we had to change the process and eliminated the confirmation code part of the process.  We also streamlined the required fields to the following:

• First name
• Last name
• Email address
• Company name
• User name
• Password
• Country

Additionally, we had a section of the registration page that was clearly labeled as optional.  The registration fields in this section included: company industry, address, phone number, job title, years of experience, role, topics of interest, and professional memberships.  About 50% of new members filled out some or all of the optional fields.

We also explained why we were collecting the information in the optional fields which probably helped with our conversion rates:

We would like you to complete some or all of these fields when you register, but they are optional. These fields help us to better understand our members and serve you better. You can also re-visit your profile and update or review your profile at a later date (using the View/Edit Profile link in the top right corner).

Finally, here are some simple tips for community registration:

1. Keep your community registration “simple and easy”
2. Look at the process for many different communities and incorporate the best ideas into your process
3. Examine and re-examine your registration process from a new member standpoint
4. Use drop-down boxes or check boxes to simplify and standardize input wherever possible

What data do you collect during registration for your community?  Are you happy with your process?