Archive | Communities RSS feed for this section

The Relationship To Free In Online Communities

by on April 14, 2009 in Communities

We all have expectations of service when we pay for something, right? Go to even a moderately priced restaurant like Outback Steakhouse and you expect to be served well. If you purchase a computer online from Dell, you want to be taken care of if something doesn’t work. And if you pay dues to your professional association, you expect a level of service to match the cost. So, how does free membership in a community alter our expectations? Should we expect the same level of service for something that we pay no money to support?

I offer two cases: Twitter and Facebook. When things blow up on either of these services, do we as users have any right to demand quick, speedy or personal support? We don’t give one dime for the ability to communicate and expand our networks. The cynical among us might even suggest that we users are really just leaching off of both Twitter and Facebook for our own gain. So if we don’t pay anything for these services, what right do we have to express outrage when we’re met with failwhales, questionable changes to terms of service or disabled features?

This is the conundrum facing most online community managers: delivering service in an age where its expected even on free sites. Perhaps the solution here is that we have to change our ideas of what defines a relationship. We can no longer strictly use the financial transaction as a point for determining service level. Since users bring value to the community through their interactions, it seems that we community management professionals need to adjust our own thinking. That failwhale impacts a user’s overall experience which, in turn, impacts the service’s brand. It’s a rippling effect that defines a daily reality for online communities.

Thoughts?

From Membership Professional to Community Officer

by on April 13, 2009 in Communities

Imagine the scene. Two nonprofit association membership pros talking in a crowded restaurant at lunchtime, commiserating with each other and sharing their professional anxieties that they fell into the wrong line of work. Not that they dislike what they do…quite the opposite. They enjoy working with members, building relationships to improve the member experience, strategizing new features and the like. But there is something nagging at both of them: they wonder if anyone outside of association management understands and values what they do. They worry that they’ll always be confined to associations because they don’t think there is any clear parallel in the corporate world. They leave the restaurant thankful for each other’s company but no closer to putting their anxieties at ease.

Okay, one of these characters is me and this is a scene from my life roughly six years ago. After graduating from college with a liberal arts education, I fell into the nonprofit association membership profession purely by accident. And after doing membership work for five years, I was concerned that few of the skills and experiences from that work would be appreciated outside of my narrow niche.

Let’s fast forward to today. Do I still think the skills, experiences and insight gained from a membership career is unappreciated outside of associations and not viable in the corporate space? Nope…quite the opposite. In today’s business reality, this unique experience translates incredibly well to the needs of social media, most specifically to the role of online community management.

Drawing on a recommended community manager job description posted by Connie Bensen, here are the parallels to membership management:

• Creatively and proactively assist customers.
• Serve as the initial point of contact for inbound requests from online company properties and the web at large.
• Monitor online conversations and participate in them to build brand visibility and thought leadership.
• Author blog posts, articles, podcasts, videos and screencasts – whatever media you want to use – to creatively communicate product uses.
Association membership development is about attracting prospective members and retaining current ones. That means knowing how to communicate well, building strong relationships with members, helping them get more out of their membership, and assisting them with thorny issues. Membership pros are multifunctional in role and serve as customer service, product management, marketing, and corporate communications.

• Identify and analyze issues, patterns and trends in customer requests and product performance.
• Transfer the information to the appropriate departments so that they can respond accordingly.
• Proactively escalate issues, observations, opportunities, and insights to the executive team.
• Communicate issues, opportunities and insights to the company at large.
Membership professionals serve on the front line, listening to members and determining whether their issues are problems needing resolution or opportunities needing to be addressed. Membership professionals must then be able to influence key stakeholders to effect changes on behalf of the audiences they serve.

• Identify and engage advocates.
Membership professionals must connect with their organization’s volunteers and help them put their enthusiasm to good use. Knowing how to find and then successfully guide passionate supporters is a must, particularly since most associations need these volunteers to help put initiatives into action.

• Stay up to date on new social media tools, best practices and how other organizations and companies are using them, so that the company can continue to be an early adopter of these technologies.
• Participate in professional networking by interacting with peers and influencers and attending events.
Membership professionals must explore the latest technology, leverage networks and resources, and plot a strategic path that will provide the most beneficial products and services to their association’s members. It requires a curious and creative individual who enjoys collaborating with people.

I write this post for a couple of reasons. One, I hope it gives a closer look at who I am and why my current work in social media and online communities is simply a natural extension of the work I’ve done since I first started my career. Two, maybe it offers membership professionals a roadmap to guide them toward other career possibilities and emphasize that their expertise is valuable beyond associations.

If your company is seeking its next great community manager or chief community officer, consider expanding your search to individuals beyond the corporate world and include nonprofit association membership professionals.

Online Community Roundup: Webstock Edition

by on April 12, 2009 in Communities

I’m too late for Webstock 2009, but I’m keeping the 2010 conference in my sights. It looks like they put together a powerhouse learning experience. Plus, it’s in New Zealand. So, I have a little less than a year to woo these good folks into a speaking gig.

One of their key workshops in 2009 was on Online Community 101 and presented by two online community heavyweights: Derek Powazek and Heather Champ. Even though it focused on the basics, both speakers delivered some strong recommendations for anyone creating communities.

These four summaries provide a terrific overview and are chock full of useful ideas:
Julie Starr at Evolving Newsroom
Courtney Johnson at LibraryTechNZ
Sarah Jones at Lunchbox
Dean Stringer at the Waikato Centre for eLearning

Maybe 2010 will be the year I finally make it to New Zealand? Even if I can’t land a speaking engagement it looks like a great opportunity to share experiences with a dynamic group of folks.

Online Community Roundup: April 3 2009

by on April 3, 2009 in Communities

For all who work with online communities, you should read these two exceptionally insightful blogposts from the past week:

Rachel Happe writes about encouraging respect, acceptance and patience in online communities. One challenge that many community creators and managers face is how much oversight to impose. It’s a delicate balance where you don’t want to squelch activity and yet there are certain “rules of the road” which community members need to adhere to. There’s a lot of room for exploring this topic and Rachel’s post is a great starting point.
Read The Social Organization: Respect, Acceptance, & Patience

Spike Jones at the Brains on Fire Blog has a terrific take on Ellen McGirt’s interview with Chris Hughes in Fast Company. Chris is one of the key figures behind President Obama’s innovative, grass-roots campaign. What I dig about Chris is that he understands that the technology behind online communities is important, but without people and relationships it simply becomes digital nothingness.

Spike highlights this quote from the article:

It doesn’t matter if it’s a company or a campaign; you build around commonality. If it’s real people and real communities, then it’s valuable. Otherwise it’s just playing around online.

Spike goes on to make a few points that every organization should consider: Be thoughtful in approaching social media, have a specific strategy for connecting to your audiences, aim to build deeper relationships that focus on the needs of customers, and be courageous enough to communicate transparently.
Read Brains on Fire Blog: Real People + Real Communities = Commonality

Three Questions On The Future Of Online Communities

by on March 30, 2009 in Communities

Online communities have the potential to bring your customers closer to your company (or constituents closer to your organization if you happen to be a nonprofit). Okay, there’s nothing new in that proposition. Since the web’s infancy, we’ve known about the potential of tearing down geographic barriers and bringing different people together around common causes. But how far have we truly come?

There’s a rather insightful article from CIO dated 2001 that talks about online communities as a way to engage customers so this idea has been around for a while. It’s interesting to see how the case for communities evolved during this decade. For instance, remember when online communities were synonymous with discussion boards? Companies were pursuing stickiness by getting site visitors to interact with other visitors. The assumption was that once a company created such forums, visitors would know what to do and a vibrant community would magically form. And the community would pretty much self-manage itself. Oh, and companies would not need to invest many resources or effort to maintain the community. Did I capture all the assumptions?

We’ve learned much in the past decade about how to most effectively incorporate communities into a company’s online and brand presence. But online communities are still not in the mainstream. I think this could change in the next few years. Not only is the technology improving, but companies are finally beginning to understand that online success means focusing on the social dimension of community.

Here are three questions that come to my mind when thinking about the future of online communities:
1. Will there be widespread adoption among businesses and nonprofit organizations?
2. Will online communities become an integral part of business strategy or continue to serve an ancillary function?
3. Will communities live up to their immense potential or will they serve as mere tools for selling and moving product?

Thoughts? Any other future-focused questions we still need to explore?