Top Five Community Management Blog Posts: June 2012

Vacation got in the way of my blog responsibilities, so I’m (once again) a bit tardy with this month’s edition of the month’s best online community management blog posts. Let’s get to it, shall we?

1. A Process For Dealing With Complaints

Community managers want to make their members happy. It’s just the way we are. So when we get a complaint from a member, we naturally want to do whatever we can to make that member happy. But  sometimes, what’s best for an individual member isn’t what’s best for the community. Rather than making decisions based on the squeaky wheels in the group,  Richard Millington writes that community managers must protect the “happy majority” from the “vocal minority.”

2. Looking for Input from Prospective Community Members? Use Your Email List.

In today’s socially-driven online marketing environment, the boring old email list can get lost in the shuffle. But those that have registered for an email list focusing on a certain topic are exactly the people that are likely to be interested in an online community focused on that topic. Sue John writes about how she was the recipient of such an email, and why it worked on her.

3. Is a Community Manager a Community Member?

The weekly #cmgrchat twitter gathering for online community managers is always interesting. It provides a real-time sampling of what community managers think about a certain topic. In this post, Jenn Pedde writes about what the chatters thought about the question of whether community manager is part of the community, or separate from it. While she (wisely) doesn’t attempt to answer the question, she provides an interesting digest of what others said.

4. 8 Helpful Moderation Tips for Community Managers

“Moderating a community is as much about what you do as what you don’t do.” So true. Jessica McLaughlin provides eight tips for community managers that every beginner should read.

5. Moderation vs. Community Management in Private Online Communities

While moderation chores like deleting offensive content are important in some communities, Joshua Paul of Socious discusses the high-level strategic job of the community manager, including growth and engagement.

Photo credit: BrittneyBush

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