1. How To Convert Newcomers Into Regular Members

One of the greatest challenges an online community manager faces is getting new visitors to stick around and participate. More than just a blog post, Richard Millington has drawn up a detailed guide on how to draw people in and get them involved. He sets down five “golden rules” for converting visitors into active members of the community. Every community manager should read this. Really.

(Also this month, Richard posted How To Build An Online Community: The Ultimate List Of Resources, an index of his past blog posts along with helpful community management resources.)

2. Being a Cool Kid: Key Steps to Getting “In” With Your Community

If you’re a community manager coming into a community that’s already established and active, you may find yourself on the outside looking in. You need more than admin rights to lead a community. You need to be accepted by the group. This two-part blog post from Lyn Muldrow of Metaverse Mod Squad compares this situation to being a freshman in high school seeking social acceptance and provides tips on how to become part of the in crowd.

3. 5 Steps to Ensure Your Members Don’t Run Away With Your Community

I’m one of those people that subscribe to the notion that the members own the community. Cecilia Edwards of Telligent writes that member ownership of the community has several benefits, but reminds us that “community ownership can turn into community hijacking.” She has some tips for finding the sweet spot between coercive community management and an online version of Lord of the Flies.

4. 6 Ways to Kickstart Engagement for 2012

If your new year’s resolution was to do a better job keeping your community engaged, Amanda Allan of Spark Boutik has put together a nice list of ways you can keep the conversation flowing. Though it’s aimed more at social media managers, managers of traditional online communities will find this list useful.

5. How To Get Started As An Online Community Manager

Looking to break in to the community management space? Sue John has some great tips on how to get started, along with links to useful community management resources.

Honorable Mention: Don’t tell my mum I’m a community manager, she believes I play piano in a brothel

Photo credit: Alan Campbell

I had a couple of recent experiences with the communities I help manage on Delphi Forums that brought the point home for me.

The first was the reaction of our members to the Stop Online Piracy Act (and its Senate counterpart, the PROTECT IP Act). At my urging, Delphi Forums took a position that SOPA was a bad piece of legislation and potentially devastating to our business. We even resigned from the Better Business Bureau in order to protest their support of SOPA (see previous blog post). We undertook an education campaign to urge our members to learn more about SOPA. If they came to agree with our position, we asked that they contact their congresspeople to let them know how they felt.

The response was amazing, as our hosts and members took to the cause with gusto. Delphi Forums did not take part in the January 18th Wikipedia-led blackout protest, but several of our hosts took it upon themselves to shut down their communities that day. Many members added anti-SOPA images to their message board signatures. Even though SOPA is now dead — or at least dormant — conversation about the topic continues in our host support forum in a thread that has grown to hundreds of messages. Their actions went way beyond what I had hoped for.

The other experience was the way our members embraced Community Manager Appreciation Day. Although CMAD has been around since 2010, this is the first year we observed the event on Delphi Forums. On Delphi, all of our communities are created and managed by our members (assisted by our amazing support team). To say we appreciate these volunteer community managers would be an understatement. Without them, we simply wouldn’t have a business. Marking CMAD seemed like a great way to let these people know how much they mean to us.

It was a huge success.

The vast majority of our members had never heard of Community Manager Appreciation Day, so we educated them about the event and made a few suggestions about how they might want to get involved. On Delphi, we have a sizable community of “signature artists” — artistic members that create message board signature graphics for other members. We asked these artists if they would be willing to create special signature graphics for CMAD, and they came through with some great designs. We also left messages in our top 20 forums addressed to the host, thanking him or her for their time and efforts. The reaction was terrific. In nearly every forum where we posted, other people started jumping in to add their thanks. It seems that our members truly appreciate their forum hosts. They just needed a reason to express those sentiments in the forums.

You can never force online communities to do what you want. But these two episodes showed me that when you present an idea to the community that people genuinely agree with — and do it in an open, honest, and collaborative way — they will respond.

Photo credit: Steve Shattuck

If you manage a private or internal company community, you’re probably not at risk. But if you’re like me and manage open, public communities, you should be worried about SOPA. My company, Delphi Forums, has taken a public stand against SOPA and has resigned from the Better Business Bureau because of that organization’s support of the bill.

Right now, Web sites that host user generated content are required by the Digital Millennium Copyright Act to make a good faith effort to remove copyrighted material from their sites. These sites are protected if they respond to complaints about stolen content in a reasonable and timely manner.

SOPA would remove that protection. Web site operators would be at risk if just one page of their site contains copyrighted material or is “dedicated to theft of U.S. property.” No excuses. So even if people are on your site just talking about intellectual property theft, you could find yourself afoul of the law. It doesn’t matter if you take down this material after you find out about it.

If you don’t have the resources to put together a legal challenge within five days, your domain name can be disabled.

This kind of thing would be devastating for operators of small, hobbyist online communities. These people simply don’t have the resources to defend themselves against the big entertainment companies and their lawyers. If SOPA becomes law, we may see the end of online communities started by people who just want a place to gather online with those that share their interests.

Everybody involved with online communities ought to be worried.

1. Community Management Education (and Certs) a Sound Investment –Yet Experience Trumps All

With the growing recognition that community management is a specialized field requiring specialized skills, some organizations have launched certification programs for community managers. One of the more notable examples is the Community Management Certificate program developed by the Community Roundtable, WOMMA and ComBlu. Altimeter Group’s Jeremiah Owyang writes that these certification programs are valuable, but adds “real-world experience is the most important teacher of all.” This post also includes some great advice for companies that are hiring community managers.

2. Strong Common Interest

People participate in online communities because they share a common interest. The stronger that common interest, the more likely the community will succeed. Richard Millington writes that if you want to launch a community around a topic, make sure people have expressed an interest in that topic by actually talking about it –online or off.

3. Just because you build it doesn’t mean they’ll come – Selling the Solution

If you build an online community just because you think you need to, you will fail. Online communities are business tools like any other — they are a means to an end. Edward Ford reminds us of the steps any business needs to consider before launching a community: Identify what you’re trying to accomplish, then figure out how a community can help you get there.

4. What Does it Take to Be a Great Community Manager?

Anybody looking to hire a community manager would do well to read through this post by Patrick O’Keefe. Patrick stresses experience, but also comes up with a list of 14 things to look for in a candidate. These include a passion for community, strong communication skills, and technical savvy.

5. How to Increase Participation in Your Twitter Chat or Any Online Community

In an online community where expertise and knowledge is shared, participants can be forced into two groups: experts and newbies. It’s great when experts share their knowledge with newbies, but what about those that are more knowlegable than newbies but don’t consider themselves experts? Mack Collier writes that community managers must make everybody feels comfortable participating.

Is there a community management blog post you think I should have included in this list? Please let me know about it with a comment below.

Photo credit: Sandra Regina

1.) Measure everything that moves

You don’t know if you’re succeeding if you don’t measure your performance. Data is good. Keep track of everything you can. Make Excel your close and personal friend.

2.) Become a better writer

The written word is how we communicate, and communication is key to everything we do. So take the time to write well. When composing a communication to your members, do several drafts until you get it right. Ask somebody else to read your writing and give you feedback. Bad things happen when community managers miscommunicate ideas. Be the best communicator you can be.

3.) Say thanks

You know those leaders in your community that make your job a whole lot easier? Tell them that you appreciate what they do. Shooting off an email to thank somebody who has made your community better takes just a few moments, but can reap huge rewards in loyalty and continued help. More importantly, it’s the right thing to do.

4.) Read more blogs

There are some really great community management bloggers out there. You’re wasting a huge opportunity if you’re not reading what they have to say. Take a look at the blogroll to your left to start. Need more ideas? Check out Richard Millington’s extensive list of blogs and other online community management resources.

5.) Try something new

Keep things fresh in your community. Experiment with new and different ways to engage people. If you need some inspiration, see tip #4. After you give your new idea a try, see tip #1 and measure how well it worked.

Are you a community manager making resolutions for 2012? Please leave a comment and share your plans.

Photo credit: notmargaret

This year, I’m starting to come around.

Our awesome team at Delphi Forums started me down this road with the “Winter Holiday Parade”  they organized. They encouraged our forum hosts to create a special look and feel for the holidays and then compiled those forums into a list of communities that “dressed up” for the season. Take a look at some of the cool designs our hosts came up with:

The other thing that got me thinking about special holiday activities was this week’s #cmgrchat Twitter discussion for community managers hosted by The Community Manager. The topic was Community Holiday Planning. Sue John relayed that she organizes a Christmas avatar competition. She and other also talked about organizing the community to benefit a charity or other good cause. All great ideas.

So maybe I’ve been missing the boat (or sleigh) all these years.

Are you a community manager that organizes special holiday activities? If so, please share in the comment section.

1. Community Managers are Human Experience (HX) Professionals

We all talk about user experience (UX) and user interface (UI) when building the technology that enables online communities, but what about the person-to-person interactions that can make or break those initiatives? Rachel Happe, co-founder of the Community Roundtable (and a former colleague), points out that the human experience (HX) is just as important.

2. Can Rewarding Fans Ruin Your Relationships With Them?

There’s a lot of talk about gamification and incentives. But David Spinks argues that incentives can be damaging. David writes that when users are given a specific reward for specific actions, it replaces a genuine relationship with a series of transactions. I’m not sure I agree with David 100%, but I’m including this post because it really got me thinking.

3. 5 Tips for Organic Online Community Growth

The opening sentence of this post says it best: “You can’t force community.” People will participate when they feel there is value in doing so, not because you tell them they should. So how do you promote participation without resorting to the hard sell? Deborah Ng has five useful tips to help you grow your community organically.

4. Online Community Beta Groups: Why And How

When you invite people to participate in a new online community, you don’t want them to wander into a ghost town. Vanessa DiMauro suggests inviting a few trusted and/or influential people to act as beta testers before your formal launch. Doing so will seed the community, give you valuable feedback, and create a welcoming committee of sorts for the rest of your participants.

5. Help! My Community is Failing

What happens when you create a new community and it fizzles out shortly after launch? Can it be saved? Terry Coatta says it can, and suggests four ingredients you’ll need to get your community going again.

Do you know of an article that I should have included in this list? Please add it in the comments section below.

Photo credit: Red Mozzie

Here are my picks for the best of the month, reviewed twice for your reading pleasure:

1. The 10 Principles Of Professional Community Management

What sets a professional community manager apart from an amateur? Richard Millington answers this question with a manifesto of sorts:  The 10 Principles Of Professional Community Management developed as part of the Pillar Summit community management course he founded. Anybody looking to become a community manager should read this. So should anybody looking to hire one.

2. Building A Great Volunteer Community Team

Many community managers turn to trusted members to help run things as the community grows. From subject matter expertise to communication skills, David DeWald has some great tips on what to look for in a volunteer moderator.

3. Darth Vader: The Galaxy’s Worst Community Manager

Those who read this blog regularly know I’m a sucker for this kind of thing. Jason Ferguson looks at Lord Vader’s behavior as a model for what community managers shouldn’t do.

4. The Dangers of Over-badging in Online Communities

Badges are great for recognizing desired behavior. But Dan Marotta reminds us that badges only work when they actually mean something and should not be given out freely. As Dan writes, “It’s the scarcity of the reward that makes it valuable. ”

5. What to Do When Your Online Community Faces Unexpected Downtime

It’s happened to me, and if you’ve been in the community management business for any length of time, it’s happened to you: Unexpected  downtime. Patrick O’Keefe has some great tips on how to make the best of a bad situation.

Photo credit: Donna Grayson

Likewise, those of us in the online community business worry whether or not people will come and knock on our virtual doors and see what goodies our communities have to offer. So let’s embrace the spirit of the season with this Halloween take on community management.

Make sure the pumpkin is lit

A glowing jack-o-lantern is the universal welcome sign for trick-or-treaters. Make sure you give a similar cue to those that visit your community. The entryway should be welcoming and clearly spell out what’s in store for those who enter. Don’t spook newcomers by requiring registration just to look around.

Don’t make it too scary

If your Halloween decorations are too spooky, you’ll scare off some of the younger kids who might have otherwise come to visit. If your community is too intimidating, you’ll never get lurkers to join in the conversation. Make sure everybody feels comfortable posting. Never give them a hard time for failing to follow rules about where and how to post (if needed, give them a gentle reminder couched  in a hearty welcome).

Make sure you have enough candy

If kids knock on the door and you’re out of candy, you may be spending November 1st cleaning toilet paper and eggs off your house. When people visit your community, make sure you have plenty of “treats” on hand. That means engaging content that invites newcomers to participate.

Set down the candy rules

When we give out candy, we tell the kids how many pieces they can help themselves to. Otherwise, some of the more aggressive kids will just grab as much as they can. Set down rules for your community as well. Not everyone will read them, but you can always refer back to them if and when somebody crosses the line.

Keep it fun

If Halloween isn’t fun, what’s the point? Your community needs to have an element of fun as well. Even if you manage an internal corporate community or one dedicated to helping people do their jobs better, there’s always time for a fun poll or offbeat story. On Delphi Forums, we have very active community for home improvement professionals. In one of the more active threads in that forum, people are sharing pictures of their kids in their Halloween costumes .

Are you doing anything to mark Halloween in your community? Share your ideas in the comments section.

Photo credit: Pedro J. Ferreira

1.) Have Rules

Let’s face it, most people don’t bother to read the rules before participating in a community. But that doesn’t mean you should dispense with rules altogether. A banned or gagged member will often plead ignorance and demand to be reinstated. Having a set of rules to point to makes it easier to deal with those claims.

2.) Be Consistent

Don’t let troublemakers accuse you of playing favorites. Apply all rules consistently. Have your own, internal set of guidelines for what discipline to mete out in various situations to ensure you’re treating everyone equally.

3.) Take Emotion Out of The Equation

Members facing discipline will sometimes attack the moderator personally. Those attacks can be pretty viscous. Never lower yourself to their level. When communicating with disruptive members, kill them with kindness. Engaging in acrimonious debate with these people just gives them another reason to believe that they’re being somehow victimized. Don’t give them the satisfaction of seeing you lose your cool.

4.) Let The Little Stuff Slide

Don’t go overboard enforcing the rules. When faced with a borderline case, give the member the benefit of the doubt. If the behavior of a member doesn’t bother other members, it probably shouldn’t bother you, either.

5.) Safety Comes First

If anything occurs in your community that presents a threat to anyone’s safety or property, make sure the authorities are notified.

Photo Credit: akwebb1