Online Community Management -- Weaving the Golden Thread

In a post from January 2009, Tom Humbarger wrote about what happened to the professional online community he was managing when he got laid off and the community was left on its own.

Tom writes,

Durng the time of my involvement, active community management and consisted of:

• delivery of bi-weekly email update newsletters
• production of monthly webcasts
• active blog posting and blogger outreach
• uploading of fresh content each week
• continual promotion of the community in various forums through guerilla marketing
• ongoing brainstorming and strategizing with respect to improving the community experience
• priming of discussion forums, and
• ongoing communications with individual community members

It’s interesting to discover that a neglected community will indeed continue to function without a dedicated community manager. However, the results are lackluster and the picture are not ‘pretty’.

Reading the comments below Tom's post made me wonder about the philosophy behind community management. Some suggested that the end goal should be to create communities that do NOT need management. I believe this is a wholly bad idea.

Think of it this way. I like going to the movies. I like watching movies. I am going to invite a bunch of friends, neighbors, and anyone else for that matter over to my house to watch and talk about movies. I'll get the TV ready, DVD player all set up, have a variety of movies to choose from, make snacks, and even ensure there is plenty of seating and that newcomers know what to do and who is who.

So, people start coming over, there are the regulars and a lot of people who are intermittent in their visits. After a year, I decide that the movie watching and discussion events can still happen at my house, but I won't be there anymore. Sure, the event can still function as it always did, but that golden thread that wove everything together -- content, people, familiarity, continuity, maintenance, individualization -- all those things are now fragmented and forgotten.

The role of online community manager is far more than just content publishing and functional oversight. It is hospitality incarnate. It is an essential and consistent human element ensuring that all the pieces fit together. To equate it with a short-term facilitator, believing that the truest measure of an online community's viability is its ability to thrive on its own, goes against every successful community (on or offline) that's ever existed. In this case, community engagement is the same online as it is offline -- the rules are basically the same, it's just the medium that's changed.

What do you think? Am I totally on to something here or way out in left field?

-- David Kinard, PCM

[photo credit: HyperLocalEdge]

Social Media Podcasts Now Available

If you haven't had a chance to stop by my Web site lately, you might want to. I've just uploaded new Podcast interviews that are going to help you with your social media strategy.

I recently spoke with Joel Comm, author of Twitter Power. We talk about how marketers can use Twitter as a marketing and business intelligence tool. It's now obvious that Twitter is no longer just a way for people to share what they're doing in 140-characters or less. Today, Twitter can be a real-time optic into consumer behavior, a trending tool, and is even used as a customer service channel.

Also new to my site are interviews with Justin Smith, author of The Facebook Marketing Bible, and Harry Gold of Overdrive Media. Both highly practical and tactical interviews.

-- David Kinard, PCM

Study Shows Nonprofit Websites Still Suck

There has been a tremendous amount of emphasis on online and technology-driven marketing for the past five years it is understandable that with the onslaught of new tools it has been difficult for some marketers to keep up the frenetic adoption pace of consumers. Sure, changing organizational cultures, breaking through bureaucratic red tape, and convincing an out-of-touch top management is difficult. But what disturbs me is the continuing neglect of the online touchpoint by most nonprofits.

Recently, at the Nonprofit Technology Conference (no, I didn’t go, but I heard it was great), ForeSee Results presented the results from their study on Trends in Constituent Satisfaction with Nonprofit Websites. Three key things stood out from their findings that make me want to scream and shout:

1. Nonprofits have plenty of room for improvement when it comes to online customer satisfaction.
2. Satisfaction is predictive of future behaviors important to nonprofits.
3. Key areas of improvement for nonprofit websites, in general, are sites’ functionality and the expression of the organization’s image online.

Too often nonprofits think they can get by with sub-par work and a mediocre online presence. Unfortunately, they are judged by the same standards as their for-profit counterparts by a tech-savvy marketplace. As for those who think that their online presence is just not a priority, the ForeSee study found that investing in a website has a direct link to increases in satisfaction, donations, volunteerism, and recommendations.

In fact, a highly satisfied visitor to a nonprofit website is:

• 49% more likely to donate
• 38% more likely to volunteer
• 57% more likely to have a favorable overall impression of the organization
• 65% more likely to recommend the site to others
• 55% more likely to return to the site

The study found key areas of improvement to be the site’s functionality and the expression of the organization’s image. In other words, the site needs to be easy to use, clear pathways to content need to be present, and the site must effectively bridge the space between on and offline ensuring the emotional aspects of the mission are not digitally lost.

There is just too much good information out there on how to build and manage a contemporary site to allow bad sites to last beyond 2009. Make it your priority this year to move your organization’s web presence to the next level. And for starters, get the ForeSee report – it’s free and it will give you ideas on where to start.

-- David Kinard, PCM