Web 2.0 Collaboration Success Comes From Facilitation

Web 2.0 is driving organizations to build and offer more interactive and collaborative sites. That’s a good thing.

We see an upcoming issue though, moderation skills are in short supply. If you search Monster.com for online community, you’ll find several positions open for moderators. Read the job descriptions and you see that the focus is on tasks such as maintaining web pages, enforcing policies, gathering content for newsletters, sending newsletters, etc. This misses the point entirely of what a good community manager does for the community.

In our experience in moderating over 40 online communities, the single most important factor in determining the success or failure of getting your community to deliver results is how well your moderators interact with your online audience. In the training we deliver to online community teams we stress “Keep a light touch and the community grows, use a heavy hand and the community slows.”

Facilitating conversations between members, between members and the organization, and building interactions overall are the key components of a good community moderator. Your moderators should be naturally outgoing people with strong communication skills and a desire to learn from your members. When your visitors are comfortable with how you interact with them, they will unmask themselves and register with their correct information (as opposed to entering garbage into your database because of forced registration requirements). Once they are unmasked and engaging you, your organization will benefit.

Want to learn more about community moderation and management? Contact Us for a free consultation.

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