While this sounds like an oxymoron, I have found that successfully getting a community off the ground is about coming to understand enough about the members that you are familiar with their strengths. Once you have that knowledge you can facilitate connections between members that result in a productive, profitable knowledge exchange that ultimately drives the client’s business objectives. This translates into activity because when someone in the community has a question in a specific area of expertise, instead of letting the question go unanswered the moderator can reach out to the right expert member and say “You might not have noticed that a member has a question in your area of expertise. I think you would be able to answer it. If you can’t, do you know someone who can?”

Additionally, there are other ways to connect without getting emotionally attached. Some of these guidelines are the very courtesies we see in positive professional environments in the offline world:

1) Always say thank you in response to contributions. When a member contributes, whether it’s a post, a blog or anything else, the moderator should thank the member for it. This makes the member feel valued and encourages them to contribute again. It also encourages contributions from others who see this behavior.

2) Respond quickly. This way, members will understand that if they seek information in your community they will find it quickly. It also encourages member to come to your community for information before they seek out information from other venues that might not yield results as quickly.

3) Set expectations. Communicate the time frame for responses on the site so members can plan their research and won’t be disappointed if they don’t see a response on the same day if that is not realistic for your moderation team.

4) Recognize contributors who stand out. There are many ways to do this, ranging from associating icons with members who have made a designated number of contributions, recognition of members on external social media sites that link back to the community, increased opportunities to interact with your organization’s executives and special site privileges.

Looks like we’re starting to build a consensus! Thanks for visiting our blog and commenting.

Thanks for your comment. I do like the Grandparents/Aunts/Uncles idea much better. Passion is a funny thing in communities, as it can help and hurt. Unchecked, passion can evolve to too much control of the community or worse favoritism towards those members who are “in line” with the goals of the community. Passion for the site and its goals is one thing that is absolutely necessary for success. But it’s a fine line when we are passionate about members individually.

So yes, not quite a parent, but something of a relative!

(Sorry about that.)

No analogy is perfect. (If it were, it would be an identity, not an analogy.) Seems to me there are indeed aspects of community management that are like parenting, and aspects of community management that are not like parenting. I wouldn’t call the parenting analogy invalid; I’d just call it limited.

I think what really has got your goat are those community management efforts that don’t follow best practices. There’s a pretty good folksonomic body of knowledge out there now on what these best practices are. Many organizations that run online communities follow them. Surprisingly, many still don’t.

~ Matthew

I agree that the community is the child (not the member) if you are to use this analogy. But in terms of passion, you must stay disciplined in your management even though you are passionate about the community. This is especially true for moderators and community managers handling large public, multi-topic communities. Too often managers cross the line because they personally disagree with a point of view and side with one member (or faction) over another. This behavior will destroy a community.

Where I think all of us agree on this topic is that without someone in the managment having passion for the community, the results will never be as good as if you did have that passionate person. To me, it’s about where you apply that passion and how. (So perhaps we’re simply splitting hairs.)

Thanks for the comment and your thoughts.

Mike

From my perspective when I think about community management as parenting I think the ‘community’ is the child, not any one member – maybe a bit more of a conceptual leap – but the goal is a healthy well-functioning community. I wholeheartedly agree that you need to be a fair and impartial arbiter of disputes and enforce the rules – but so to is that the goal of parenting. In neither do we always get it just right because we are all human.

The other perspective that I have which you may not agree with is that none of us who feel passionately about something are ever emotionally unattached – that’s the nature of being passionate. I think knowing how to recognized and acknowledge our own emotional bias – and be able to evaluate whether our own bias is affecting our ability to moderate – is a critical skill for a community manager. If we find that we do, in fact, feel so strongly that we cannot effectively moderate acknowledging that allows us to find a different person to step in and handle a situation. This I think is also similar to parenting – sometime it’s best to get the other parent to handle particular situations because it is a hot button for us that gets in the way of effectively negotiating a solution.

I do agree that every community needs a community manager that ultimately upholds the rules – and that while some communities will learn to self-moderate more than others, they all ultimately need a community manager to manage the disputes that do arise. Members rarely want to self-police and when they do, there are other issues.

Thanks for your take on this.

Rachel