Online Community: Best Practices in Moderation Techniques

There is an interesting entry on Jeremiah’s blog about “Job Hazards of the Community Manager” which is generating a lot of comments from newer, less experienced community managers. What is fascinating is that what Jeremiah is blogging about never has to happen, nor should it.

Specifically, the entry is about the ‘cyber-stalking’ of community managers outside of their own community on places like Facebook and MySpace (and for you B2B folks, LinkedIn). Many community managers are shocked to learn that members assume that the relationship extends outside of the community. When these relationships are good, it’s not so bad. But when relationships are bad, it’s really bad.

In our nine years of managing online communities and social networks for clients, we’ve seen all types of reactions by members towards community managers. A strong, sometimes intense relationship can occur in active communities and should not be discounted. These relationships can be extremely tight and formed over years. But they should never go outside the existing community ecosystem. Here is why this is true and it might surprise you because there are two sides to this…

1. When a community manager or moderator can be located outside the community, too much personal information can be found which may reflect poorly on your brand. For example, we know of several community managers using their own names in B2C communities who had information on Facebook that was not appropriate. That information was used against them in the community. Similarly, in one of the communities we currently manage, we have a disgruntled member searching all over the net for anyone who has ever been associated with the community within the client’s team and sending threatening emails. Do you want these people to find you and drag you into their soap opera?

2. When a community manager is known personally (Tom Smith), what do you as an organization when that person leaves? We’ve seen former community managers who were let go by companies, blog complaints about their treatment. And guess what? The community members found the blogs and then brought the subject up in the community and fired off angry emails to corporate legal departments. This tied up all kinds of resources unnecessarily for several weeks.

So, here is the best practice for companies launching communities and for community managers:

NEVER USE YOUR REAL NAME IN A COMMUNITY!

Seems simple right? But in the misguided thinking of building relationships that are true and honest with the community members, too many community managers are using their real names & pictures in their community. And the sponsoring companies aren’t thinking about what could go wrong and impact their brand online. Everyone needs to remember that there are bad guys out there too… not everyone buys into the uptopian experience of community as detailed in many of the leading community management ‘theory’ books and articles. So beware the false best practices being pitched by many consultants and focus on those best practices that make sense in the long run.

We recommend that community managers use a name that is ‘generic’ such as Community Host, HostTom (instead of Tom Smith), etc. That way the privacy of the individual acting as a community manager is protected, while allowing the company to replace the community manager if needed without stirring up the community too much. When you are building out your strategy and processes, you need to think long term with a bias towards protecting your brand against unnecessary attacks in the future.

Want to learn more about our best practices and how our real world tested methodology can help your organization sift through the misperceptions about running a community? Contact us, we can help you build a stronger community or social network based on our nine years’ of experience.

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One Response to “Online Community: Best Practices in Moderation Techniques”

Mike says:

October 27, 2008 at 11:54 am

Exactly what my point was within comment #14 on his blog post. Community managers need to create a natural separation between their job and their personal life.

Mike