Jenna's Blog

In the off-line world, leaders participate every day or serve a formal role in the community. The fact that they lend their credibility by an occasional spotlighted appearance, or that they drop in now and then, is generally enough to realize the effect of their support and presence. It’s like an actor being “sighted” at a particular nightclub. The fact that such a star attends the venue and respects it is a good start. If you’re fortunate enough to have the regular involvement and appearance of experts, celebrities, or personalities, your community will benefit from their presence. Once you’ve identified these folks, use some of these tactics to engage them and let others know about their involvement:

• Stage an event where they showcase their expertise/projects.
• Engage their support for hosting a topic—even if it’s only for a while.
• Promote the conversations where they participate.
• Select quotes from key participants and use them in your community promotion.
• Talk about their participation in your informal promotion venues.

But beyond experts and celebrities, you’re also going to want to encourage leaders to arise directly from the community. You’ll benefit from the participation of people who embody the citizenship you had in mind when you planned your community. Luckily, encouraging people to take a role in community leadership is pretty simple:

• Recognize contribution.
• Include potential leaders in any efforts to change or add to the community, early on; make them allies and get their input.
• Involve articulate participants by offering roles like featured blogging, managing topics or assisting in seeding. The visibility provides them the incentive of community status, and may well stimulate the others' participation.
• Encourage leaders to include others—to be community-minded rather than self-centered in their engagement. Their success is your success.

You’re not always going to be able to predict who will end up being a leader in your community. Those you’ll work with at the beginning will be whoever shows up. Frequent visitors/posters qualify as potential leaders. Work with them. Feature them. Even ‘troublemakers,’ oddly enough, may be a great source of leadership. They're often the ones to spearhead movements for change, to offer feedback and quick response. The trick is to recognize committed participants, and then gain their trust, so that they feel good about investing in the community.

Keep in mind that every contributing member of your community is adding to its content and its appeal. Whether “star” or not, contributors deserve recognition. It’s quite common that community members who are initially quiet become community leaders over time—often because of attention from a conscious community manager. Make it a habit to provide appreciative responses to those who are regularly active (or if you take no active role in the community, to feature their content). Should your relationship with them extend to off-line venues, thank them personally and express interest in their further developing ideas and conversation on line.

Some contributing individuals may just have particular talent as conversationalists—quite helpful to the community. Consider a policy that grants moderation privileges for short periods of time—a day, a week. The idea is to encourage people to show off their skills and solidify their commitment to the group. It’s a modest spotlight for enthusiasts, and it can go a long way toward providing motivation and energy.

By the same token, an issue or concern may particularly inspire some individuals. Consider a featured area that encourages users to sound off in an editorial way—whether or not they have expert status or official role in the community. Such an area is also promote-able, giving you an opportunity to draw people in on a daily basis to see who’s on the soapbox.

As community develops, leaders of all types become the social influencers who keep dozens to hundreds of other people online and attract increasing numbers of newcomers. Look for them, listen to them, cultivate them, and watch what they do. They’re the real community builders.

The culture of any social venue—whether on- or off-line—reflects its underlying assumptions, perceptions, and customs, providing the emotional glue or tissue that defines individual experience. Participants depend the community provider to keep things in order—reflective of the culture and appropriate to the topics they expect. Over the years, our community/moderation managers haves noted some best practices for rules and boundaries in a community:

It’s crucial to define the type of content and behavior that’s allowed (and not allowed) prior to launch. When they sign up, members should get the option to agree to the standards you’ve set, and membership denied to anyone who doesn’t agree to follow the guidelines. Ideally, the standards are available for review at any time. When people are fully aware of the expected protocol, peer pressure and self management strategies work best.

Keep the standards clear, concise, and easily visible in the community guidelines. Broad-based general statements allow you more flexibility in determining when sombody’s actions have gone too far and what the moderators should do. It’s also important that you provide a way for users themselves to report abusive user-posted content, and that you make sure moderators act on these reports first.

Dealing with Problems

Education can often encourage participation and turn problem behavior into positive interaction. However, take care of blatant or excessive violations quickly, or you’ll risk losing other members. Depending on your community culture, inappropriate posts might include these:

• Profanity
• Content irrelevant to the community
• Excessive “flaming” (angry posts directed at other people)
• Illegal content
• Industry regulatory limitations

Because people’s connections to one another are vital to community, keep in mind that rigid enforcement of “relevancy” can deflate morale and participation. Instead, allow people the flexibility to include friendly social conversation even in a focused topical community.

Remember, your community may be just like an off-line community; you may see people bicker, band together against outside threats, and alternately love and hate community management. Cliques form, and sometimes people are annoyed with newcomers. In other words, your community participants are just people.

• Some community users simply lurk, or read posts for information. Don’t write them off as unimportant; they are often the ones who will spread the word about your community as being a valuable source.

• Some contributors seem to post only when they’re annoyed or angry. That’s OK, too; we all know people who enjoy controversy and who only seem happy when they can be miserable. Humor them unless their posts truly violate standards; people may get used to them.

• Some participants are natural ‘helpers.’ Encourage them wherever possible.

• Those people who assume leadership roles are sometimes initially the “problem” users. Try to recognize the energy they bring to the community, and take advantage of that energy in building/maintaining activity.

One note: an established community will sometimes ‘close ranks’ against new members. You can encourage acceptance by helping old and new users establish common ground; allow them to introduce themselves, and welcome them when they show up. Note, however, that conflict may be in the eye of the beholder. It’s quite possible one or more folks can engage in spirited discussion that seems disrespectful to those watching, but doesn’t feel that way to those engaged because of their level of familiarity.

Good Trouble vs. Bad Trouble

Another, sometimes unwelcome, sign of success in creating community is that users get upset with community management, or even with the company. The positive view is that this is “good trouble” because it means the users feel ownership and loyalty to the community; they care. One of the biggest challenges in maintaining a successful online conversation is dealing with this emotion and disagreement on the part of your membership, as well as handling disruptive and unpleasant posts. Nonetheless, it’s guaranteed to happen; so be prepared.

Keep these factors in mind as you decide how best to keep things under control without censoring your community. Ask yourself a few questions about the angry posts you’re seeing, before taking any action on them:

• Are the participants violating community standards or simply voicing a position with which you (or the company) doesn’t agree?

• How damaging are the posts, really, to the community and/or to your company?

• Are the posters accepted members of the community, or ‘outsiders’? In other words, is their only participation based on attack? Or are contributing members who are registering legitimate complaints?

• Does the author or topic have the potential to be nudged and coaxed into a new and vibrant thread of conversation?

The best way to handle community-wide upsets is to identify the issues and address them clearly and directly and immediately. Most likely, if the issue has to do with the community, it requires community management efforts to explain why you can or can’t alter the policy or change what has people up in arms. However, if the issues are related to the company, escalate them and post direct response. If the complaints are clearly inappropriate to the ongoing community, but relevant to the company’s product or reputation, also provide an alternative method for people to comment.

Bad trouble—illegal activity, harassment, obscenity, or flagrant violation of community standards— is easier to handle. Remove the posts (and, if necessary, the user) from the community, and escalate serious situations as soon as possible through normal management channels. Skilled moderation keeps the streets clean and the vibes sociable, encouraging further contribution from happy members.

That's some of what we've noticed over the years. If you've got other suggestions for handling rules and boundaries, please chime in!