We announced our partnership with ReadWriteWeb in August of this year. One of the best resources we’ve seen from ReadWriteWeb this year is their Guide to Online Community Management, which is a great primer to the ins and outs of managing an online community. Editor Marshall Kirkpatrick and his team have sifted through massive amounts of information to cull out the most salient points and relevant sources for thinking about engaging in online community-building activities and getting started with online community management.

The Report Covers:

The Basics
The definition of an online community manager, assessing the need for community features on your site, and reasons for participating in the social media ecosystem (like Twitter & Facebook).

Do Startups Need Community Managers?
The blog post and comments that triggered the report: http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/hiring_a_community_manager.php

ROI
Perspectives from the field, including Jeremiah Owyang and Joe Cothrel.

Job Description
A thorough exploration of the role of Community Manager, and key differences between the community role and more “traditional” roles like marketing and customer support.

The Marketing / Engagement Balance
A discussion of the convergence of activities for the Community Manger role.

Dealing with Challenging Community Members
How to deal with “problem” community members and how to redirect the negative energy.

Interviews with Community Managers
Including Dawn Foster and Lucia Willow

The report also lists a number of key online and in-person resources (including Forum One’s Online Community Unconferences).

Online companion
One of the most innovative things about the report is the companion content site that curates the content streams from the contributors to the report in a one place.

If you are interested in purchasing the report, you may do so here.

Updated 9/22/09.
The Online Communities: Metrics and Reporting research study was initiated in late July of 2009, and ran until the second week of August 2009. The research project was conducted by the Online Community Research Network, and the intention of the study was to get a broad look at what online community metrics organizations are tracking, how organizations determine and report on the ongoing value of their online community initiatives, and the reporting and metrics tools that help companies assess this.

We received approximately 175 responses. Participants represent a healthy swath of the types of organizations participating in online community culture. Participating industry categories include: software companies, hardware companies, consumer goods non-profit organizations, independent consultants and media companies, amongst others.

Report Highlights
Several key issues pertaining to online community and social media metrics surfaced during this report, including:

• In general, organizations need to do a more thorough job of defining their business objectives for online community engagement, assessing ways to measure progress towards these objectives, reaching beyond their native platform metrics capabilities, and finding ways to measure the more qualitative components of community member engagement.
• The Role of the Community Manager is increasingly important to developing and refining business process, and measuring performance in these new “social spaces.”
• There is a growing need for community metric standards that are platform and vendor-independent.

Determining What to Measure
From Question 14: How does your organization determine what is important to measure and report?

SUMMARY:

• 20% (34) We stick with what the platform can provide
• 61% (100) We work from a strategy based on business goals and find solution to help us measure what we need
• 19% (31) We try to measure everything, will develop more of a strategy later

TAKEAWAY:
Respondents are primarily shaping metrics strategies based on business goals (61%), even if their platform doesn’t support gathering or tracking desired metrics. Platform metrics are generally speaking, not comprehensive or extensible enough to create a meaningful dashboard to see overall community health, get an accurate visualization of the community’s social graph, and to understand the ongoing insight created by and the sentiments of the community population. The risk in relying only on data that a platform can provide (20% of the respondents) is that the data sets aren’t comprehensive or contextual to organization’s needs. “Measuring everything” (19% of respondents) can overwhelm the community team and stakeholders, and is unlikely to yield meaningful performance data or insight without some rigor in the analysis.

Metrics Currently Being Tracked
From Question 16: What do you currently measure?

SUMMARY:
The top 5 items that online communities measure for tracking and reporting are as follows:

• 152 Responses – Unique Visitors
• 150 Responses – New Member Registrations
• 143 Responses – Page Views
• 126 Responses – Visitors
• 116 Responses – Message Posts

The top 5 items that online communities don’t measure, but want to are as follows:

• 90 Responses – Member Satisfaction
• 90 Responses – Influencer / Evangelism
• 84 Responses – Member Life Cycle
• 83 Responses – Member Loyalty
• 73 Responses – Referrals to Community

TAKEAWAY:
The top 5 items that online communities currently measure for tracking and reporting are the same for both profit and non-profit organizations and include Unique Visitors, New Member Registrations, Page Views, Visitors and Message Posts.

Non-profit organizations concentrate on measuring Podcasts & Video Links and Member Satisfaction, more often than other organizations, whereas commercial organizations place more attention on measuring Retention / Attrition, Member Loyalty, Member Blog Posts and Conversion than non-profit organizations.

As organization’s community strategies mature, the trend to primarily report on basic web metrics (page views, registrations) will be replaced by metrics that speak to the health of the community, the strength of members’ networks, the quality and type of member participation, and more robust measurements of member engagement. The data suggest that we are on the cusp of the evolution from “basic” community metrics to more robust and contextual reporting.

Currently Measuring – Profit and Non Profit


A larger version of the graph can be downloaded here:
http://www.onlinecommunityreport.com/images/metrics_tracked_2009_graph.png

Top 3 Key Performance Indicators

From Question 19: What are the 3 most important community key performance indicators in the reports you send to management?

SUMMARY:

• 32% (74) User Activity / Engagement
• 21% (49) Membership Count [New Registrations, Active]
• 18% (42) Number of Posts / Comments
• 5% (12) Member Satisfaction / Loyalty
• 4% (10) Number of Questions Answered
• 4% (10) Sales Revenue – Up Sell, Cross Sell, Renewals
• 4% (8) Leeds / Referrals Generated
• 3% (6) Number of Downloads
• 3% (6) Number of Influencers / Evangelists
• 2% (5) Visitor Retention
• 2% (5) Number of Conversions
• 1% (2) Donations Received
• 1% (2) Visitor Geographic Dispersal

TAKEAWAY:
Almost a third of respondents indicated that User Activity / Engagement (32%) is one of the most important key performance indicators in the reports that they sent to management. Within the User Activity / Engagement category, the following 3 key performance indicators were the most commonly reported:
• 33 Number of Page Views / Clicks
• 22 Number of Site Visits
• 19 Number of Unique Visits

The other two key performance indicators that many respondents input into management reports are Membership Count (21%) (including new membership and total membership count) and the Number of Posts / Comments (18%) received on their site.

User Activity / Engagement is the number one item to track for both profit and non-profit organizations. Within this category the specific key performance indicators were dispersed similarly, with the profit based organizations having a slightly higher percentage ratio on key performances such as the Number of Threads reported and General Participation. Non-profit organizations, on the other hand, have a slightly higher percentage ratio on reporting metrics such as Number of Returning Visitors and the Number of Site Visits.

Another common response from profit based organizations was related to reporting key performances such as Sales Revenue and the Number of Conversions whereas non-profit organizations had a higher percentage response rate for reporting the amount of Donations Received.



USER ACTIVITY / ENGAGEMENT 34% (BROKEN OUT):


Access to the Full Report
For members of the Online Community Research Network, the report is included as a benefit of your annual subscription. If you are interested in joining the OCRN, or learning more about the Network’s activities, please go here.

The Online Communities: Metrics and Reporting 2009 report is also available for purchase for $295.

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This week’s Online Community Expert Interview is with Angela Connor is a multimedia journalist and community manager with a passion for online communities and social media. She is the Managing Editor of User-Generated Content at WRAL.com where she launched and currently manages the top-rated news organization’s first online community GOLO.com, which has grown to more than 13,000 members. Angela has worked in broadcast, print and online news in Cleveland, Tampa, West Palm Beach and Ft. Lauderdale and is author of the book, 18 rules of Community Engagement.

Q: Tell me a little about how you became a Community Manager. What attracted you to the role?

Actually, it fell in my lap in many ways. I was working as the Multimedia Editor at a newspaper in South Florida when my former boss and good friend contacted me about the position. He thought it would be a good move for me based on my relationship building experience as a news manager and producer and wanted to know if he could recommend me. I was heavily involved in the online video strategy for the newspaper and managing our broadcast partnerships and pretty content in my position at the time so it felt like it would be an unwelcome disruption to my life, but it turned out to be the best move I could have ever made. When I started researching what the job was all about, I told him to go ahead and submit my name. I was attracted to the fact that it was a startup and I had never been involved in a brand new online initiative. I was also attracted and intrigued by the UGC aspect because it was a term being heavily circulated in the online publishing industry and I knew that meant something big. His advice to me was to go try it out because even mild success would chart a new career path for me. I wasn’t convinced, but once I started talking to the folks at the TV station and saw how committed they were to the community they serve I knew it would be a good fit.

Q: What were the most challenging lessons you learned during your first 90 days on the job?

I am now well over two years in the job and I continue to learn new things, and new challenges emerge pretty much weekly. But I have to say that in the first 90 days I realized that there was no guide book on how to do this and that trial and error was a major part of finding success. So I would say that coming to terms with that was a bit tough, especially since I have always known how to do my job and do it well. This was new territory because there are so many aspects of community management that you simply do not control. I wanted to see membership take off, and by many standards it did but I wanted it to happen more quickly. It’s very challenging to sit back and wait for others to act. You are depending on people to make your project a success and they are not on your payroll. It requires a different mindset. Once I really understood that, I was able to chart a course of action.

Q: What excites you the most about your job?

I am excited about the fact that I am doing something that continues to gain popularity and is increasingly gaining value across all industries. How many times do you really get to say that you were involved in something at the ground floor? I feel like I am, and that’s pretty exciting. I like being able to try something and see what happens without worrying about long-term repercussions. If it doesn’t work I can just try something new. It’s also very exciting to teach others both inside and outside of my organization about the value of online communities through real life stories that take shape right before me. Watching relationships emerge online as a result of a venue you provide, manage and maintain is very fulfilling.

Q: What 3 pieces of advice would you give to those considering Community Management as a career?

1. You must have a thick skin. If you cannot walk away from derisive comments and constant, sometimes unwarranted criticism, you cannot do this job in the way it needs to be done.

2. Study the craft. It is important to learn from others and pay close attention to the developments in this space.

3. Be prepared for change. This is a position that means different things within different organizations and your responsibilities may ebb and flow.

Q: How do you see the Community Manager role evolving over the next 12-18 months? What trends should CMs be paying attention to?

This may not be a popular train of thought, but I think there is a distinct difference in community management geared towards the mainstream social media platforms such as Twitter, Facebook and blogs, and the management of those that are owned by a specific organization or what some would refer to as branded communities. Right now it seems as though everyone is lumping it all together and that could be because the position is hot and top brass at organizations don’t really know how to label much of what they are asking people to do, particularly with social media related positions. For instance, is someone who is responsible for monitoring twitter a community manager? I guess the first question to answer there would be if twitter is even a community. It certainly isn’t one that any of us owns and if for some reason it’s gone tomorrow many people would be in big, big trouble. But that’s a conversation for a different day. Is the person who maintains a Facebook fan page or YouTube Channel a Community Manager? Could they transfer what they’re doing in that space to a less mainstream or new community and grow it from scratch? That’s where you get down and dirty and go through all the frustrations that make you better or make you realize that this isn’t the craft for you. I think we are mistakenly confusing social media savvy with the ability to manage online communities. I think we will see more of that in the next 12-18 months and beyond. And that’s a mistake. Community managers should pay attention to technology trends and if you are one responsible for engaging in the mainstream platforms you have to pay attention to what is happening with each and every one. Pay attention to every move made by Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, YouTube and beyond and find smart people who provide good analysis and interpret those moves.

The Online Community Summit will be held October 8th & 9th in Sonoma, CA. It is hard to believe that the Online Community Summit is now in it’s eight year!

The Summit was originally convened by Jim Cashel of Forum One in October of 2001 as a unique invitation-based event, bringing together thought leaders from business, government, finance, academia and the media, who despite different positions share a keen interest in online group collaboration. Each year we gather a select group of senior online community professionals to discuss topics addressing business strategy, emerging technologies, key trends, as well as many tactical issues during the breakout sessions.

This year, I will be hosting the Summit, along with co-host Joi Podgorny, Head of Community at Mind Candy. Joi is an online community expert with areas of expertise in virtual worlds and online experiences for children.

What makes the summit so special?
In short: the people, the conversations, and the location. The Summit is attracts senior and knowledgeable online community experts from the commercial and non-commercial sectors. Our session format is structured in a very unique way, in that two expert session leads present 30 minutes of prepared comments, followed by a facilitated discussion with the attendees. The location of the Summit is Sonoma, California, a nexus of world class food, wine and leisure. In addition to sampling the best ideas in community and social media, we will be sampling the fruits of Sonoma Valley with outstanding food, wine and socializing on the beautiful ground of Ramekins Culinary Academy and the Sonoma Plaza.

A Few of the session topics:

• Turning to the Crowd: Ideas and Contest Sites
• What You Need to Know About the Mobile Communities Revolution
• Social Marketing & Advertising
• How Online Communities are Reshaping News
• Social MEdia: Employees as Brand Advocates

Session leads include:

• Kevin Bertram, Distributive Networks
• Lila King, CNN.com
• Erika Kuhl, Salesforce.com
• Paul Levine, Current Media
• Miles Orkin, America Cancer Society
• Bruce Smith, Answers.com

If you are a senior online community professional interested in participating in the Online Community Summit, and you haven’t received an invitation, you may request one by writing me here.

Please note: We restrict attendance of platform and service vendors to those sponsoring the event. IF you would like information about sponsoring, please drop me a note.

Event tag is #ocs2009

This post is part of the #OCTribe series, intended to spark discussion amongst community practitioners on a bi-monthly topic. This week’s “call to post” was initiated by Scott Moore:
The Aug 11 Topic: Fostering culture in and around online communities

I wanted to touch on negative influences of Online Community culture, and hopefully shed some insight in to how to manage these influences. This post is based on our Online Community Culture study in October of 2008, which is part of the ongoing research agenda of the Online Community Research Network. The intention of the study was to get a broad look at the factors that influence online community culture, and the steps community managers and strategists take in cultivating, and in some cases influencing, a community’s culture. We had over 75 participants in the research, representing many sectors, including software, tech, traditional media, social media and online community, and non-profits. Respondents seniority skewed towards Manager (44%), Directors & VP’s (12%).

What issue can have the most negative impact on a community’s culture?
From the research responses, we found the following to have the most negative effect on an online community’s culture:

• Negative Content: The issue that most respondents said would have a negative impact on the community culture was related to content 25% (12) (negative content, irrelevant content or no content), trolls and spammers.
• Host Involvement: Host Involvement was also a commonly reported issue, including lack of host involvement 14% (7) and over controlling host 10% (5). It is an important factor, it seems from the responses we received, for hosts to tread the fine line of properly representing and supporting a community.
• Member Feedback: Another issue that was said to have a negative impact was a failure to respond to member’s comments and concerns 6% (3), and to actively cultivate and make use of member’s feedback 6% (3).

Other important issues that could have a negative impact on a community’s culture are lack of member participation 14% (7), lack of trust 10% (5), excessive moderation (3), lack of consistency (2) and poor user interface (2)

A graph of the most common write in responses:


Select write in responses about the different factors that negatively affect community culture:

Negative Community Content:

“”me too” posts, posts that waste people’s time.”

Librarian, Non-Profit Organization

“Unprofessional actions including but not limited to, trolling, personal attacks, and disruptive behavior.”

Community Program Manager, Software Company

“Allowing negative attitudes without chiming in to encourage more positive interactions, also not responding to member’s complaints.”

Community Manager, Tools / Service Provider

Host Involvement:

“There are actually two issues that can negatively impact a community’s culture: 1) too much involvement by the host organization (corporate politics or the host organization doing things it feels are important, not what the community views as important or needed) and 2) not enough involvement by the host organization (not listening to and responding to member’s concerns, ideas and suggestions). There is a fine line that must be found in order to properly represent and support a community. And this is a challenge for many host organizations.”

Community Manager, Online Community / Social Media Company

“Being disingenuous in your interactions with the community culture (you will get busted), or otherwise pulling the blinds after you’ve made the effort to provide transparency.”

Director, Online Marketing & Community Development

“Short of the host going belly up and shutting off the servers? Lack of, or inconsistent, communication from the community host. This strips the feeling of control or impact on can have on their community which leads to less investment which leads to weaker communities. Trolls and spam can be disruptive, but they are only destructive when the hosts are absent, ineffective or inconsistent in supporting the values of the community.”

Independent Consultant, Consultancy

Ignoring Member Feedback:

“Failure of the host company to respond to it’s members. Failure to listen and respond to their comments. When we work with our members on changes to the site, some ideas can get expensive. We explain that we’re bootstrapped and , although we love the idea, can’t do it at this time. They understand. But to ignore it or just say ‘no’ would set the wrong tone. Honesty with our members has a tremendous upside.”

Co-founder, Online Community / Social Media Company

Lack of Trust:

“Lack of trust in the reputation of its members.”

Online Community Strategist, Media Company

Excessive Moderation:

“Inexperienced (overzealous) moderator intervention, particularly in response to external pressures (a spammer, a “too-salesy” vendor post, perceived threat from other communities, etc.).”

Analytics Country Manager, Agency

Poor User Experience:
“Bad user experience can kill a community incredibly quickly – doesn’t matter if the community is online or physical, bad experience brings it to a stop.”
Community & Education Marketing Manager, Software Company

Creating a Positive Culture:
It’s clear from the research (and the write in comments) that a few key factors to prevent or manage the negative influences are:

Be a good host – Ensure a clean, well lit place from a user experience perspective. Be present in the community, and participate in the community. BE transparent about your intentions for hosting the community, and about any changes or updates to the community and to any policies or guidelines.

Be clear about policy – Post behavior guidelines prominently, and ensure that are easily understood. Educate members by example by your actions as well as highlighting examples of positive behavior and contribution.

Be even about moderation – Be consistent in enforcing moderation guidelines, and keep visible punitive action to a minimum.

Listen. Then listen some more – create as many channels of feedback as you can manage, including forums, feedback email alias and soliciting feedback via regular satisfaction surveys. As important as listening? Ensure the community feels heard by acknowledging the feedback. Even if you can’t respond to every email (really?), you can regularly post answers to questions or feedback you have gotten.

We want to hear from you
What are your thoughts? Did we miss any of the negative influence factors? What suggestions do you have for preventing or managing negative community influences?

This month’s Online Community Expert Interview is with Dawn Lacallade. Dawn is a social media practitioner whose projects include Dell Community Forums, Ideastorm and currently the SolarWinds communities.

In her own words, Dawn “has a passion for releasing the full value of a completely integrated community and clearly demonstrating the results.” She is currently chasing this passion with the deeply integrated communities at SolarWinds, where community is one of the core tenants of business. As the Community Manager at SolarWinds, a Network Management Software company located in Austin, Texas, Dawn is responsible for the Community strategy, direct integration of Community in the SolarWinds products, growth of Community product extensions, Community engagement and implementation of all Community projects. Before joining SolarWinds, Dawn was the Manager of Ideastorm and the Dell Community Forums. She led the evolution from the focus on support forums to a broader integrated community including the Forums, Blogs, and Ideastorm.

Q: I’ve heard you use the term “deeply integrated community”. Can you define what you mean by that term?

When I say this, I mean simply the level of engagement with every aspect of the company. Often I will see companies that are deeply integrated with their community in a single area, like say a support community. That same company will have a marketing team that has no awareness or interest in involving the community in their processes. What about the website team? How about product development? A deeply integrated community is part of the core fabric of a company and can be seen in all groups. I see this as the next great evolution of the companies that thrive on customer satisfaction; get your customers involved in everything!

Q: During your time at Dell you were a key player on the IdeaStorm site. Looking back on that experience, can you talk about the 3 most important things that you personally learned as a community practitioner? In your opinion, do you think IdeaStorm is a sustainable model?

While I was not involved in the creation of Ideastorm, I did take responsibility for it after the first year. My focus, while working on Ideastorm, was to work with Salesforce to improve the technology to be more scalable. When the site was initially launched the functionality on the back side was very minimal. You had few tools to manage the hundreds or thousands of ideas that came in. You could not assign them to someone, check status, nag people, etc. This was all done manually via email (if you can imagine). The inherent tools within the Salesforce architecture and some gifted developers made an outstanding suite of tools in short order. I had huge learnings from this time.

Here are my top three that come specifically from Ideastorm:
1. A quality product (tool) is MUCH more than what you can do on the front end (from the user’s perspective). The back end is as important or perhaps even more important.
2. The largest challenge in a tool like this is not getting the feedback(people are dying to tell you), but in disseminating it within the company and prompting action.
3. Depending on your product lifecycle, the action can come more slowly.

Is Ideastorm a sustainable model? Good question. I think that it is much like the launch of any community tool; to be successful, the tool has to align with the goals and have the proper amount of resources and commitment from the company. In the community ideation space specifically; an Ideastorm is the broadest of strokes you can take. You are literally saying to anyone that has an idea about anything that you want to hear it, all at once, and they all expect responses. This could be way too much for many companies. Where I see the future of community ideation is in the hybrid models. These might allow the community to offer ideas and comments on a topic that the company lays out. Or perhaps the community picks the topics and then the company selects the questions. Either way delivers more targeted feedback on the areas that you have the most need at the moment so you can better align with business pain points and product roadmap timing.

Q: The boundaries between many “corporate” web sites and their social corollaries are softening (and in some cases being erased). Do you see this trend at solarwinds? How is it playing out in your day to day online strategy? What do you see longer term?

I agree the lines are blurring, particularly in the support communities. Indeed at SolarWinds we have some content that is currently shown on both the SolarWinds.com site as well as on thwack (our user community). As we continue to look at the community as partners in all that we do, this linkage will continue to grow. As for the sites moving together, absolutely that is happening. Anyone looking at thwack over the last 18 months has seen a much closer integration with SolarWinds.com.

As for the general future of this trend, I believe the best option for the end user is a blending of the traditional website and the community offerings. Back to the support site example, a blend of documentation and support avenues from a traditional website with the community generated/vetted/edited content delivers the best value to a user. I believe users need both the fully vetted content created by the company as well as the more agile content created by the community. I think the combination will ensure that the long tail of content that is often overwhelming for a company is addressed via the community. I don’t know that anyone has struck a perfect balance out there yet. (if someone has one, please let me know!) I think many companies are working on this blend and it will be the future of the on-line support website.

Q: Many community teams are struggling with which metrics to measure to assess the health of their community, as well as to quantify and qualify value back to the organization. Can you share your guidance on metrics, and any thoughts you might have on the importance (or lack of) for proving “ROI”?

Wow, I could write a novel on this subject. In my opinion, there is nothing more important than having clear goals and measures to evaluate the success of those goals. I propose there are three main groups of measures you should be reviewing weekly (for the community manager) and monthly for the “Stakeholders”. (Stakeholders include your management team as well as management from any other groups that are involved in the funding, benefits, or strategy of the community) Here are my groups and a description of what they include.
1. Business Measures: These show how you directly move business measures via your work. These HAVE TO BE specific to your company. There is no one size fits all for discovering these measures. Let me explain. For example: A support forum allows questions and answers. The metric might be “answered posts” and “views of answered posts”, but neither of these is the metric the business follows. To be a good business measure, it needs to be in the business terms (is it on one of the business scorecards?). In this example you would gain agreement that one answered question = one call avoided into the support call center. You might then decide that 1% of all views of the answered content is also considered one call avoided. This would give you a number of calls avoided per week/month/quarter/year. That is the level these metrics need to go to be relevant to the business stakeholders.
2. Community Health Measures: This group generally shows the activity on the site. These include the common measures of new registrations, posts, page views, visits, unique visitors, search data and sentiment. In these measures you are looking for trends and the actions that drive activity. For example, if you had a very high month, was it because you had a brilliant new product released or because your brilliant new product had a huge flaw that made people angry? You must understand the causes of change for these measures to have true value.
3. User Behavior Reports: In order to truly understand and connect with the community, you need to know what the behaviors are and when they change. For example, you know that John has been a power user for the past year posting 5 answers a week. For the past 3 weeks, you have not seen John. This should be a huge red flag for you to reach out and check on John. A truly gifted community manager will notice these things. It enables you to thank those that go above and beyond and bring back those that might be disillusioned.

Q: Lastly, any advice for those interested in becoming a community manager?

This is a fantastic and dynamic field! I think the rules are still being made and it changes almost daily! For this and many other reasons, I recommend this field to others often. I have found that those that come into this field from a passion for customers and for improving business do much better than those that come with a campaign mentality. Here are a couple of lessons learned to consider:
1. Learn from many sources: Books, websites, benchmarking and certainly talking with those that have done this before.
2. Don’t believe anyone that says there is a one size fits all answer for community. No such thing.
3. Start by joining communities and observing. What works? What doesn’t? Your observations as a user are great data for your gig as a Community Manager.
4. Drive your organization to CLEAR goals before beginning anything.
5. Build a strong relationship with your community and then when you make mistakes, they will forgive you.
6. Get to know your users as people (goes with above).
7. Never overpromise to either your Stakeholders or your Community. It breaks trust.
8. Keep one eye on the new tools, but don’t get caught up with a shiny object when a tried and true forum for example would do better for your goal.
9. Don’t be afraid to learn as you go.
10. And the most important, Don’t ever over sell your abilities. I have met several people that make their resume sound like they know/have done more than they have.

Note: This post is part of the OC Tribe series. Each 2nd Tuesday and 4th Tuesday of the month, online community practitioners will be encouraged to explore a particular topic via blog, video blog, twitter, or whatever suites your fancy. The recap will be hosted on the site of another one of the bloggers in the loosely defined OCTribe group. This ad-hoc group (movement?) is just starting up, so please join in!

Today’s topic is the role of influential members in online communities. In the kickoff post, Gail Williams asks

“Who in your communities is an influencer of others? As a facilitator, moderator or community manager, how do you work with the most influential people in your network? As a designer, how would you accommodate the opinion leaders? Got three top tips for rewarding these valued members of a group?”

The Online Community Research Network studied this topic as part of the “Online Community Marketing, Growth and Engagement” report, published in July of 2008. At the time, Elite / Influencer programs were not a priority, and were generally being handled in an informal way. There were several reasons for this, including lack of executive support, overhead with finding and qualifying members, and the legal implications with having an “elite” or privileged tier:

“The real answer is that we don’t have much of an Elite program yet. We have started in the last 18 months to do some things, but haven’t yet gotten much participation. There are some legal reasons why we haven’t really done much so far. Go back and look at AOL. We’d like to find ways around the legal”

The case that the survey respondent was referring to was Greenberg vs. AOL (2001) which involved volunteer moderators suing AOL for back wages. To our knowledge, legal issues regarding influencer programs, and the related compensation, rewards or special privileges are still being approached on a case by case basis for organizations with programs.

Organizations that were attempting to identify influencers and elites stated:

• It is easy to identify influencers and elites because they tend to be easy to spot and they stand out from the crowd due to the amount of time they spend on the community and the amount of content they create or post.
• Others said it is all about relationship and knowing the people who are participating in the community and engaging them directly.
• A minority of people use algorithms and metrics to identify the influencers.
• One person stated they manually tabulate the postings that each participant makes each week.

Various tactics for engaging influential members included:

• Having Moderator contact the influencers directly via email.
• Providing extensive training and support.
• Highlight / celebrate influential community members in different ways on the web site.
• An escalation procedure and incentives (sometimes monetary) for converting members into subject matter experts, featured editorialists and/or ambassadors (geographic).
• I would recognize them in newsletters and on the website; send them a gift branded with our logo; quarterly send them something more expensive like an iPod.
• We increase the features available to these members for no charge.
• After the existing team has voted 100%, we approach a candidate with an offer to join in the decision-making group.

The write in answers from the study offer more insight:

Easy to Spot / They Stand Out (10):

• I have no methodology other than a feel for who is there most often, and who is listened to and respected by others.
• Influencers on our site are easy to spot – they have the most activity in submissions, Diggs and comments.
• Those who are comfortable with technology will be most likely to post and respond; therefore they will stand out in the community.
• Listen, track the people who are most interested and demonstrate that interest by spending a lot of time, posting a lot, etc. Then, most importantly, once we identify them and make contact, we provide pretty extensive training and support. Show them we really appreciate their support and want them to succeed within our community.
• We will probably start with those who actively engaged with our content — live events. Online courses, newsletters and seek out ways for getting them to engage with our content online.
• We are an online children’s game and we can easily identify the influencers by their levels in the game – so, no words of wisdom there, sorry.
• Monitor discussion.
• Directly. Just ask. It’s really that simple. Find the decision maker…keep it short and show what is in it for them and let the rest take its course.
• Tracking activity and having Moderator contact the influencers directly via email.
• Scan participation for quantity and quality of posts.

Relationships (5):

• The full team develops personal relationships with influencers and elites. They are also highlighted / celebrated in different ways on the web site, but I believe the personal relationship is the key engagement.
• I know them all by heart.
• Facilitators know who the most active contributors on their communities are.
• The community staff is part of the community so they recognize these people and through contact with them on the chat channels build up trust.
• Editors have connections to various “experts” that they’ve asked to be guest bloggers. We’ve had some success with this.

Use Algorithms & Metrics (4):

• We have algorithms for automatically identifying who is contributing lots of content, and the rating tools go into helping us identify who is doing interesting contributions. We also do “calls” for specific content and then comb through the submissions. We then have an escalation procedure and incentives (sometimes monetary) for converting members into subject matter experts, featured editorialists and/or ambassadors (geographic).
• Our platform has a member rank algorithm built into it, so we can easily see who’s among the top members according to total posts, quality (overall rating) of posts, and return visits to the community.
• Use metrics to see number and source of contributions and comments.
• We rank individuals for non-elite program means, using proprietary calculations, using a complex formula, including simple things like traffic, to very complex things like social network analysis (proprietary versions of centrality, between-ness, etc.)

Manually-tabulated Metrics (1):

• Unfortunately the platform we used did not have a recognition system, so I would have to manually tabulate postings for the week and key contributors/rated content. I would recognize them in newsletters and website under “Member Spotlight” where there was a printed Q&A with them, I would then send them a wireless kit that was branded with our logo and quarterly would send them something more expensive like an iPod. I then went from posting their interview to podcasting their interview and this would be posted on the website, in the forum, on newsletters, and anywhere else that was appropriate.

Community Volunteers (3):

Additional Resources:
Two programs that come up regularly in our research as target models are the Yelp Elite and Microsoft MVP programs.

Yelp Elite
http://www.web-strategist.com/blog/2008/05/27/understanding-community-leadership-an-interview-with-a-member-of-yelps-elite/

Microsoft MVP
http://mvp.support.microsoft.com/
http://www.socialtext.net/ocu2007/index.cgi?engaging_influencers_through_recognition_programs=

Influencer Session Notes from Unconferences past:
http://www.socialtext.net/ocu2008/index.cgi?managing_entitlement_wrangling_with_the_elite_noisy
http://www.socialtext.net/ocu2009/index.cgi?identifying_and_engaging_with_online_influencers

Patrick O’Keefe is the founder of the iFroggy Network, a network of websites covering various interests. He’s been managing online communities since 2000 and currently runs KarateForums.com, phpBBHacks.com, PhotoshopForums.com and other sites and blogs about community management at ManagingCommunities.com. He authored the book “Managing Online Forums,” a practical guide to managing online forums, communities and social spaces.

Q1: You run a network of independent communities. How has the economy affected the business of running these communities? What lessons have you learned? Has the economy had an effect on participation?

The economy has affected most businesses in a negative way, and online communities are no exception. Generally speaking, since most revenue is generating through advertising and advertising has been hit hard, it has been difficult. But, you can only do what you can do, work hard and find a way. I don’t know if I’ve learned anything in particular: at the end of the day, when the economy is bad, most everyone is going to be worse off. You just have to experiment, try new things and see what works. I don’t think that the economy has had a determinable effect on participation. People will always have the desire to connect with like-minded individuals and to take a break, regardless of the economy.

Q2: What role do you see independent communities like the ones you run playing in 2-3 years, especially given large social networks like Facebook attempting to become a center of gravity for social activities online?

I think that they are just as valuable. A community offering something that people want has always been the key. If people want to have legitimate discussion of the martial arts, for example, where they know that disrespectful comments and spamming aren’t permitted, are they more likely to go to Facebook and join a group on the martial arts, or to end up at a moderated martial arts community, dedicated to that subject?

In my experience, people will prefer something that is dedicated to what they want and that’s regardless of where it is. Facebook’s offering is new in some ways, but the same, as what has existed, in others. There have been sites that could “streamline” online community for years and years and cover endless topics all at one site. But, it still comes down to the community and the management and that doesn’t have a lot to do with it being on Facebook or it being on a standalone forum.

Q3: You recently wrote about a very tragic issue: dealing with a suicide in your online community. Can you talk about what prompted you to write the post, and how the response has been?

It’s always been an important subject to me, because we’re talking about human life. Luckily, I have not been affected by this type of tragedy. But, I’ve always recognized the potential and have had an idea of how I would want to handle such a situation, for a long time. The Abraham K. Biggs’ and Megan Meier stories brought it back to the forefront and I thought it gave me an opportunity to address the topic. I have actually been thinking about it for months and researching it, in order to formulate a post that would help community administrators.

I think it’s somewhat of an elephant in the room in that it’s difficult, no one wants it to happen and we’d rather not talk about it. But, thinking about it and planning ahead can help to eliminate fear and give you the greatest chance to help someone. The response to the post has been great so far.

Q4: What advice would you give to a startup that wants to develop an online community strategy as part of their product offering and brand experience?

Spend time setting up the entire operation before you make anything public. From the organization of the site to the (really important) guidelines or participation policies, your community should be consistent with who you are and how you want to be seen. Don’t set it up as you go and don’t try to cater to everyone; stay true to what your operation is about. It’s important to get community right and getting community right means, eventually, people will shout that you are wrong. Be strong and be consistent.

Patrick O’Keefe
Owner, iFroggy Network – http://www.ifroggy.com
Author, “Managing Online Forums” – http://www.managingonlineforums.com

Twitter – http://www.twitter.com/iFroggy
Skype – patrick_okeefe

The Online Community Platform and Services Satisfaction research project was initiated in January of 2009 and published in March. The research project was conducted by the Online Community Research Network, and was created to provide insight about customer attitudes towards online community platform and service vendors, particularly around satisfaction. Further, we wanted to explore the unmet needs in the online community platform and services market.

We received approximately 208 completed surveys. Participants represent many sectors and markets include: large software companies, large community and social media destination sites, niche community sites, manufacturers, government and
non-profits.

Two items worth noting about the research protocol:

• Platforms with less than 5 respondents were not reported on in depth, and
• Online Community Vendors were not allowed to respond to the survey instrument, as the project was intended to study customer attitudes and issues.

Most Important Attributes for Purchase
From Question 9: Which of the following community platform vendor and system attributes are the most important to you when making a purchase decision about your community platform?

Most important vendor and system attributes ranked in descending order.

A majority (48%) of respondents consider scalability and feature set equally as important. Customization almost as important at 46%. It was interesting to note that pricing was less important that scalability, feature sets and the ability to customize. It was also interesting to see that respondents reported the that the technology of the platform was a lower priority attribute. SaaS functionality was least important at 5%.

Evaluatiton Criteria
We asked respondents to rate their primary community platform (and if applicable, supporting vednor) based on the following criteria:

• Overall quality / reliability
• Meets overall expectations
• Vendor delivered on deadline
• Post-purchase support by vendor
• Ability to Customize
• User experience / usability
• Ability to scale to meet demand
• Ongoing technical operations
• Ease of community management
• Metrics & reporting
• Members like platform

High Level Results
Platforms with five or more respondents are featured with full details of the customer experience of implementing and using the platform. A high level summary of findings include:

• Drupal (17 Respondents) – Scored high in the “Ability to Customize” category.
• iCohere (7 Respondents) – Received solid ratings across the board.
• Jive Clearspace (8 Respondents) – Received good ratings, with a lower marks in the reporting area.
• Jive Forums (11 Respondents) – Reviews were mixed, especially around support. This is likely due to vendor no longer supporting or upgrading this product.
• Joomla (6 Respondents) – Most Joomla attributes were rated fair or better
• Leverage Software (5 Respondents) – Leverage scored well on delivery and scalability.
• Lithium (6 Respondents) – Received solid ratings across the board, with no poor or unacceptable ratings.
• Ning (5 Respondents) – Received solid ratings, with low marks regarding metrics.
• Telligent (10 Respondents) – Received mostly solid ratings, with 2 respondents giving unacceptable marks regarding user affinity.
• Web Crossing (6 Respondents) – Received positive feedback on many attributes, with deadlines, support and metrics being weak areas.

A sample of Quality and Reliability scores from key platforms and vendors includes:

Drupal: Overall Quality & Reliability

Total responses presented in ascending order.

Jive Clearpsace: Overall Quality & Reliability

Total responses presented in ascending order.

Leverage Software: Overall Quality & Reliability

Total responses presented in ascending order.

Lithium: Overall Quality & Reliability

Total responses presented in ascending order.

Community Server by Telligent: Overall Quality & Reliability

Total responses presented in ascending order.

We also collected detailed data on custom platforms developed “in house”.

Additional Findings in the Report
The full 68 page “Online Communities: Platform and Services Satisfaction Report” includes in depth information on:

• Write in comments on vendors and community platforms
• Products and services that community teams are using in conjunction with their community platform
• Length of time communities have existed
• Online community budgets, broken out by company size
• Desired online community products and services that are currently unavailable
• Advice on online community platform and vendor selection and management

Access to the Full Report
For members of the Online Community Research Network, the report is included as a benefit of your annual subscription. If you are interested in joining the OCRN, or learning more about the Network’s activities, please go here.

The Online Community Platform and Services Satisfaction report is also available for purchase for $349.

We initiated the Online Community Culture study in October of 2008, as part of the ongoing research agenda of the Online Community Research Network. The intention of the study was to get a broad look at the factors that influence online community culture, and the steps community managers and strategists take in cultivating, and in some cases influencing, a community’s culture. We had over 75 participants in the research, representing many sectors, including software, tech, traditional media, social media and online community, and non-profits. Respondents seniority skewed towards Manager (44%), Directors & VP’s (12%).

Key Factors Establishing an Online Community’s Culture
One key area we wanted to understand was the short list of factors that community managers thought were most important in establishing a communities culture. We asked: “What are the three most important factors in establishing and maintaining a community’s culture?”

The top three responses (in order) were:

• Quality, up-to-date content

• Have a clear objective / value statement 11% (12)
• strong moderation / facilitation 12% (13) of the community site was a critical factor.

Key quotes from the respondents:

“Listen, and treat others as you’d expect to be treated. Be there – 24/7 coverage. Show gratitude to earn respect”
Director / Community Manager, Media Company

“Active moderation with a well informed host, participation at all levels of the organization and support by the executive level”
Director Internet Marketing, Tools/Service Provider

“Platform, (if you want the conversation to occur on a 1st party site, if not it may very well occur on a third party site), Recognition (supporting the achievements of the community members, and enabling through various interactions including events, content, and feedback interaction opportunities. Listening Mechanism (ensure that community members voices are heard)”
Community Program Manager, Software Company

“The community is open to all (even competitors. Speak your mind but respect everyone. Clear policies and guidelines dictate the rules/expectations of the community”
Social Media / Community Manager, Hardware / Software Company

“1 – Focus: Managing expectations from the outset as to what users can and cannot experience in the community 2 – Prompt response & closing the loop
3 – Rich & engaging content”
CEO, Online Community / Social Media Company

“œ1 – establish ground rules at the get go and enforce them even handedly 2 – respond to the evolution demands of a growing community by evolving your offering 3 – remember that you are not one of them, you are their advocate to the company and the company’s advocate to them”
Senior Community Development Manager, Hardware/Software Company

“1- Always ensuring that the community comes before the brand behind it. 2 – Let the community create the culture and make tools and communications to enhance that, instead of trying to impose a culture. 3 – Prevent the community from going stale”
Online Community Coordinator, Non Profit Organization

“1) Providing differentiated and relevant tools, features, & content (why engage with ‘product X’ here, vs. anywhere else?) 2) Lower the barrier to participation / access as much as you reasonably can 3) Provide self-moderation tools”
Director, Online Marketing, Entertainment (Video Games)

Steps to Establish an Online Community’s Culture
Another area we wanted to explore with this project was the set of key actions taken by community hosts to support the establishment of a community’s culture.

We asked: “: What steps have you taken to establish a new community’s culture?”

Respondents highlighted the following key actions:

• Recognizing positive participation

• Soliciting and Responding to member feedback
• Communicating with Members

Key quotes from the respondents:

“Active participation of internal staff – Reward programs for active participants – ongoing moderation – News and announcement on landing pages.”
Community Manager, Software Company

“For our upcoming community redesign, we are limiting the amount and importance of “standard” community features (friends, forums, “favorite books”, etc.) and focusing more on making the resources, our organization’s knowledge and user’s generated knowledge, as a visible and social part of the site. All articles and content can be rated and comment upon. Users will have access to a Yahoo Answers style tool. Users can contribute stories and best practices in a community blog. The “standard” functions are there to help make relationships made on these new functions easier to keep, but the knowledge and resources people create will be the most important part of the community.”
Online Community Coordinator, Non-Profit Organization

“Instituted simple but comprehensive rules and codes of practice. Engaged community members directly rather than leaving them to flail without response. Demonstrated that by following, new policies results happened.”
Community Development Manager, Hardware / Software Company

“Actively soliciting feedback from members. Publicly acknowledging and acting upon the feedback received. Clearly identifying desirable behavior as a model for others to embrace. Setting a positive example when posting as a member (not as a moderator).”
Analytics Country Manager, Agency

“1. Designed our primary social media platform to emphasize and reinforce our targeted audience — business professionals interested in an exchange of information on business oriented topics. This includes, look and feel; community standards, user added content, involvement with other business oriented social networks. 2. Individual responses to feedback submitters, within one business day, from me or my team, providing information as well as our real names, e-mail addresses and office phone numbers.”
Director, User Participation, Media Company

“Listen, learn and adapt. It’s important to remember that company’s can participate in the community discussion, and provide a “the company’s” perspective or view”
Community Program Manager, Software Company

Netting It Out
Based on synthesis of the respondents’ answers, key activities and factors for establishing a desirable culture for an online community are generally:

Value Statement
Create a clear value statement for the community that includes all stakeholders (host and members). The host must offer a unique set of content, features, and access to personalities as part of the value statement. The value statement should be clearly communicated within the community overtly (via the code of conduct) and subtly through branding, user experience and moderation / management cues.

Clear Code of Conduct
A clear and concise code of conduct should be available on the community site, and should clearly describe the expected behavior of community members, and the consequences for behavior that is out of bounds.

Open Lines of Communication
The community host must be easily accessible, and responsive. As noted in the comments above, some organizations have an internal SLA (Service Level Agreement) for response times.

Host plays a visible (but different) role
Members of the host organization should play a visible role in the community. Being present, interacting with members and often times leading community initiatives or activities. It is important to note that the role of host is one of attending, not just participation. Just like the host of a good party doesn’t just mingle, and good community host participates with intention, and keeps an eye on the overall mood of the community.

User Experience / Feature Set Should Be Tailored To Audience

If you subscribe to the design principals of the Bauhaus, then “form follows function”. This means that, from the baseline information architecture of the community presence, all the way to feature selection and visual design, the community’s online experience is shaped to be appropriate for the desired audience. A community designed for 3D artists working in the film industry (more visual, to share images) has a much different form factor than a site designed for application developers (more text-based, to share code samples).

Content
Quality, relevant and up to date content is key to many online communities. Unique content from the host organization is often one of the key “Why are we here” factors to attract community members. Ensuring that quality member content is highlighted on the community site (and elsewhere, if possible), helps with participation incentive and helps foster a sense of engagement.

Acknowledge Positive Contributions
Highlighting positive contributions and contributors helps encourage content contributions, as well as reinforce positive member behavior.

Create a “Welcoming” Culture
When new members are welcomed in to a community by the host or other community members, that member is more likely to come back, and to contribute.

For More Information

The full report “Online Community Culture: Establishing, Maintaining and Changing” (Published 11/08, 40pgs) is available to Online Community Research Network members, and includes additional information on:

• Factors that have a negative impact on culture

• Processes for collecting ideas, memes, and “stories” from members
• Managing external factors effecting culture
• Managing a negative culture