community management basics | by two pi team

About: Two Pi Team.

Two Pi Team was founded in 2005 and offers

a range of game-related services with a focus

on MMOGs.

Our 28-strong team provides professional forum

moderation and supervision, as well as community

management, localisation, translation and other

game-related services.


About: Two Pi Team.

Two Pi Team’s client base includes:

Two Pi Team creates functioning and strong communities, ensuring their clients enjoy an excellent reputation.


What does

Community Management mean?

Let’s start with the basics!

What is Community Management in the first place? What does it stand for?


• The original notion of Community roughly defines a collective sharing of at least one common interest and building up an identity of its own.

• The term of Manager, in economics, serves to describe an executive.

• In sports or in the field of arts it means an agent who in particular solves organisational and business issues for his clients.

What does



So we should ask ourselves:

• Is the Community Manager an executive? He should be – within the company’s structure.But should he be for the community, too?

• Is the Community Manager an agent? He should be – for the community. Exactly how he is to bring this into accordance with his task within the company, remains to be clarified.

What does



And where is the Community that the

Community Manager is an agent for?

Community Management should be understood as

central interface.


• Taking care of the Community

• Interaction with the Community

• Granting a smoothly flow of information

• (Making contributions to the) Development of Marketing Strategies

• Meaningful and significant reporting for the Developer and/or Publisher

• Interactive tie inhouse between the departments

Some of the

Community Manager‘s main tasks


How should Community Management be integrated into a company’s structure?

Please don’t: Pressure is being

applied from “up high”.


„The ideal situation: All departments communicate with each other.”


How should Community Management be integrated into a company’s structure?

Each company has to identify and decide by themselves

which philosophy they follow and which structure and tasks

the community management has in its goals.

But one thing should be taken into consideration:

Community Management

intern or extern?


The community is the heart of the game: The Community Management is its lungs. Even if the heart might not always beat in the same pulse, the lungs should always provide enough oxygen.

That can be seen best by telling which

skills a Community Manager has to have:

• He must be able to tackle something with passion and yet understand and comprehend cooly calculated facts.

• He must be sensitive, but thick-skinned at the same time. He should not only enjoy a game, but understand the underlying processes involved in producing and operating it as well.

But what is Community Management?


• He must possess an excellent faculty of speech, without sounding artificial.

• He must be flexible in many aspects and still have solid cornerstones to get his bearings from.

• He must be an entertainer without making a fool of himself. He simultaneously is a buddy and a person of respect. A lone warrior and a 100% team worker.



• He is a mouthpiece pointing in two directions, a double simultaneous translator: interpreting from the company to the community and vice versa. Ideally, not only does he understand the language of the community, but also that of the developers, of business people, of marketing, of the different cultural and linguistic circles, etc., etc.



• A Community Manager is constantly tearing himself apart. There is a reason why it is said that a Community Manager’s “half-life-period” ranges between three to five years – after that he’s burned out, is outspent because he’s perpetually strained himself beyond his limits. Here again, we strongly recommend: Don’t leave him to fight all by himself!



The Goal is to get as much Members with a smiling face as possible. Look out for traps and bonus cards and you will be the lucky winner at the end.

So let‘s get started!

The Gaming-Community:

A Community Game



A Community Game


Trap-Card: You get swamped with work from many other departments to help them, so you do not have the time to care for the community and to interact with them.


A Community Game



A Community Game


You´ll get ONE MORE chance.

Try again and draw a new card.


A Community Game

Bonus-Card: Special Community Fertilizer. „Game Keeping & Care“



A Community Game


Trap-Card: Epic Fail.You fail to communicate in different languages simultaneously.


A Community Game



A Community Game


Trap-Card: You missed the opportunity to communicate important facts like missing ingame items, changes in the pricing policy, changed items in the boxes and so on.

The community will find out on their own when all is too late.


A Community Game



A Community Game



A Community Game

Bonus-Card: Interaction & Involvement



A Community Game



A Community Game

Bonus-Card: Reward the Community



A Community Game


Trap-Card: Exclusive Information for the Press only.


A Community Game



A Community Game


You´ll get ONE MORE chance.

Try again and draw a new card.


A Community Game

Bonus-Card: Exclusive Information for the Community



A Community Game



A Community Game

Bonus-Card: Thinking of the whole Community



A Community Game


Imprint

Two Pi Team

Owner: Nadja Bastawi, Dipl. Oec. (CVO)

[email protected]

Thomas Lagemann (CEO)[email protected]

Gerresheimer Str.9D-40721 Hilden

Germany

Tel: +49 (0)2103 322 76www.two-pi-team.com

Graphic & Animation:Sabrina Rentzschke

Sound:Wolf Detsch & Sabrina Rentzschke

Member of:

The future of gaming is:

COMMUNITY

COMMUNITY COMMUNITY!

Quote: David Perry on GCDC, Leipzig 2008 © Two Pi Team, Quo Vadis 2009, Berlin

http://www.two-pi-team.com/

community management basics | by two pi team

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