Human-centered Aspects of Community

Management

Marc Siegel marc@simraceway.com

msiegel@gmail.com

My background

Teachers and students

Software developers

Casual game players

My current job

I am currently hiring for • Customer Service Reps ($14-16/hr)• Associate Community Manager

(mid-$40s / year)

Race car simulation game

Winners of online races win nice prizes, i.e. trip to California to drive real race cars

Humanize interactions

• People come for content but stay for relationships

• Address people by name or handle

• Sign notes with your name

• Provide robust profiles to help people relate:• Allow individuals to share about themselves

free-form• Have system keep track of updates: posts,

badges, etc• Highlight fresh or good profiles

Communications

• Be open, honest and transparent• If you don’t know or can’t share, simply say

so• Squirrely answers erode trust• Don’t delete negative comments; instead

respond with the best spin possible

• Create feedback loops• Let the members have lots of influence in

determining the community roadmap• Always be grateful for constructive criticism

Make it easy for newcomers

• Provide a “Visitor’s Center” • Name is not important; could be

“Getting Started” or “About us”• Include the following:

• Frequently Asked Questions• A guided tour• Membership requirements• Help/Search• Press releases• Links to notable people

Volunteer leaders

• Promote certain members to be volunteer leaders; choose them carefully

• Delineate their responsibilities

• Provide training if need be

• Provide perqs for participating:• SWAG, early access to software, connections to

key people, private group for discussion• Distinction online (icon with their screen name)

• Monitor their continuing participation

Roles within the community

• Greeter – welcome newcomers

• Host – facilitate the core activities

• Content expert – provide compelling posts for other members

• Editor – evaluate content

• Cops – remove people/content that violate the community standards

• Teacher – teach members to become leaders

• Events Coordinator – plan and run events

• Support – answer questions about the system

• Manager – evaluate and support leadersFrom “Community Building” by Amy Jo Kim

Stages of participation

• Visitors: people without a persistent identity in the community

Membership Ritual: letter, gift, event

• Novices: new members who need to learn the ropes and be introduced into the community life

• Regulars: established members that are comfortably participating in community life

Leadership Ritual: selection, training, graduation

• Leaders: volunteers, contractors and staff that keep the community running

• Elders: long established regulars and leaders who share their knowledge, and pass along the culture

From “Community Building” by Amy Jo Kim

Encouraging participation

• Seed discussion• Don’t open empty forums• People are reluctant to go first• People need examples to follow

• Create some dummy questions/answers• If you can find helpful cohorts, great• Else create dummy accounts for just this

purpose• Provide variety of use cases

Encouraging more conversation

• Answer in open ended ways• Even if you are providing a definitive

answer, say “has this worked for other people”

• Ask questions

• Don’t’ respond immediately; allow the community to answer• Exception: if bad info has already been

posted, respond quickly to avoid people chasing bad info

Designing products via community

• Throughout the design/build cycle, get feedback from customers

• The better your product reflects customer desires, the more successful it will be

• Examples:• Simple: Christmas theme at Mindjolt• More elaborate: continual back and forth

between development manager and community at IBM

Analytics trumps community input

Regardless of input, Shard 5 tests so much better, so it will be used going forward

Bonus question: Twitter

• “LinkedIn is dead; the way to search for work is by Twitter”

• Huh?