The art and craft of moderating discussion forums is an often overlooked skill. After an online community is built technically, the hard work begins of making it thrive with participation. But how do you encourage and support members? What are some of the best practice activities that a community manager can do to help a fledgling community grow? Success can often be found in a combination of factors - some sheer persistence and others in making the right moves online to create an environment where people are comfortable in taking the step to post a message, comment or review. We often forget what a big step it is for many people to make themselves visible in an online community. People will not spontaneously converse online any more comfortably than they will stand up before a large crowd and share their ideas.
Here are some suggested best practices for community moderators who are working to support their forums and social media campaigns to help bring life and engagement to their community from a book I co-authored in 1994.
Key areas covered include:
Engaging members in thinking
Engaging members in doing
How to get to know each other
Timing
Tone, and
Maintaining quality
Sometimes, the more things change, the more they stay the same! What are other best practices or guidelines for moderating that you find work? If you have any tips or suggestions share them so we can share and grow together....
Tuesday, February 24, 2009
Top Tips for Moderators of Online Communities
Sunday, February 15, 2009
Building community 140 characters at a time
Forum One's Online Community UnConference East 2009 in New York last Wednesday had an interesting mix of traditional and new media attendees and topics. Traditional media include Consumer Reports, McKinsey Quarterly, NBC/Universal and Time Inc. New media organizations include Amplify, EverydayHealth, FotoLog, MomCentral, WikiAnswers and many more.
The conversations covered some perennial online community issues, such as:
- How to moderate communities
- How to build member engagement
- How to monetize a social network
And some new topics:
- Twitter and how to use it
- Getting alignment between members and organizations or community sponsors
- Using social networks for political engagement (Does anyone think Obama would have won without using these tools?)
Largely absent from the session:
- Metrics. Looks like everyone knows what to measure and how to measure it. Right?
- Anything about blogs and podcasts. It's so mid-00's.
Cool stuff:
- ConsumerReports and McKinsey are using Twitter for news and business info
- Municipalities are starting to use social network tools to expand community outreach. This means they are going from offline engagement strategies to online and then back to offline, in-person engagement again.
Consider what happens when Google's open-source (sort of) Android wins the next-generation OS battle by 2010 or so. Does this mean the interactive aspects of online communities and social networks will evolve from the current information-dense conversational model into more telegraphic, terse and transitory exchanges? Check the updates ...
Tuesday, February 10, 2009
The power of new media research
The purposeful use of social media in business and society is actively transforming our lives - not just online where it takes place but its impact on the ways we do business and connect to others in changing. What are the drivers of such innovation? What are the processes that make for effective use of social media? How are the tools being applied in meaningful ways? What are the best practice for social media in learning environments, in business and education online communities and professional networks, that help people collaborate and make effective decisions - be it buying decisions, strategic decisions, or decisions that help them be better at what they do. The tools are the (relative) easy part; it is the application of the tools that really matter. These are the questions that drive what I do as a social media strategist, researcher and practitioner. I have devoted the past 15 years to the fruitful examination and application of the answers in real world situations.
I am so excited to have an opportunity to continue this work the course of the year through my SNCR Research Fellowship for 2009. Through this fellowship I hope to further the advancement of the art and science of new media to support business adoption and to help codify best practices so that they can be applied effectively.
From the media release...
SNCR Fellows include a leading group of futurists, scholars, business leaders, professional communicators, members of the media and technologists from around the globe - all collaborating together on research initiatives, educational offerings and the establishment of best practices.
"Palo Alto, Calif. (PRWEB) February 5, 2009 -- The Society for New Communications Research, a global, nonprofit think tank focused on the latest developments in media and communications, today announced its 2009 Fellows. These new Fellows join the Society's existing group of business leaders, scholars, professional communicators, members of the media, futurists and technologists from around the globe. The Society's Fellows collaborate on original research and educational programs focused on the advanced study of emerging trends and developments in media and communications, and their effect on business, professional communications, media, and society."
Connie Bensen, online community strategist for Techrigy; journalist Andria Y. Carter, online editor of Trentonian.com; Marcia L. Conner, managing director of Ageless Learner and Fast Company columnist; Mark Chrisman, senior instructional designer for T-Mobile USA; Vanessa DiMauro, CEO of Leader Networks; Laura Fitton, Twitter expert and founder of Pistachio Consulting; R. Craig Lefebvre, PhD, new media expert and designer of public health and social change programs; public relations strategist and author of Now Is Gone, Geoff Livingston; Gaurav Mishra, the Yahoo! Fellow in International Values, Communications, Technology, and Global Internet at Georgetown University; John Quinn, media veteran and public affairs marketing director for ABC affiliate WJLA-TV in Washington, DC; Susanne Rockwell, Web editor for University Communications at the University of California, Davis; Todd Van Hoosear, senior analyst for SocialSphere Strategies; Dr. Tamara L. Wandel, Ph.D., assistant professor in communication at the University of Evansville; and Charlotte Ziems, vice president of client engagement at Tendo Communications.
Congrats to the group! May we offer valuable insights over the coming 12 months to help shape and inform the practice of new communications.
Wednesday, February 4, 2009
The secret is out of the bag: lawyers use social media
At the Legal Tech conference yesterday in NYC I participated in a vibrant panel on Best Practices for Professional Networking with John Lipsey -from Martindale-Hubbell, Journalist Bob Ambrogi, Eugene Weitz of Alcatel-Lucent and Olivier Antoine of Crowell & Moring to discuss the emergence and best practices around professional networking for attorneys.
Key discussion points (with lots of questions and dialogue from the audience) included:
* Legal profession has been slow to adapt social media and professional networking but improving. Stats were offered from an ABA survey and from the Leader Networks "Networks for Counsel" study (downloadable here)
*How to evaluate/choose where to participate online - private networks for professional collaboration vs. public profiles
* Some concerns surfaced about how to do it and issues around legal (jurisdiction, client confidentiality, how not to disclose intention)
* What are the value drivers for business? How to measure the return on effort?
We also talked a bit about Martindale-Connected, a private online community for legal professionals. I am quite a fan of this community and believe it offers a good vehicle for professional collaboration, learning and networking online. In full disclosure, Leader Networks worked with Martindale around the strategy and planning of this community, but they have done a great job getting it out into beta and forward. They understand the rules of engagement and have created a trustworthy online community that allows the best professional networking and information sharing opportunities for legal to emerge.
We ended the conversation with discussions about how online professional networking and social media is here to stay. Lawyers are using it and there is an opportunity for legal to embrace social media and use it wisely for their professional betterment.
Questions from the audience honed in on the many concerns legal have around using social media - they are late adopters to many technologies so history repeats itself, but here's hoping that the ease of the tools will lead many firms and legal professionals to focus on the benefits and opportunities granted through participation. There is definitely resistance on the part of legal to enter this brave new world of social media, but it is starting to gain momentum. I believe it will become more mainstream for legal in short time.
A well read blog LawyerKM (which focuses on knowledge management & technology for lawyers and law firms) summarized the panel quite well.
John Lipsey put together a fine summary podcast which goes into many of the Martindale Connected features and benefits.
Caselines, another noted blog, also posted notes with detailed Twitter commentary.
Tweets about the event at large can be found #LTNY
