For more than 6 years, I have wanted to start a web video show focused on reviewing soda. I love soda and I am passionate about it. This summer, I finally acted on those aspirations when I launched Soda Tasting.

There are new episodes released 5 days a week and views to my videos are rising, slowly but surely. More importantly, I am having a blast doing it. So much fun. I’m interested to see where it can go. I have already released 60 episodes.

I believe that my community management experience aides me greatly in growing the show. In turn, certain things that have happened have made me think of strategies that relate to community management.

photo credit: VinothChandar

This is a guest post from Richard Millington of FeverBee. For community managers, Richard’s blog is a great source of ideas, suggestions and observations that will make you think. He recently released his first book, “Buzzing Communities.” He has given me 2 copies to giveaway and I have decided to do a random drawing of those who comment on this post. So, if you’d like to win a copy, please comment below by December 12 at 8 PM ET!

Community guidelines don’t change the behavior of your members for one simple reason: your members don’t read them.

You can test this for yourself. Use Google Analytics and measure how many members visit your guidelines page. I bet it’s less than 1%. And the 1% that take the time to read the guidelines probably aren’t the people that are likely to break them.

The more that I read Adrian Chen’s story about Violentacrez, who the writer labeled  “the biggest troll on the web,” the more angry I became.

Not anger in the sense of uncontrolled emotion, but anger as someone who has managed online communities for a long time and helped, in whatever small way, to establish this field as a profession. Most of that anger was not directed at the troll, but at Reddit. If you prefer, you can substitute disappointment for anger – they both work.

Let me be clear. Michael Brutsch, the troll in question, disgusts me. I don’t have any compassion for him. I would have fired him myself if he worked for me. His actions are deplorable, his explanations are ridiculous. He is responsible for his actions.

This story is not an attack on anonymity because he wasn’t anonymous. The moment he told other Reddit members who he was, that anonymity vanished. He trusted people who turned on him and gave him up. Chen just put the pieces together – the pieces that Brutsch shared with others.

photo credit: dotpolka

Back in July, when I asked what you’d like me to write about, Ben asked about lurkers. Specifically, how to convert lurkers to active contributors without changing the forum platform in use.

In Ben’s case, his forum is for a browser based game. 50% of the people who play the game have a forum account and 2% of those members are active on a daily basis. Are those numbers poor? It depends. But, not necessarily. Lurkers will represent a large percentage, usually a big majority, of the traffic for most publicly viewable, successful online communities. Still, it never hurts to consider how you can improve.

Lurkers are a common concern for community managers and a persistent topic when it comes to growing an online community. When it comes to converting lurkers, there are two big areas that you should focus on.

photo credit: up to 2011

Much of community management deals with matters that most members will never know about. So then, how does the average member form their perception of the manager? By what they know – largely, how the community manager participates in the community.

Participating can feel like a lighter part of the job because, well, it probably is. Talking about a movie, sharing an experience, starting a topic or replying to one – whatever you are doing, you are doing something that you probably do naturally with others, anyway.

Though I might not need to convince you that participating in your own community is a good thing, perhaps there are benefits of doing so that you are not yet aware of.

photo credit: blumenbiene

Last week, I wrote about the practice of creating fake accounts to seed a community and why you should never lie to your community.

But, “getting a community going is hard,” some might say. “You need activity to entice people to join,” they might also say. “If I can’t lie to my potential members, what can I do?”

In short? Actual work.

It isn’t easy to get a community going. That’s true. It’s also true that one of the factors that determines the attractiveness of your community is the activity that people see when they first visit it. There is nothing wrong with seeding, as long as you treat your members with respect. Let’s talk strategy.

photo credit: Renato Ganoza

Posting on Branch, Geoff Stearns started a discussion titled “Seeding a new online community.” In his post, Stearns asks for ideas and practices for getting a new online community started.

He specifically references the video embedded at the bottom of this article. In this clip, Reddit co-founder Steve Huffman says that he, and the other co-founder Alexis Ohanian, grew Reddit by submitting content under many different usernames.

He explains that, when he or Ohanian visited the submission page, they would see an additional field that other users wouldn’t: a user field. In this field, they could enter whatever username they wanted and, if it was available, it would then be registered and the content would be submitted under that name.

photo credit: LOLren

As people endeavor to add more features and sections to their forums and communities – more than “just” discussion threads – there is a great opportunity for additional value for all parties involved. But, in the thirst to be “more,” it can be easy to forget the cost that you may incur.

This can include things like articles and dedicated editorial, product reviews, Facebook-like profiles with comments and a wall, member blogs, chat rooms, wikis, photo albums and plenty of other dedicated sections that receive top billing, or close to it, on your community.

These sections can all be great, meaningful parts of your community. So, what’s the problem?

photo credit: smplstc

This is a guest post from Benjamin Plass, a ManagingCommunities.com reader, who is the Head of Community Management for Goodgame Studios.

Every community manager has goals. Everyone wants their community to grow. The forum structure influences this growth. It is therefore very important to understand and adjust it to your needs and overall goals.

To make your community grow, you have to engage your first time visitors and new members. The conversion from reader to a posting member is a big step and as Patrick has discussed, the majority of your users will just be reading.

photo credit: davidkn1

Communities often see downswings in activity around specific holidays or even specific seasons.

For example, you might see less of some people during the summer, when they are more freely able to go outside and take vacations. Of course, summer occurs during different portions of the year, depending on where you are based. If most of your visitors are Australian, you’ll see it in December through February. If most are from the U.S., then you’re looking at June through August.

The same thing can happen on weekends, especially 3 or 4 day weekends that include holidays. In the U.S., it is Memorial Day weekend. I asked for ideas for today’s article and my friend Ted Sindzinski suggested that I discuss seasonality. Specifically, “How can communities thrive through slow seasons, even leverage users going offline?”