photo credit: slightly everything

I don’t support local businesses. I don’t support global businesses. What I do support is businesses that offer me the greatest experience.

Experience, for me, can be broken up into 5 categories. Quality, selection, price, convenience and personality (which includes customer service). In order to get my business, you don’t have to be great at all of these. At a minimum, you need to compete on quality and personality. If you fail at one of those, it doesn’t matter how good you are at the rest. I’ll use you if I have to, but I am actively looking for a way not to use you. That’s a bad place for you to be.

photo credit: j_lai

I spoke about monetization at indieconf this past weekend. This marked the third year for the event and, having spoken at all three, I can say that it is a great conference that provides a lot of bang for your buck. Michael Kimsal, the organizer of indieconf, cares and it shows.

Following the event, I had dinner with Michael, as well as Jonathan Bailey and Kevin Dees, friends of mine who had also spoken at the event. We discussed indieconf, of course, and the discussion turned to conference food.

I don’t recall all details of the conversation, but I believe Michael said that a bunch of people complemented him on the food at the event. Specifically, the quality of the food and the options available. There were sandwiches, salads and desserts. There were options for people who eat red meat, who don’t (me) and who wanted a meatless sandwich. There was also a dedicated table for vegans and vegetarians with some good looking options.

Strong communication skills are essential for a great community manager. And a subset of that skill is explanation. Your proficiency in explanation helps to determine how successful you are as a community manager and how effectively you spend your time.

If you can’t explain why you removed a post, you may confuse or anger a member or have to spend more time talking about the issue. If you can’t explain the new features that you are launching, adoption of those features will suffer. If you can’t explain the responsibilities of your staff members, they will not grasp their roles quickly and you will have to spend more time training them.

My friend Lee LeFever of Common Craft just released a new book, “The Art of Explanation: Making Your Ideas, Products, and Services Easier to Understand.” In it, he defines an explanation as:

photo credit: Svadilfari

Regardless of the software that you use to run your community, it is likely that one of the features that it offers is private messaging. This enables community members to exchange messages privately, between themselves, without posting them in your public areas.

This feature can be used in a bad way and should probably be disabled on some communities. But, even if they are disabled for members in general, it is usually a great idea to keep them enabled for staff communications, especially for private conversations between staff and members.

When you contact a member about a site related matter or a guideline violation, you want to make sure three things happen: the message is received, the message is opened and that it is opened by the account holder. When it comes to ticking these three boxes, private messaging easily beats email.

photo credit: mikecogh

Have you ever had a member who says that you did something that you actually didn’t do?

For example, a member of one of my communities recently posted in public, on a thread within our community, suggesting that a member of staff had told them a post they made earlier in the thread was “wrong.” Beyond the fact that we don’t allow posts that reference moderation decisions, there was one gigantic problem with this: it never happened.

No one on my staff had told them that there was anything wrong with their post. The post itself was still on the thread, untouched. When a post is made that violates our guidelines, it is removed – not left. No one contacted them.

photo credit: jontintinjordan

Recently, a new member posted a request on one of my forums that violated our guidelines. Suffice to say, the request was inappropriate.

It was available for viewing for a few days. As soon as I saw it, I removed it and handled it appropriately.

A veteran member of the community had replied to the thread, remarking in disgust at the request. I went ahead and sent that member a private message to let them know that the thread had been removed and, more importantly, to encourage them to report posts of that nature to me, should they occur in the future.

Their response was one of surprise. They were surprised that I “let it go as long as it has.” Let’s review:

photo credit: rmartz

There is a particularly sensitive discussion being had on one of my communities right now and, as you probably know from dealing with sensitive discussions, they tend to take more attention from moderators than your average thread. This one is no different.

With that in mind, this thread also hasn’t been that bad, either. Most people who have participated in the thread have done so in an appropriate manner, with respect to our user guidelines. But, it is rare when you have a sensitive thread where there aren’t at least a couple of people who run into trouble.

photo credit: fauxto_digit

In response to my request for reader suggestions, Kal was kind enough to outline the following scenario:

“I run a very small online games community that has around 500 [daily active users]. … The community and games are free but there is also the possibility to subscribe which gives access to additional features such as new games to play and being able to change colours and styles of the website – things like that.”

photo credit: swanksalot

It’s natural that members of the community that you manage may want to interact with you on other social sites. Facebook is an easy example here, because of its massive userbase and because many profiles are private. But, certainly, other similarly structured platforms would apply just the same.

If your name is known to your members, as is commonly the case, then your profile may be a simple Google search away.

Should you accept and encourage friend requests? Or should you discourage and ignore them?

photo credit: susivinh

I’m a big believer in leaving moderation to moderators and in having a word with any member that attempts to act like a moderator.

By act like a moderator, I mean that they try to tell other people what they can and cannot post and where and when they can do so. Even if they are correct, I don’t want them telling other members what to do.

In the long run, I believe that this sort of thing does more harm than good. I want members to respect one another and treat each other kindly. I don’t want them to manage each other or to feel as though their fellow members are watching over their shoulder, waiting for them to slip up. I want them to enjoy the community and each other and leave the management to the recognized staff members within the community.