SMIL Handbook: Online community building

Online community building is a key role of a the community manager, This role is a fairly new one, and although it has its roots in the roles of those who managed bulletin boards and discussion forums - when they were often known as facilitators - the role is still emerging and evolving.

However, the role of a Community Manager is essentially to encourage, foster and support the engagement of participants in the community, although the way this takes place will depend on the nature and purpose of the online community

Types of community

There are many types of community - big and small - with different remits and purposes, e.g.

Whole organisation communities

Project/team/subject communities

Learning communities

Communities of practice

Research communities

Customer communities

Role of community managers

It goes without saying that they will need to to be very active in the community: both reactive and proactive

They will need to welcome participants , encourage full participation (via sharing of resources, experiences, ideas etc, as well as working collaboratively with others)

They will also need to set ethical standards for the community, and deal promptly and effectively with any unacceptable behaviour that takes place in the community (e.g. flaming, etc)

Dawn Foster writing in the Web Worker Daily explains that the day-to-day responsibilities of a community manager contain an interesting mix of tactical tasks and strategic planning for most community managers, and the work usually falls into four areas:

Facilitation
Content
Evangelism
Evolution

Skills of community managers

technology skills - being competent and confident users of Web 2.0 social media tools
people skills - being a competent "people person" to support, encourage, cajole and develop individuals' engagement with the community, and have good communication skills

Chris Brogan considered the essential skills of a community manager in this post in 2008:

The best community managers are like a good party host mixed with a fine restaurant host
Community managers must be experienced communicators
Community managers are ambassadors and advocates in one
Community managers are bodyguards and protectors
Community managers must build actionable reports
Community managers cultivate internal teams for further support

Stuart Foster, writing in Mashable, describes the 5 essential traits for community managers:

Loving your job
Ability to promote others as well as yourself
Ability to empower and support your community
Transparent, fun and engaging personality
Extensive knowledge about the company

Kick-starting your online community

Getting your community started needs to specific thought, In this article by Jeremiah Owyang, he provides 10 ways to kickstart your community:

How to kick start a community - an ongoing list, Jeremiah Owyang, Web Stategy, 14 August 2009

Building your own online community

Take a look at this article by Robin Good, which interviews and videos Nancy White.

Online community building strategy: good advice from Nancy White

This article from communityspark also looks at how to build an online community.

How to build an online community, community spark, 14 September 2009

Community gardening

A number of authors use a gardening metaphor to describe the job of maintaining an online gardening. They talk about seeding, weeding and feeding. Take a look at this article by Clark Quinn:

Seed, feed and weed, Clark Quinn, Learnlets, 17 September 2009

Encouraging community

Jakob Nielsen's Participation Inequality theory of 2006 says that in

"In most online communities, 90% of users are lurkers who never contribute, 9% of users contribute a little, and 1% of users account for almost all the action"

In other words 90% are consumers, 9% are contributors and 1% are creators. TSo how do you encourage participation and contribution in the community? Nielsen says you can't, and that although participation will always be somewhat unequal, there are ways to better equalize it.

Building an online learning community

For many years Gilly Salmon has been writing and talking about E-Moderation, which is the role of an online teacher (or facilitator). The first edition of her book, E-Moderating was produced in 2000 and a second edition appeared in 2004. In this book, she describes a 5 stage model of how individuals make use of CMC (computer mediated communication), the technical skills students need to master at each stage, and how the online tutor needs to help them. The 5 stages comprise

Access & Motivation
Online socialisation
Information Exchange
Knowledge construction
Development

For a diagrammatical view of this 5-stage at Gilly's All Things in Moderation website

Reading List:

Community managers and management