Help Me to Help You
23 Apr 2012 Leave a Comment
If you sing it…..it sounds great!
I pride myself on taking care of our thousands of community managers. I certainly don’t have the time I would like to spend with each and every one, but I do make an effort to make them feel as though they are the only people in my worklife, and their ‘asks’ are the only things I had planned to do.
In fact, juggling a few high priority projects in addition to my job can make that challenging. But I know it’s working since many of our CMs will write to me and say, “Could you please (add a new CM, or change the title or whatever) of my space.”
THAT’s the problem…..of my space. I’d love to be able to say that I recall each person and their associated spaces but it doesn’t make much sense to begin tell untruths at this point in my life. More and more, I’ve found myself writing back, and asking for verification of the space url and name.
I’ve published blogs about the information needed to troubleshoot, I post friendly reminders every month or so, but every time I receive such a message I am reminded that these folks really do believe that I am there for just them.
What’s better than that?
Why Did Visits to my Community Slow Down?
15 Apr 2012 1 Comment
in Lessons
Well, hell’s bells, I surely don’t know!!!!
This Community Manager gig is really a hoot if you approach it with the correct balance of reverence, irony and humor. I manage over 700 internal (employee only) communities. That sounds like a lot, and it is, but I don’t really have an opportunity to build relationships with each of the 1500 or so Community Managers. But this one should have known better.
Every CM who wants a ‘traffic’ report on their space has to request one. Truth be told, reports have been scarce since end 2011 due to resource issues. But, just last month, the March report was released.
That left CMs comparing their November, 2011 reports to the March, 2012 report and….guess what…..the one Community Manager who actually reads and uses their report noticed a large discrepancy in space visits. So what does he do? He calls me, and says “I’m making a presentation to (insert your Mr. Big Executive name here), and this report shows a sharp decline in visits to our site. I must tell him why.”
My reply? I’ve found that short and simple is best in these cases so I reply, “Well, I don’t know what’s been going on in your business so you might want to tell me why.”
After several attempts at discrediting the reports, all of which I assured the CM were based on the same data so even if the data was incorrect (which it wasn’t), it’s stil comparing the same fields and definitely shows a decline over the two quarters.
“Why?” he asked again. I offered a number of suggestions as to what might cause this precipitous drop:
- Were there layoffs in your group?
- Did someone else begin a community that is similar to yours?
- Did people have goals in Q4 to visit the space, and without goals they didn’t ‘stick?”
- Is this just a natural leveling of space visits?
With those starter hints, I left the Community Manager to determine what had changed in his business to yield his space visit results.
I heard later that he continued on his quest for an answer calling the person who generates the reports, and then contacting several different people in IT asking what happened.
Business owners own their membership. Numbers and percentages are simple measurements, managing a community requires analytical thinking and linking to organizational and business results.
Own it!
And when things go wrong………
06 Apr 2012 1 Comment
in Uncategorized Tags: Community_Manager
Spent a weekend at a chanting and meditation retreat, and I have to say that even 5 days later I’m still glowing. Well, maybe no one sees it on the outside, but there’s a glow in my heart.
When managing any community of people, whether live or virtually, there are bound to be issues. Yesterday, we experienced the tsunami of issues. Graphics no appearing on our platform, 4 hour delays in posting to the time the post appeared in our enterprise space, and on and on and on.
With my newfound perspective, my first thought was, “I didn’t realize how important this social platform is to our employees.” They were literally writing saying that, “everyone depends on this (space, document, discussion)” and we have to get the issues corrected as soon as possible.
I managed the user communication, while our tireless and often unthanked IT support folks worked diligently to identify the root cause of the issues and to resolve them.
What I’ve learned, again :
- I don’t need to get emotionally attached to the issues that people are having or the emotions that they are feeling.
- Simply acknowledging how they feel is often enough. ”I know how frustrating this is” or “I understand the urgency and have taken steps….”
- People want to know that someone hears them. They really don’t expect that every issue must be resolved within 3 minutes of reporting it, but they surely want to hear back after reporting an issue. A little assurance that they are not alone, that you are there for them, that you sincerely care about their experience = priceless.
So this is apparently the new and improved version of Community Manager. Looking back, investing my energy into getting spun up about these issues would have done nothing to serve my employee customers.
What techniques have you used to defuse potentially agitating situations?
All I Learned was taught by the Beatles
24 Feb 2012 Leave a Comment
in Uncategorized Tags: beatles community
I’m forever quoting Seinfeld episodes, but yesterday was different. I found myself quoting the Beatles, and John Lennon in particular, at least three times.
How does John Lennon relate to social media, you ask? My first response is he did it way before anyone else did. Remember the John & Yoko “bed-in” for peace that was broadcast globally? But his lessons remain true today.
Let it Be
It may take me a bit of time, but I have learned during the past 18 months as a Community Manager to sometimes just let it be. Not easy for a driven, Type-A personality to let a request go unanswered even for a few hours. But when I’ve practiced, I find that folks often answer their own questions given the time and the ‘opportunity’ to look for the answer.
Don’t get me wrong; I’m not abandoning my community. I’m just letting a bit more time lapse before I don my “Community Savior” cape and offering people the chance to figure things out. Received three excited messages yesterday from folks like this, who found the answers to their own questions and were SO proud.
All you Need is Love
That speaks for itself. Let’s face it, when you manage a social community, with tens of thousands of people, some of them will…….well……..push your buttons. You have to remember that they are YOUR buttons, and only YOU can decide who will push them, and you, over the edge.
I’ve learned that with patience (and more patience), full explanations, examples, illustrations, and most importantly kindness that community members will always respond positively. They may not get what they wanted, but they will get what they need
Instant Karma’s Gonna’ Get You
This one’s my fave. Whatever you reap, so shall you sow. When you teach someone how to do something in their social space, you can expect a teaching to come your way. When you respond with kindness and patience, it will be returned to you. Maybe not the same day but it will be returned.
So, imagine.
Housecleaner Needed: Why Every Community Manager needs one
08 Feb 2012 Leave a Comment
in Lessons, New Community Managers, Uncategorized Tags: cleanup effort, housecleaning, space management
Or, why some might argue that every Community Manager must BE one!
Spaces proliferate faster than putting two undetermined gender bunnies in a cage. Before you know it, you have hundreds (and hundreds) of communities and groups. Wearing our rose-colored glasses, we can quote those stats to show how we’ve accomplished adoption in our work environment.
But let’s get a dose of Dr. Phil and get real. Not every space is successfully launched, prepared, nurtured, revised, evaluated, redesigned, and adopted. I don’t have numbers to back me up, but I do know from experience that an annual ‘cleanup’ effort reduces the overall number of spaces by about 20%.
So back to the housecleaner. I don’t know about you, but my workday is quite full with supporting users, community managers, creating and changing spaces, moderating content, making connections between the business and community…oh, and attending meetings, planning strategy, generating reports and doing all the things that all of us have to do all the time.
Housecleaning communities is, for me, an annual event that is mind-numbing. I have to wonder what it would be like to have the time to follow up on every space request, to reach out to Community Managers to offer assistance and to jump start their spaces, to archive spaces well before they hit the ‘no content in six months…you’re archived’ rule.
One person can’t do it all. Anyone out there have a housecleaning strategy?
A New Year is Upon us
30 Jan 2012 Leave a Comment
And with a new year comes a whole new vision of what enterprise communities will look like.
Here’s the short list of what I hope to accomplish this year:
- A new way of organizing groups and spaces to help our user more easily find that they want/need
- Unique ways to blend events, campaigns etc. with social activities as well as traditional marketing
- Cross linking strategies to ensure one voice across a variety of platforms and domains
- Continuing knowledge and skill particularly in the art of consulting, negotiating, and marketing
My resolution?
Advocate for customer ease of use as adoption of social media increases across the enterprise.
What’s yours?
Social as a Business Workstream
11 Jan 2012 Leave a Comment
in Lessons
Many members of company communities are interested in their social platforms first as a social outlet. Lots of gardening and photography (and let’s not forget motorcycle!) groups the first year.
As time passes, and users become more adept at using social as part of their day to jobs, they realize that it can :
- easily replace blast eMails sent to constantly outdated distribution lists (internally)
- replace those much-deleted monthly ‘broadcast’ newsletters from the corporate university or division
- offer an opportunity for users to ‘talk back;’ to offer their opinions on corporate positioning; to suggest better ways to position products or services to customers
- and, in short, it can create a dialogue that enhances the quality of communication and the quantity of sales via transparency in sharing best practices
Making social part of the overall workstream is a challenge that many of face.
How have you done it, or how do you plan to do it? This intrinsically ties into the notion of measurement; if aligned to the workstream, would social then be considered a factor…maybe even a driving factor in driving leads or revenue?
