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?
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- easily replace blast eMails sent to constantly outdated distribution lists (internally)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?
Enough – When Seeking More Leads you Astray
02 Jan 2012 Leave a Comment
in Lessons
When is enough enough for YOU?
Duirng the latter part of 2011, we had a rather eventful family life. Nothing so unusual that I need to write about it in great detail, but the regular joys and trials of family life (lucky for me, far more joys).
But I have realized something about myself, pretty much nothing is enough. I’m always looking for more, to do more, to be more, and…shamefaced…to have more.
While many of us have resolutions that we seriously intend to keep, I just want to be mindful of the many blessings in my life and to acknowledge that I have enough. In fact, when it comes to family and friends, I have receive far more than my fair share.
Have you had enough yet?
Listen to This!
18 Nov 2011 3 Comments
in Lessons, New Community Managers
I’m getting increasingly disturbed by the widespread use of the word “listening” in a social context. We’ve been taught that listening can be either active or passive in a face 2 face situation, but the word listening is inherently passive.
Maybe if we started using words that our non-social wannabees could relate to, it would be easier for them to understand what we’re talking about. It’s like talking to them in their own language; how radical is that?
Listening is not:
- Monitoring social channels for mentions
- Pumping out reports on the number of mentions
Listening, to my beginner’s mind, IS:
- Monitoring social channels for mentions AND taking action
- Replying to happy customers and inviting them to our social spaces to continue the conversation
- Responding to unhappy customers and offering a quick resolution to their issue
- At least attempting to measure sentiment, albeit not an accurate science or easy task
Maybe we call it engagement (another widely used social term). Or Customer Conversation. Or Customer Touch Point.
I don’t propose to have the answer, but I know that the word ‘listening’ doesn’t get across the breadth of activities, or the full value that can be produced by its flawless execution.
Post-Cleanup Aftermath
14 Nov 2011 Leave a Comment
in Lessons, New Community Managers, Space Architecture
If you’ve been following along, you remember that I just finished archiving over 170 spaces / communities. It was among the most tedious, mind-numbing things I’ve ever done and I will think three times before ever creating a new space again. OK, that’s an exaggeration but I will certainly apply lessons learned.
Of those 170 spaces, managed by approximately 300 Community Managers, I have received three…..three…..requests to reactivate the spaces:
- “I post a quarterly newsletter in that space, I need it.” Well, communities aren’t really intended to ‘push’ content but rather to engage but in any event the last time a newsletter was posted was a year ago. Haven’t heard back from that one, time sure does fly.
- ” Where did my space go? It just disappeared!” Remember that post that I highlighted, advising that I’d be archiving spaces? Well, your space had three pieces of content, all posted by you, all more than a year old. It’s gone, baby, gone.
- “I urgently need you to reactivate my space; my boss is all over me.” Really? Maybe your boss has been gone for 11 months, but not a piece of content has been added or viewed in that timeframe.
The rest of the Community Managers may someday discover that their spaces have been archived, but I doubt it. Monitoring spaces, especially when attempting to manage over 700, has to be a nearly weekly routine.
Blaze an active space!
Autumn is the time for Space Cleanup
09 Nov 2011 Leave a Comment
in Lessons, New Community Managers, Space Architecture
Well, not really. The time for space cleanup is probably every week at best, but I only get around to it seasonally. A few months into my Social Media Management role, and I’ve just archived 170 spaces of some 700+ in existence.
It is a mind-numbing activity with multiple steps, spreadsheets, and documentation to substantiate the decision to archive. But I followed one basic rule: no content in 6 months qualifies a space for a focused review. Now I didn’t archive EVERY space with no content for 6 months, but I found a boatload of spaces with no content for two years.
And, I learned some lessons during this effort that might be helpful as you create new spaces:
- The majority of spaces that I archived were being managed by either contract employees or student interns. Nothing wrong with that, but it appears that these folks either rotate roles or are more transient in their roles. They have a tendency to move on without notification, leaving their spaces unattended and withering on the proverbial vine.
- Second in the archive line were private spaces. Oh, everyone wants them but more often than not they sit empty or with occasional (VERY occasional) efforts at starting conversations that no one gets to see.
- And finally, the third category of ‘bound to be archived’ spaces are sub-sub-spaces. When will we ever get out of this hierarchical model of space architecture?
I hope this experience can hep you in some way. Would love to hear your observations!
Compassion in Action, Devotion in Motion
17 Oct 2011 Leave a Comment
in Lessons
Peace begins with me
This one line in a song performed by MC Yogi has touched me deeply. As I get deeply engrossed in any task that I am performing, on projects, goals and literally any activity that I take on, I have come to learn that the very purposefulness…the relentlessness with which I ‘attack’ each activity sometimes makes me blind.
The things that make me successful in both my private, social, and business lives….focus, dedication, reaching the end goal…are the very things that sometimes prevent me from seeing what is right before my eyes.
People who need us, who I sometimes see as obstacles to achievement of my goal. People who simply want to be with us, for no other reason than their sincere love for us I sometimes see as intruding on my plans.
So my mantra, for today and every day, will now include ‘compassion in action, devotion in motion’ as a small nod to the essence of a life well lived.
What does it look like?
- Listening, even when in the midst of some mind-boggling effort
- Giving, even when my own well feels empty
- Acccepting, even when I cannot understand
- Seeing, when others look away
- Being. in. the. moment. as time marches forward
Architecting Social Spaces : Part 1
16 Sep 2011 Leave a Comment
in Lessons
The growth of our social enterprise collaboration space has been organic, now exceeding over 30K registered users.
We’re entering our fourth year, and it is becoming most apparent that there is increasing utilization of our collaboration space for learning, sharing, idea promotion and many other business conversations.
Accompanying that growth is an accelerating number of requests for groups or spaces, many that are specific to one geography, one workgroup, or one interest group.
We have communicated a strategy for the management of these requests that I hope may prove useful to others facing the same growth trajectory:
Communities
We create a community when the space serves a ‘parent’ organization that spans departments and often geographies. We use ‘community’ as the broad container for content that has the potential to impact a large number of users. A Global Services, or Information Technology space request, for example, will generally yield a community.
Groups
Although users don’t generally request a group, using the more common words “space” or “community,” we allocate a group when the target audience is limited to a particular geography, work group, or social interest. Global Services EMEA, or Garden Club, or Midwest Operations are examples.
_________________________________________________
This strategy is not foolproof, as some might argue that using categories or spaces might be more effective in integrating some groups with communities. I would have to agree. But with organic growth comes a proliferation of communities and groups that are not requested sequentially, that are not immediately aligned and that is the next step in our enterprise community journey.
To date, we have done the following:
- Identified Organizational Advocates who assume the responsibility for overseeing the overall space architecture for their division (more to come!)
- Strongly advocated and sometimes insisted that requested communities instead be groups, or elevated the discussion to include content on existing communities
Three Strategies to Build Community Engagement
21 Aug 2011 Leave a Comment
in Lessons, New Community Managers
Nearing my one year anniversary in a Community Management role, thought it might be a good time to share some tips to build your community. Most of them are free, all have been done for less than $200 total.
Global engagement. This has been my # 1 priority as our current enterprise community is, indeed global but global users represent only 20% of the registered population. Here’s what I’ve done:
- Created a homepage banner, with the assistance of folks who are not as HTML challenged as I, that has a global image and the word ‘welcome’ in 7 languages. Great visual that our space is intended for global users.
- Created a “global correspondent” role. Published a ‘help wanted’ widget, asking for global news correspondents, and organizational news correspondents. Built a solid base of employees from Russia, Ireland, Israel and occasionally Pakistan, Egypt and China.
- Publish a weekly wrap up, including all content from our global and organizational correspondents. Precede their links and summaries with a ‘globe’ icon to indicate their status.
- Several sections in the Wrap Up: From our Global Newsdesk, From our Organizational Newsdesk, News You Can Use, and, on occasion, “Most Active” communities, discussions documents, and blogs
- Prior to my involvement our intranet ‘owners’ had a live feed of all activity taking place in our enterprise community
- Building on that, we publish monthly “Best of….Communities, Discussions, Documents, and Blogs” on the intranet to engage more employees.
- The Community Managers and authors will have their content recognized both in the community and on our intranet, and will receive a “GASPIE” award (Grog Award for Social Participation).
- The Grog award was named after our 4 minutes Evolution of Conversation at EMC video, which is wildly popular. For a cost a bit below $200.00, we printed greeting cards thanking our monthly GASPie winners for their continued participation.
It’s only words…….
02 Aug 2011 1 Comment
in Lessons
And words are all I have.....
Some of you might recognize the reference to the Bee Gees, and if not, I’m thoroughly embarrassed by bringing it up 
My last several roles have involved editing and communicating with people via eMail. I have to say that I have noticed a steady decline in the quality of writing skills. We seem to have unconsciously adopted the 140 Twitter character rule when communicating with each other, so here’s my list of phrases that I propose we ban:
- Wassup? Really, we can’t take a moment to write out the highly informal “What’s Up” or, even better, ask “How are You?”
- Come with? This is killing me. Are we unable to spare the breath and effort to speak in a complete sentence and ask “Would you like to come with me?’
- No worries. I get this one; I do. But wouldn’t it be kinder to say “I’m so glad that I could help you.” Or, “Please don’t worry about this, it will be fine.”
- In eMail, ALWAYS include a salutation. It doesn’t have to be formal, but a “Hi, Joe” adds a personal touch that takes only a moment to type
- Don’t write as you speak. That’s the opposite of the advice I’ve often given, but given the current state of verbal communication and text-speak, it’s probably best to elevate your writing.
- Be succinct; but write in full sentences, with commas, periods and appropriate punctuation.
- Close your message. A simple “Thank you,” ”My Best,” ”Ciao” or whatever is appropriate in your work environment will call attention to your email messages and differentiate them.
What phrases would you like to ban?
