by: Matt Rhodes
At FreshNetworks we know that good community management is critical to the growth and success of any online community. That’s why this week’s Required Reading looks at some of the principles of community management.
The presentation below comes from Julius Solaris and details ten ‘commandments’ of managing online communities: from consolidating activities to having an offline presence for your online community. This is a great set of activities that I think help to define what a community manager does and what community management is. It is much more than just moderation of forums, also including strategic elements, such as considering how you monitise a community, or how you work with the different groups to grow and shape the conversations and the benefits all parties are getting.
For us, however, the most important part of community management is really to appreciate that as a community manager you can never control a community. You have to be part of it and work with people as an equal rather than trying to establish yourself as superior. These ‘commandments’ are a great starting point for shaping this kind of role and for building successful community management.
Some more reading
- Your online community should work offline as well (freshnetworks.com)
- Communities vs network of practice (egrommet.net)
- Does Twitter Replace Face-to-Face? (converstations.com)
Original Post: http://blog.freshnetworks.com/2009/03/the-ten-commandments-of-managing-online-communities/
