Thoughts From the Brains on Fire Community Manager Team

Posted on December 13th, 2010 by Eric Dodds and currently 2 commenting.

Last week Robbin made an interesting comment to me: “I’ll bet you and Shannon have learned so much doing community management over the last few years.” I thought for a second and responded, “You know what? We really have.” And, as happens so often around here, the ‘that would make a great blog post’ lightbulb went off.

So I sat down with Shannon and we talked for a few minutes about the things that we’ve learned in our seemingly countless hours of community management. Our thoughts are below, but for clarification, I’ll give a brief description of what the job looks like for us:

At Brains on Fire, community management is a hybrid role. It’s a Frankenstein job that stitches together account management, strategy execution, planning (lots of planning) and analytics with the myriad of relationships, communication, problems, inquiries, and more that come from being the point-person for a brand’s community. When we’re on the job, we’re the go-to for both the brand and the community. It’s less management and more working shoulder to shoulder with employees and customers to lay the daily brick and mortar necessary to build something that will last.

Here are our thoughts on building successful community:

First, actually want to make a difference in someone’s life.

• When you were a kid, your parents knew when your compliments were genuine affection and when you were buttering them up because you wanted to spend the night at your friend’s house. Guess what? If you really don’t care about them (and you’re using them as stepping stones to the quarterly report and your next promotion), your customers are going to pick up on it, and it’s hard to build a community on that foundation.

It ain’t rocket science: just pursue meaningful dialogue.

• There’s so much buzz and marketing-speak about ‘engagement’ and ‘authenticity,’ so we’ll break it down nice and easy. You build relationships between a brand and it’s fans just like you build relationships in your life: invest in consistent, meaningful connections and dialogue over time (we’re talking real, long-lasting relationships here, not becoming a trending topic on Twitter). Of course there are different dynamics, but great relationships take time, sacrifice, creativity, and a whole lotta hard work. As much as we’d like to believe it, there just aren’t shortcuts.

Metrics are a guide, but they’re not king.

• We know what you’re thinking: “They’re king for me – I have superiors to answer to. Besides, what’s the point if we’re not making progress or adding to the bottom line?” We agree. We’re no strangers to demands from numbers in the board room. And if we’re wasting a client’s money, shame on us. But there’s a difference between using metrics to express meaningful growth and making yourself a slave to them. Community isn’t advertising, and the return on investment looks incredibly different. Shannon said it well: “Spikes in numbers are great and can really create positive energy, but slow steady growth is generally the most healthy, long-lasting kind of growth.” The danger is in viewing your community as a bunch of statistics instead of a bunch of people.

You have to give up control in order to gain control.

• You don’t get to control who your fans are or the content they create about your brand. If they’re your fan though, your best option is to embrace them, whether or not their activity surrounding your brand matches up with your utopian vision of your customers advocating for you. So many brands try to make customers something they’re not; accept your advocates for the real people they are, warts and all, and they’ll love you back.

The technology isn’t as important as you think it is.

• If you have a group of people gathered around a shared passion or belief, they’ll find ways to connect and talk about it. Communities hinge on connection, not the tools that facilitate the connection. Aren’t the tools helpful? Yes. Incredibly. They can make an enormous difference. But they aren’t the most important part about the community.

Don’t check your email first thing in the morning.

• Seriously. Don’t. Have a cup of coffee, plan your day, remind yourself that you’re trying to make a difference in real people’s lives, take a deep breath, and then get to work. Having a little mental buffer makes a pretty incredible difference.

• Tweet
• RSS
• EMAIL
• more
  

  BlinklistBloglinesBlogmarksDiggdel.icio.usFurlMa.gnoliaNewsVineRedditStumbleUponTechnorati