How would you define a community manager? The following phrases are a good starting point: Lead social capital builder Brand evangelist Master listener Rule enforcer Spam controller As many of you know, today is the third annual Community Manager Appreciation Day (CMAD). According...

On Jan. 28, you’ll have a chance to express that appreciation, along with the entire social industry. It’s Community Manager Appreciation Day – a special day created by industry analyst Jeremiah Owyang to bring attention to the emerging community manager role. It is, of course, a very...

Effective moderation can leave a community manager feeling a bit like Goldilocks in search of the perfect bowl of porridge. Too much moderation can lead to foregoing one of the key benefits of your community – crowd sourcing the answers to your customers’ questions. Too much moderation...

Long before there was Google+, the concept of +1 was used to address the topic of extraordinary customer service. In 1993, Ken Blanchard and Sheldon Bowles wrote Raving Fans: A Revolutionary Approach to Customer Service . In Raving Fans , Blanchard and Bowles cover three areas: Deciding what you as a...

If you are new or ‘newish’ to community management, you are undoubtedly sifting through a trough of information and advice to help you establish your role. Been there, done that – and still doing it! As a community manager, like many professions, you will never “master”...

Effective moderation can leave a community manager feeling a bit like Goldilocks in search of the perfect bowl of porridge. Too much moderation can lead to foregoing one of the key benefits of your community – crowdsourcing the answers to your customers’ questions. Too much moderation...

After you have done the necessary steps to build and deploy a successful online community, there’s still one thing left to do – make sure that your community team is in place. It takes more than just one person to build and maintain a community; it takes a team effort to successfully implement...

Believe me, I hate rules. I really do. But, without them your organization, product, society – any function or institution where people are involved – would eventually go off the rails. Unfortunately, dear human, it’s just in our nature. So, we create rules to keep us moving forward...

The 3.5 version of Telligent Analytics was announced Monday , and it includes substantial improvements to performance, quality, and functionality. One of my favorite features is the Answer Rate report (shown below), which many of our customers use to assess the vibrancy of their support-oriented online...

You have incorporated community objectives into your company’s plan, designed the community to foster member ownership and finally launched your very own community – so now what? Well, that’s a great start; however you are not at the finish line yet. After the preliminary push to...