Presentation given by Lisa Barnett of eModeration at OMN London on the 30th August 2012.

2. Building Branded Communities

3. All About Me
Lisa Barnett, Senior Community Manager

4. First, Some Definitions

5. What is Community?

6. How Do You Feel About Online Communities?
• A dangerous place full of weirdos
• A scary place full of teens who speak in a language I
don’t understand
• A useful place to go for specific information (e.g. support
forums)
• A wonderful way of connecting with people all around the
world who are on my wavelength
• A place which enables me to interact with my customers

7. Why have a Community?
Market
Research
R&D
Collaboration Community
Evangelism
Customer
Service

8. Community Management
Growing Building Nurturing
Negotiation Strategy
Conflict Management
Facilitation Collaboration

9. Why Community Management?
Main challenge faced in building a community?
People don’t behave the way you expect or want them to

10. Community Management is the Answer
Tools
Allow for free and easy communication
Leadership
Encourage the behaviour you want to see in the community
Culture
Ideas and egos are fragile, so create a safe haven
Community Management allows the shaping of all of the above

11. Enter the Community Manager

12. A Jack of All Trades

13. Inside the Mind

14. Traits of the Community Manager

15. The Community Manager Diet

16. Community Management Best Practise

17. Your Audience
• Understand your members
• Build trust
• It’s not about you
• Foster belonging

18. Make It Valuable
• Demonstrate the value of community
membership
• Look beyond the obvious
• Communities create a stickiness
• Think long term
• Let Your Members Promote

19. Build the Right Community
• Look after your garden
• Protect membership from
sales
• Promote thought leadership
• Encourage positive
outcomes

20. Build the Right Community
• Size Matters
• Men & Women Participate
Differently
• Social media &
community are not the
same

21. Be Realistic
• Building communities takes time
• Win small victories
• Build guidebooks or playbooks

22. Support Community Managers
Your community manager
needs authority
Acknowledge the often
overwhelming nature of the
community manager role

23. Setting Expectations
• Have moderation staff available 24/7 in shifts where
possible if the community is active around the clock
• Try not to post in the forum on off hours
• Implement automation where possible
• Encourage forum members to help others
When building a new community, it is critically important
to set the availability expectations with customers upfront

24. 10 steps for building a great branded community

25. 1. Set your objectives
• But be prepared to be flexible

26. 2. Make your tools easy to use

27. 3. Don’t try and be everywhere

28. 4. Keep it clean and safe

29. 5. Set expectations

30. 6. Have engaging content
But not full of marketing messages

31. 7. Be consistent

32. 8. Incentivise your audience
What’s in it for me?

33. 9. Empower your champions
• Publicly recognised as your power users
• Can act as your eyes and ears
• Get moderator status
• In return, you share freebies/discounts/special
offers with them

34. 10. Don’t be afraid to ask

35. Thank you
Lisa Barnett
Senior Community Manager eModeration
lisa.barnett@emoderation.com
uk.linkedin.com/in/lisabarnett
www.twitter.com/lisab88