The document provides an overview of online community management. It discusses what an online community is, leading platforms for online communities, the roles and responsibilities of an online community manager, steps for setting up an online community, factors that contribute to a successful online community, techniques for promoting an online community, considerations for managing an online community, and trends for the future of online communities.

1. Online Community Management
J a s m i n V a l j e v a c , M S c

2. Content
What is online community ?
Leading platforms for online communities
Positive and negative aspects of online communities
What is an online community manager ?
Steps to set up online community
What makes online community work
How to promote online community?
What else to keep in mind?
What NOT to do while managing online community?
Final questions to ask yourself?
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3. What is online community ?
“An online community is a group of people with common interests who use the Internet to
communicate, work together and pursue their interests over time”
Term comes from: Howard Rheingold book : “Virtual community”
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4. What is online community ?
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5. Leading platforms for online communities
The platform formerly known as Drupal is one of the darlings of the community world One of the few .NET blog platforms
PostNuke is now called Zikula and is a and would come first on the list for many in the has evolved into a full-blown
fork of PHP-Nuke 5.0. community business. It’s a highly capable, mature, and community product
extremely popular community platform
Open source, based on PHP, Joomla is one of the Microsoft’s SharePoint is the first commercial
most widely used content management systems and product to make the list and is also one of the
community platforms most mature and popular
The second .NET platform (after SharePoint) and
the first open source .NET community platform
One of the older CMS/community platforms, on this list, the capable DotNetNuke has been
PHP-Nuke is still one of the most widely used going through extensive maturation over the last ClearSpace Community from Jive Software has
community applications available year been getting a lot of attention lately,
particularly with its popularity in the
enterprise space
The first SaaS community platform to make the list is
Lithium, an innovative and fast-growing solution for
customer communities that is seeing broad uptake
KickApps is a relatively new up-and-comer that is getting wide
according to my metrics
distribution in a relatively short time period including major
5 wins with large public Web sites for ABC and the BBC

6. Positive and negative aspects of online communities
Ability to interact with like-minded individuals instantaneously
from anywhere on the globe
Negative
People: gives people a place to engage with your company,
organisation or product
Innovation: get feedback on products or ideas from many
people
Collaboration: work jointly with people toward a common goal
Evangelism: help grow support for your cause or product
Loyalty: engagement can drive a tremendous amount of loyalty
toward your efforts
Too much time in virtual communities
may have negative repercussions on real-
world interactions
Positive
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7. What is an online community manager ?
Online community manager role is a growing and developing profession and their are no simple forum moderators,
but role models that listen to the community and relay that information to the those who can improve it.
Patience
Networking
Communication
Facilitation
Technical skills
Marketing
Self motivation
Workaholic tendencies
Organizational
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8. What is an online community manager ?
Community managers spend a large amount of
time sifting through discussions in the community
Facilitatee to make sure that people are getting answers to
questions and helping to make sure that the right
people are being pulled into conversations
As a community manager, I have created various
types of content in the form of blog posts, new
discussion topics, tweets, videos and more to
Content
help make sure that the community members
have the information that they need to be
productive members of the community.
Unless you want to have a community of one (or
a very small number of people), getting out and
Evangelism talking about the community to get people
interested is part of the role of community
manager
Topics of conversation change, software changes,
and people change, which all requires changes to
your online community. This is the strategic piece
Evolution where you get to think about what the
community should look like in five years and
make changes to the common year unity to make
sure that you achieve your goals for the
community manager.
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9. What is an online community manager ?
The community owns the community but
the manager:
Manages the community
Owns the infrastructure
Facilitates the discussion
Moderates and keeps people in check
Focus on the individuals: participate as a person
Be sincere: sincerety = credibility
Not all about you: community is about converssation which is by definition two-way
Be part of the community: dont try to control the community
Everyone is a peer: you are not the expert, knowlege comes from everywhwere
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10. Steps to set up online community
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11. Important things to keep in minds!
You must know why your site exists. What benefit does a user derive from participating? Without an underlying goal, it's
extremely difficult to guide users in constructive ways. Once you've found your goal, stick with it.
Exist For a Reason
As the leader it's your job to attract users. This is the easy part. Making sure the right people stick around is harder. In a
healthy community, that's not your job. As a group, your most active users will draw more users than you will. An active user
group exudes a sense of community.
Users Draw Other Users
Community members will continually surprise you, especially if you've never really analyzed an online community before.
They'll also tend to develop some strange characteristics.
Users Will Surprise You
Regular users will develop a sense of community ownership. As a whole, their content contributions probably outweigh yours.
Besides letting community leaders and members perform administrative work, don't forget that the community has a stake in
A Sense of Ownership its own future.
You'll know you have a healthy community when users comment publicly that "this is the best site I've ever used. A healthy
A Shared History and Culture community also develops a sense of history and in-jokes
Barriers Are Mixed Blessings The number of active community members varies inversely with the amount of work necessary for an initial participation.
Requiring e-mail confirmation before registering a username prevents users from creating blank account after blank account.
The Interface A strong community can overcome technical limitations. It's possible to write a Wiki or a weblog in under a hundred lines of code. Simplicity
may appeal to some users. The lack of sophistication (reply notification, searching, revisions, and access controls) may put off some users,
and an ugly or awkward user interface may get in the way sometimes, but a community can grow in spite of the mess.
Mischief Like any community, your group will have spats and factions and frictions. These must be handled wisely for the community
to survive. Plan for trouble, though you cannot tell when or where it will strike. Set simple rules. Make them explicit. Apply
them consistently.
Discuss the Community Openly
Even if you have a legal or moral right to change the structure of the community, you may not have the necessary social
capital. Change is difficult.
Don't Stop There!
Be very clear about your goals and the rules. Manage your expectations about user participation and groups wisely. Allow a
little chaos. Use your common sense and best judgment. If there's an audience for your conversation, you'll find a community.
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12. What makes online community work
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13. How to promote online community (1/2)
Incorporate traditional
social media:
personal blogs,
facebook, twitter,
audio, video,etc
Within new
community run a
limited beta with
people you trust.
Get their feedback
and let them help
promote it to
others
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14. How to promote online community (2/2)
Integrate your community into your overall marketing strategy
The old saying goes, content is king
Social Media - Go for the Viral Effect
Ask the community to do the work for you
Networking - Get involved
Run a competition
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15. What else to keep in mind?
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16. What NOT to do while managing online community?
Preventing community members from criticizing you. The fear of negative feedback in communities
tends to be overblown; fiercely negative comments are atypical; Negative feedback is valuable feedback;
better to have it articulated in your own community where you can respond to it then have it only appear
elsewhere on the Web.
Failing to share with community members the results of feedback and the changes inspired by the
community. Where survey respondents typically don't expect to receive detailed summaries of the results,
community members are participating in part to learn from their peers.
Using the community to try to win sales. Survey researchers have confronted this and banned it: sugging
(Selling Under the Guise of research), deemed unethical by standard market research codes of conduct.
Don't treat the community as a lead generator for events and programs and sponsorships
Starting a community because "everyone is" rather than defining clear goals for your own
organization. We encounter this among our prospects more than we would like: organizations that built
an online community because it seemed like a good idea, but hadn't put in the effort to plan their
objectives and how they were going to achieve them.
Failing to devote the time and staff required. Forty-four percent of organizations surveyed by Beeline
Labs reported a significant challenge was not finding enough time for their online community. In the
initial launch, community management needs to devote time to starting and participating in discussions,
Wrath: Punishing community members. Negative behavior in an Internet forum can take many forms,
from flamers to troublemakers to pet-project promoters.
Over-surveying and over-researching members. Provide a Bill of Rights for community members
discussing the restrictions you'll honor. For instance, limit surveys to twice a month and limit the length of
surveys.
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17. Trends for the future
Bad news Good news
Advertising: First, companies are reluctant to The good new is that while many online community sites whither financially, a
advertise on pages with "user generated content. number of niches within the online community space are faring very well,
Second, users in online communities interact suggesting ten important trends to watch:
with advertising less than users of content or
transaction parts of sites. Search Communities
Subscriber Fees: Online community sites have
struggled to generate substantial subscriber
Trading Communities
income. Users don't want to pay simply to talk
Education Communities
Mergers and Acquisitions: Many online
communities survived through investor largesse Scheduled Events Communities
based on the promise that if they grew big
enough, they would be acquired based on traffic Subscriber-based Communities
metrics alone. Some web entrepreneurs became
very rich on this promise. In today's environment,
however, essentially no companies are willing to Community Consulting Firms
pay to acquire page views or unique users alone.
E-mail-based Communities
Advocacy Communities
CRM Communities
M&A Activities
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18. Final questions to ask yourself?
Now, in terms of these online communities,think about real life communities!?!?
What if you were able to be an active member of these real-life communities?
What if there was an easy way to find and get to know the other members?
What if you could have discussions with them easily?
What if you could compare notes and use other members as resources?
Online Communities provide real-world communities a place to come together
the Internet. By being a member of an online community, you
using
benefit in many of the same ways you would a real world community- it's
just that you use the Internet.
Instead of traveling to a coffee shop or hotel, you meet at a web site
Instead of having face-to-face discussion, you post messages to one
another
Instead of picking a time and place to meet, the community is always-on.
Instead of depending on a physical location or resource to keep track of
community events and activities, a web site can do it for you.
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19. Conclusion
All-in-all, online communities are about people needing an easier and more accessible
way to get together. In business or socially, online communities have the power to
create lasting and productive relationships where none existed before. In the future, in
many different forms, I believe that online communities will become a greater part of
our lives.
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20. Thank you !
Jasmin Valjevac, MSc
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