After the dust settled on opening day of SXSW Interactive 2008, and people began to be focused on networking and learning, I dove headfirst into panels starting with “Managing Communities that Work.” This panel, on Saturday Morning, was lead by some of the most accomplished community builders who shared some of their secrets of success.

If you’ve ever built a community, or even tried to assist in facilitating one, you know that participation is key. When people don’t contribute to the community, it won’t grow, and therefore, won’t be successful. So what are some things that will help prompt participation? The panel collectively expressed that the number one mistake in community building is assuming that people will participate without being prompted or inspired. Here are some of most important elements they said would help with community involvement:

• Create Q & A columns – this will bring in new content and address user concerns
• Send updates to the community – this will help them get used to recognizing new content and they will start to anticipate updates
• Recruit good moderators who are not afraid to go in and welcome community members and give them a sense of safety and comfort
• Create content that may not always be agreeable – this will help people discuss issues and voice their own views and opinions
• Use people and resources experienced in your particular site’s mission – this way you can change information per your culture/needs and you won’t have to go in and reinvent the wheel

Good moderators are another key element in successful communities. Patricia Dugan of beliefnet.com talked about the struggle with wanting to maintain a sense of freedom within the community, while keeping privacy and respecting the boundaries of all users. You don’t want to moderate the community too heavily, as the members will surely complain. But you still need to keep with your culture without seeming overbearing. When selecting your moderators, you’ll need to provide them with a training document and be sure they understand the rules of conduct. Also, depending on your community, moderation may be less involved. For instance, if your spam filters are efficient, you won’t have to peruse the comments as much, or review them before they go live.

Another question they addressed was how to maintain support for your community internally. The most important thing here is to be sure that your employees are comfortable in recognizing and addressing bad comments, while keeping ones that may be beneficial. This is also how your company and its members would create trust for a mutually beneficial relationship. Being sure that if your moderators and/or employees are communicating with the members, their profiles are filled out complete with a photo. No photos or information on profiles loses credibility. Also, if you find profiles like this on your site, you should remove them in order to keep the trust of your other members.

The last two things covered were ones I felt were most important: how do you monetize a small community that works? And how do you bridge the technology gap with different ages and international groups? The monetization issue is straightforward: provide value-added content. Your content is free, so if you’re going to have ads, make sure they relate to your content and your community members. Then they will be more likely to click on ads/links and in turn, will make you more money. For instance, if you have a blog or forum post, create a direct link at the end of the article that gives readers the opportunity to purchase a product closely related to the topic of the article. For bridging the gap, take the time to train your clients so that they can be able to explain it to their members/moderators.

Finally, the panelists discussed some of the most successful community sites, and here they are:

• Save the Children – Global best practice sharing for 100+ countries
• NeigborsGo.com – They have a weekly print edition as well with about 20 community managers
• Gindie.com – Global community for independent movies
• Beliefnet.com – Largest multi-faith website
• Antseyeview.com – known for their online/offline community strategy.

If you’d like to know all about making your community work, you can listen to the podcast here.

Category: General Thoughts, SXSW

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