How to Be a Great Community Manager

11 min readApr 6, 2018

Originally published December 15, 2015

Communities and Enterprise Social Networks (ESNs) need committed leaders. Community managers should know the subject in depth, have energy for stimulating collaboration among the members, and be able to devote sufficient time to leadership activities. These activities include scheduling and hosting calls and meetings, asking and answering questions, posting information which is useful to the members, regularly spending time expanding membership and increasing member contributions.

Communities

From What are you supposed to do in a community?

Community managers and ESN leaders should Schedule, Host, Answer, Post, Expand (SHAPE):

Schedule: Line up speakers and set up events
Host: Initiate and run conference calls, webinars, and face-to-face meetings
Answer: Ensure that questions in the threaded discussion board/group receive replies, that discussions are relevant, and that behavior is appropriate
Post: Share information which is useful to the members by posting to the community site, threaded discussion board/group, blog, and/or newsletter
Expand: Attract new members, content contributions, and threaded discussion board/group posts

Adapting details from Knowledge Management Leaders & Community Managers: What’s Needed? a community leader needs to perform the following tasks.

Improve business results through the activities of the community.
Define, maintain, and execute the community plan.
Implement people, process, and technology components for sharing, innovating, reusing, collaborating, and learning in the community.
Define measurements for the community.
Report regularly on the community’s performance against goals.
Communicate regularly to the community and to potential members.
Ensure fresh content is being shared in the community, multiple voices are being heard, lively discussions are recurring, and questions receive timely replies.
Actively participate in the community, model the desired behaviors, and be visible as a leader and member.
Network with other community leaders, both inside and outside of the organization to stay current in the field of community management.
Demonstrate, document, and train on the use of communities and ESNs.

From 10 Tips for Leading Communities

Carefully choose the community topic
Publicize
Increase membership
Post and reply
Use newsletters, blogs, and wikis
Schedule and host events
Provide useful content
Tell members how they should participate
Set goals and measure progress
Solicit, find, and publicize success stories

From Community of Practice: A Real Life Story

Have co-leaders for your community, assign complementary roles such as one person hosts and one person records, divide up the job of lining up future speakers, and ensure that at least one leader will be available for each call.
Create an online agenda space for the community calls.
Post files in the agenda space before each call, so members won’t ask “will the slides be shared?”
Record the calls and post the recordings in the agenda space immediately following each call.
Send meeting invitations by email to the members of the community and to all guest speakers.
Send reminders to speakers — one month in advance, one week in advance, and the day before, and let them know how to submit slides and connect to the call.
Be prepared for no-shows by speakers, last minute switch requests, and speakers who are confused about how to connect to the call.
Send reminders by email the day before the call, and post reminders in your ESN group the day before the call and immediately before it is about to start.
Post in your ESN group following each call with the transcript of any group chat held during the call, a link to the slides, and a link to the recording.
To increase participation on calls, try posting the following in your ESN group; when we posted this, we received 122 replies.

Are you a knowledge management professional? Or a KM advocate? Are you interested in staying on top of the latest insights in knowledge management both within and outside of the company? If so, we are looking for you to join the Knowledge Management community and promote KM principles by actively learning from and sharing your knowledge with other community members!

Please reply here to note your interest — by doing so, you will gain the following benefits:

You will receive the calendar appointments for monthly KM community calls
You will receive reminders about the calls
You will have opportunities to help guide the KM community through activities like helping to identify potential topics for upcoming calls and prioritize those topics

Attributes from 7 Habits of Highly Effective Knowledge Managers

1. Adaptable

Flexible: willing to try different courses of action
Resilient: overcomes difficulties, withstands setbacks, and meets challenges
Open-minded: considers the opinions of others

2. Assertive

Takes initiative
Consistently achieves challenging objectives and meets commitments
Makes effective decisions in a timely manner

3. Calm

Maintains a high level of performance even when under pressure
Even-tempered even when dealing with unpleasant circumstances
Balances logic and emotions when interacting with others

4. Member-focused

Understands members’ needs and concerns
Responds promptly and effectively to member needs
Eager to be of help to users

5. Creative

Develops innovative approaches to problem solving
Invents new ways of doing things
Willing to try out bold ideas

6. Collaborative

Acknowledges others’ contributions
Works effectively with individuals of different backgrounds and from different groups
Willing to seek help as needed
Shares personal knowledge
Builds partnerships and networks

7. Curious

Stays current in the field
Open to new ideas
Asks others to share their knowledge and experience

8. Dynamic

Gets results
Balances analysis with action
Sets high standards

9. Influential

Gains support and commitment from others even without formal authority
Resolves differences by determining needs and forging solutions that benefit all parties
Facilitates teamwork across organizational boundaries

10. Personable

Gets along well with many different types of people
Nurtures new relationships
Well-liked as a community manager, professional colleague, and friend

Enterprise Social Networks (ESNs)

ESN group administrators should ensure that for their groups, the following are true:

There are multiple group admins, all of whom are actively monitoring the group
It is not redundant with other groups
There are posts at least once a week
Posts are from multiple people
There are replies to posts
All questions receive timely answers
If membership must be approved, pending requests are reviewed and accepted or rejected
There are posts which are not just shares from other groups
Posts are of actual value
Content is appropriate, e.g., no third-party documents have been uploaded, conversations are civil, confidentiality and privacy guidelines are being followed, etc.

25 Tips for ESN Group Administrators

1. Be sure that the group has a compelling subject that will attract members who are passionate about it.

2. Look for groups with overlapping subjects, and contact their admins to see if the groups can be combined.

3. Set email notifications for your group.

4. View all posts by reading all email notifications for your group.

5. Set an Outlook reminder to review your group each week.

6. Make sure questions receive answers. Respond to unanswered queries in one of these ways:

Answer the question yourself
Reply and mention one or more other people who are likely to be able to provide an answer
Click “More” and then “Email Me” to send the question to you by email, and then forward that message to one or more other people and ask them to reply, either by clicking on the link to the thread, or by replying to your email with an answer which you can then post as a reply in the group
Use the Share function to share the question in one or more other relevant groups and ask the members to reply in the original thread

7. If there have been no posts in a week, share a link, start a discussion, or reply to a previous post.

8. Communicate widely to let people know your group exists, its purpose, and its target audience. Promote the group by mentioning appropriate people who can help by replying to the post to raise visibility through their followers. Send out an email to a distribution list or to individuals, or mention specific people in a post, with a message such as:

TO: All Gamification Enthusiasts
We have created a new group called Gamification for those who are interested in the subject. We encourage you to join the group by visiting <URL>, clicking the Join button, and setting email notifications by scrolling down on the right until you see: Access Options
x Subscribe to this group by email

9. Link to or embed the group in relevant intranet and other web sites.

10. Ask key leaders and subject matter specialists to post, reply, like, and praise in the group.

11. When you receive email messages sharing information, asking questions, or seeking resources, reply to the senders asking them to post in the group, or if they are okay with you posting on their behalf. Then reply to them in the group.

12. Use the Praise function to recognize people who post and reply in the group.

13. Let members know what specific actions they can take to get value from the group. For example, customize SAFARIS for your group.

14. Make sure there are good examples of these actions in the group so that when people check out the group, they will join it.

15. Take steps to increase membership to achieve critical mass.

16. Get leaders to lead by example by routinely posting, replying, and praising in the group — and doing this directly themselves.

17. Provide training to all group members on setting their feed and notifications, following people and topics, and joining groups.

18. Edit your group name to make it clear, specific, and helpful.

19. In the Description field, provide sufficient details and keywords so potential members will quickly grasp the intent of the group, and so others searching for groups will find it and know what is about. Edit your group description to remove redundant, non-essential text and misleading keywords and ensure that all meaningful keywords are included.

20. Remove non-essential text and add key links in the Info box.

21. Use the Related Groups function to link to other groups of interest to members and to link back to your group from those groups.

22. If your group has no image, add one, and make sure it looks good.

23. Have at least two admins, and welcome others who wish to become co-admins.

24. Measure your group’s performance:

At least one post to the group per week
Posts by more than two different people
No questions left unanswered after 24 hours
At least <your preferred minimum> members after the first three months, with growth in membership every quarter thereafter

25. Respond to queries and requests, reply to discussions started by others, and mention other people to ask them to also reply.

Other Views

In an actKM discussion on the role of community managers summarized by Arthur Shelley, the following attributes were supplied by the participants:

1. Arthur Shelley: “Community manager key responsibilities:

Lead the community, engage membership and other stakeholders
Organize community interactions and activities on regular basis
Ensure the purpose of the community remains aligned with personal aspirations of the members as well as business goals
Create an identity for the community to which people want to belong
Generate an atmosphere of fun to keep the interactions vibrant
Network with potential new community members to promote community benefits
Collate feedback from members and facilitate responses to source of feedback
Ensure collaboration activities are beneficial to the community members
Engage members and generate a sense of commitment to community activities
Network with HR and Communications personnel, advise them of interest stories
Communicate community benefits and successes to wider stakeholder groups
Establish (with members) agreed processes for community activities and events
Establish accountabilities and timeframes for agreed projects, tasks and activities
Identify objectives, roles and responsibilities for community members
Designate resources requirements and determine any funding arrangements
Anticipate risks and explore impacts non-delivery of desired outcomes
Establish a monitoring and review process
Liaise with the Content Manager to discuss layout and formats of content on the portal
Screen submitted content for appropriateness and relevance
Encourage members to load useful content to the relevant portal pages”

2. Shawn Callahan: “Here are the character traits I think a community coordinator should have:

well respected
knowledgeable about the community’s domain (but not an expert)
well connected to a range of community members
keen to develop the community’s practice
good communicators
personally interested in community leadership
good workshop and meeting facilitator
likable

The other critical feature is that the coordinator should be approved/accepted/chosen by the community leadership.”

3. David Smith: “Our community facilitators:

Act as the intermediary between people seeking knowledge and people who can provide the knowledge. They actually seek out experts to support community requests for assistance.
Identify, maintain and make accessible the collection of knowledge sources in their area of responsibility.
Facilitate validation of knowledge before updating repository.
Monitor other Knowledge Communities and other reporting systems to extract new knowledge or identify issues that require solutions.
Identify needs for new knowledge and stimulates its creation.
Assist management in prioritizing new technology developments based on community needs.
Manage the community portal.

Facilitator competencies:

Recognized by peers as competent (not expert) in broad range of community subjects
Good people skills
Passionately interested in the community subject area
Proficient in KM process and tools”

4. Matt Moore: “Some community coordinator attributes: