Amatuer online community manager wants to go Pro.
May 17, 2010 3:18 PM Subscribe
Aside from Metaverse Mod Squad blog, what are good sources of learning re: Forums, Community Management, & similar topics?
I work at a small Mac software company. I've ended up moderating our forums. I suppose I do an okay job of it, but ad hoc efforts can only take you so far. We do the basics - we have a forum. We tweet. Etc.
I know we could be doing more, but I'm not sure what we should do, and I'm not even sure where I would go to learn more about the topic.
In addition to the one mentioned in the question title, I currently read managingcommunities.com and the Eating Bees blog. Are there any others I should be paying attention to?
God help me, are there conferences on this kind of thing that do not suck?
I work at a small Mac software company. I've ended up moderating our forums. I suppose I do an okay job of it, but ad hoc efforts can only take you so far. We do the basics - we have a forum. We tweet. Etc.
I know we could be doing more, but I'm not sure what we should do, and I'm not even sure where I would go to learn more about the topic.
In addition to the one mentioned in the question title, I currently read managingcommunities.com and the Eating Bees blog. Are there any others I should be paying attention to?
God help me, are there conferences on this kind of thing that do not suck?
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If not, the Community Roundtable is a for-profit professional organization, but their Twitter feed alone is a great free resource, and while I can't swear that membership is worth the money, they seem to be interesting people of good will.
Twitter is a resource being used meta-professionally as well as for actual publicity - take a look at some of the lists like SixOkay's Community Manager list.
Right here at home, MetaTalk is an invaluable resource - make sure you're reading the moderation-related threads to get our mods' invaluable analysis of their own decisions and the community's reaction to it. Reread a couple of the Favorites experiment threads - they're a classic example of how communities often fear change.
Also in the gaming vein, take a look at Broken Toys if you haven't already (he hosts Eating Bees but Scott =/= Sanya.) He doesn't always talk about community management but when someone does it wrong he's all over it.
As for conferences, the only useful ones have been the ones that take place after three rounds at the hotel bar - get a bunch of CMs drunk and you'll learn the sort of stuff that leaves scars :P The stuff that's sanitized enough for Powerpoint is usually pretty community management 101 stuff in my experience. (I'd love to hear I'm wrong! But a LOT of this new batch of CMs seem to be more into self-promotion than anything, and damn but that makes for boring blog posts/presentations/roundtables.)
Feel free to memail (or email - it's in my profile) and I'll chat about this for DAYS. It's what I do.
(Disclaimers: I'm a member of the CMG, I'm on a lot of those Twitter lists, I used to work for Sanya, and I had lunch with Scott last week. So this isn't entirely an impartial list - my friends are who leap to mind.)
posted by restless_nomad at 3:50 PM on May 17, 2010 [1 favorite]