The Historian

I wanted to expand on the very short response I gave to Martin Reed of Community Spark. The comment was in reply to his comment on on looking beyond your core community members.

“the last thing you want to do is focus on a small core of your super members at the expense of the overall community”

My response was to give that core a name

“The ‘bubble’. The world that only includes those who post, not those who lurk or, in the case of gaming, never hit the forums. A Community Manager needs to see past the bubble.”

How often do we get stuck, inside that bubble, only seeing what is going on right in from of our faces?

It really shouldn’t be that way.

With all the ways to track and monitor social media today you should be able to get additional information about your community. In my case, I’ve got tools set up to watch for keywords related to the many games that Acclaim publishes. Everything from Blogs to News outlets and even twitter posts. I’ve registered with pseudonyms at as many fan sites and guilds sites (those that let me in) for our games as I can. All of this gives me additional insight beyond my community’s bubble.

It also allows me to respond on a very personal level to our players and fans. There is nothing more pleasing than to find a blog post about one our games, make comment and to pass the link along to our community. And the owner has to like the additional traffic and personal response. But that just scratches the surface. I’ve caught issues with games by twitter posts, helped with easy support issues and generally made myself available to anyone who want to talk to me about anything to do with our games. All in an effort to see beyond that small core of super members.

I encourage you to push past the bubble and think of new ways to find and listen to your community.