The Historian

At a young and impressionable age, I was introduced to the concept of “learning styles”. Specifically David Kolb’s learning styles model and experiential learning theory. My first contact with it was in the summer of 1989, a few years after the publication of his ‘Experiential Learning: Experience As The Source Of Learning And Development’. I won’t go into a lot of detail about it as there are other resources online that cover it. (Kolb Learning Styles)

This past week I’ve been able to receive the research of Charles Lieble, who along with C. Jay Hertzog researched the use of learning styles in the teaching of Geography. It was Charles Lieble that first introduced me to these concepts.

The reason I called this post “Full Circle” is that I have used the concepts of “Learning Styles” in my philosophies on Community Management. Because not everyone assimilates information in the same way, it is important that when presenting things to communities that you address the way that everyone captures and retains information.

Over the next few months I will now be able to show how the use of learning styles can greatly increase the growth of Online Communities as well as facilitate the rapid spread and uptake of information around your products.

At my current company we have an “official” blog, a Facebook page and three twitter accounts; one for promotions, one official and one for a specific region. The regional twitter account is the most active and was actively posting about a new store opening in their region… unfortunately there was no mention of the opening on the primary twitter account or blog and the blog hasn’t been updated since December of last year. There was some activity on the Facebook page for the opening, but mainly because of the customers were commenting. Additionally there was a Foursquare check-in promotion running but it wasn’t communicated very well to the stores so there were issues with employees not helping our guests.

All this just shows how important it is to have a consistent and defined plan for how you plan to use Social Media to enhance your customer’s experiences.

Bring all the pieces of your Social Media puzzle together and outline the message you want to send. If you have an event coming, plan ahead to get the message out consistently across all of your outlets. With people in different regions, be sure they are aware of what is going on in other places so that that can either support the interested users or at least point them in the right direction. And of course if you have promotions being sent via Social Media, be very sure that your employees know what the promotion is and how the guest will be taking advantage of the offerings.

In the end, a well planned, well defined and well executed Social Media plan can have dramatic impact on your customer’s experience encouraging them to share their positive experiences with their friends and family.

So you’ve done it. Everything is going perfectly and your community is growing fast… maybe growing much faster than you expected. But don’t panic there are things you can do to keep from getting overwhelmed and losing control. In my case we grew from from just over 1 Million registered users in May 2008, to over 8 Million in April 2009, roughly 7million new accounts in less than a year. I had some successes and some failures, and I hope you learn from my experiences.

Get Help

At this point you shouldn’t be running things by yourself, but if you are get some help. There are only three options here… Hire help, enlist Volunteers and of course doing both.

If you hire, be sure that everyone shares your vision of managing a community. It is imperative that you are all on the same page and that you are working as a cohesive unit. Mixed messages from the Community team will only cause additional issues. I strongly suggest that if you choose to hire, that you hire from within your community… Why? Morgan Johnston, JetBlue Airways’ Manager of Corporate Communication, advises those looking to fill a community or social media position to put someone with “an intimate knowledge of your business, or the immediate resources to access and apply that knowledge” and who better than someone already in your community, already a fan and already making positive contributions?

If you can’t hire, you can still leverage the champions in your community as volunteers. Just keep two very important things in mind. You need to compensate them, but be very careful about the labor laws. As we have seen time and time again there can be some serious issues when treating community volunteers like employees. At one point I had 200 exceptional volunteers helping me manage the 14 communities I was in charge of. We used a structured hierarchy of Teams with Leaders. However, there are a number of ways to order your team. There are communities that you are most likely a part of, seek out the Community Managers of these communities to ask about how their programs work. Most CMs will welcome your interest and be very helpful.

Get Feedback

You really have two important questions for them “What are we doing wrong?” and “What are we doing that we can we do better?”. Honestly if your community isn’t already telling you what you are doing wrong, then you really need to dig deep because there is already a big problem. Communities must feel comfortable and, importantly, empowered to express their opinions positive and negative. You need to be able to listen objectively and realize that they are ultimately on your side… they want things to be better for everyone too. So take time to ask the community to help determine the biggest issues, prioritize them and even suggestions for resolving them.

That said, you are already doing great things; otherwise you wouldn’t be dealing with growth issues. It could be subtle little things that make a huge difference in the perceptions of the community. Keep in mind that not every aspect of your community will be growing at the same rate. Now is the time to see what should be changed to improve the experience for your community. So you should ask about what you are doing that could be improved. Try to get them to be specific. Using forum boards as an example, see which forums are getting the most traffic, which are dead and ask which might be better if they were merged together and are there any new forum that should be created. Be sure to outline ways your community can effectively impact your decisions for the community. Don’t be afraid to look at other ways of connecting with them. If you haven’t explored Social Media site, official pod casts, blogs or other means of connecting to your do so now. We held what we called “webinars” which were really Developer chats, which we converted to pod casts, where the players got to talk directly with the developers on a near weekly basis. We treated this as an open forum where the players could ask about what was coming to the game and air issues they saw in the game. Everyone loved this personal, one on one interaction. The developers loved the instant feedback and the community really knew that their message was heard, since the devs actually talked to them.

Most importantly, explore the suggestions of your community as best you can and be honest about the things you can and cannot change. With luck all this will help you fine tune everything and prepare you for further growth.

Keep on, Keeping on

The bottom line is that you have a “great” problem: You are growing rapidly. Just continue to communicate well with your community and revisit the suggestions above as needed and I’m sure you will be able to ride the rising tide of success

Today I am reminded of the power of people coming together to share what they know. This is something that has really come together with the advent of the internet and people with common interest coming together for social interactions and to share their knowledge for the better of everyone.

Last weekend my car started acting up, seeming to not want to shift from gear to gear as I accelerated and on Monday it just wouldn’t get past 20 mph. Now I might be tech savvy, but when it comes to cars I can do two things, change tires and light bulbs. Add to this that I’m still job hunting, and I am on a very tight budget so extensive and expensive auto repair is not an option.

So what am I to do?

Well first I did a search to find out how to get the error codes for my car, which was as simple as cycling the ignition 3 times. Two codes popped up, one for the knock sensor and another for the camshaft position sensor. I searched for those codes and found a forum with user comments stating that in this case it was most likely not the knock sensor, but the camshaft sensor. A third search pointed me to a diagram of where that sensor was located. From there I popped on to an auto parts site, checked if they had the part I needed in stock then went and purchased it.

Turns out it was a matter of disconnecting the electrical cords and removing 4 bolts, those were a royal pain to remove with all the metal pipes in the way, but I managed to do it all in about 2 hours and the car is working perfectly. Admittedly there could have been more wrong with my car. It could have been the cables that were bad or even something wrong with the computer, but I was fortunate.

10 years ago this wouldn’t have been as easy. I might have found a few forums back then with some information, but the chances of putting all this together to actually fix my car myself, was just not as likely. All in all I fixed my car myself with the help of the vast knowledge of the internet, 2 hours of my time and $29.

What is a Community Manager?

They are the person who oversees, maintains and takes responsibility for your business’ presence online in all the forms needed by your company. Such as using many online tools that make it easier for people to listen, interact, engage and collaborate with each other online. Many Social Networking platforms such as Facebook, MySpace, YouTube, LinkedIn, Twitter, blogs, message boards and countless others are becoming increasingly import connections to your customers.

Why do you need a Community Manager?

Your company can stop being reactive and start being proactive. Your CM can actively participate in social media conversations as the eyes, ears and voice of your company to create positive word-of-mouth about your products and services and grow your company’s reputation.Having one person tracking your online reputation and keeping you up to speed on what is happening in your industry is invaluable. Instead of always playing catch up with your competitors, be trendsetter.

A CM can also research ideas, and learn more about what your customers and prospects are saying about their needs and experiences, and about your products and related areas. When this person becomes aware of something happening online among your audience, they will draw on the expertise and knowledge from within the organization to provide information to your customers. By analyzing your social media campaigns and translating the anecdotal data into recommendations you can gain new market and competitive insights to improve your products and services.

Some things to keep in mind:

Your community isn’t online from only 9 to 5. Communities never sleep, never take the weekend off and never take holidays or vacations. Being a CM is a very time-consuming job and the results are not always tangible and visible, though your CM should be able communicate what is happening in your community at any moment.

The launch phase of any community requires someone that is passionate and “transacting” a lot. Building communities is not about collecting as many people as possible and communities often don’t grow the way they are planned. The CM role will change as the needs of the community change. This means the CM doesn’t fit into any single definition. I often refer the to the role as being similar to a liaison, bridging the gap between those inside and outside the organization.

I hope this as helped you and if you have any questions please feel free to contact me.