What is thanatosensitivity and what does it have to do with my community?

If you don’t acknowledge a member’s death, that person’s online contributions may live on, but their memory will quickly fade. Acknowledging death allows your online community to give special consideration to a person’s contributions and bring a sense of closure to the gap that can be left by a member’s passing. In case you haven’t…

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Why I volunteer: The benefits of extracurricular pursuits

This article first appeared on AssociationSuccess.org. Join me, Catherine Hackney of Confident Communities Consulting, and Arianna Rehak from AssociationSuccess.org on September 14th, 12-1pm EST, for a live, collaborative discussion about handling conflict in your online community. Register for the discussion today. I keep hearing about all these reasons why people shouldn’t work too much—health, wellness,…

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Skariphos one year on…thank you!

If you subscribe to the blog, then you got a sneak peak of this a few weeks ago when I accidentally posted it as a test–I hope you enjoyed the early release! As a thank you to all of my readers and to celebrate the founding of Skariphos.com in September 2016 (and Labor Day weekend…

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August in Review: Highlights From Skariphos.com

It’s been a busy month here at Skariphos, so I thought I would take a little break and take a look back at some August highlights. In addition to a few of my favorite articles from the blog, click the image below to get links to features of Skariphos and me, Luke Zimmer, in ASAE’s…

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Retired members make great association community managers

I was getting coffee with a friend of mine, and she was telling me that her association is at the point where it needs a community manager, but they don’t yet have enough work to make it a full-time position. She told me about a few of the options they had considered, including bringing on…

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Levels of order in online community: The art of banning users

I was listening to Community Signal (available wherever fine podcasts are sold) and Patrick O’Keefe’s conversation with famed criminologist George Kelling about applying the Broken Windows theory to community management. They discussed how behavioral demonstrations and “levels of order” can maintain a cohesive, orderly group, whether online or off. While the theory is somewhat controversial,…

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How the 90-9-1 rule applies to community tactics–like welcome campaigns

You’ve heard of the 90-9-1 rule, or the 1 percent rule of online community participation. It’s the general principal that around 90 percent of your audience will lurk in your community, not producing any content, only consuming it. Meanwhile, approximately nine percent of your community members will share intermittently, and the last one percent will…

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