At some point you may have found yourself at work long after everyone else has left, the fluorescent lights buzzing above your head, and the sound of a lonely unanswered phone ringing through the empty hallways. Yet you remain, typing madly and wishing you had a clone to help you with all of the work…
Tag: Strategy
Three signs your association is ready for an online community
While I may be biased toward online communities–I think lots of organizations can find ways to incorporate community into their business strategies–I will also be the first to tell you that there is a right time, and a wrong time, to launch your association’s community. Before you can even start building your private social network,…
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…
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…
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,…
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…
Creating a member-oriented online community
This article originally appeared at ASAE: The Center for Association Leadership. My thanks to Oona Schmid who co-wrote this article with me! Just because an association creates an online community platform and stacks it with educational material does not mean members will rush to sign up. These tactics will help you build an engaging and…
Finding your calling as an online community consultant
In today’s internet-fueled economy, it’s easier than ever to find a niche in the workforce and fill it, which is essentially the definition of what consultants do. And frankly, in the future freelance jobs like consulting will likely become the norm, if they haven’t already, for making a living. Boutique marketing consultant Caitlin Connors made…
