The document discusses best practices for community managers, including engaging with members, understanding the audience, setting measurable goals, moderating discussions, rewarding loyalty, and leveraging various tools and strategies. It emphasizes starting with a clear community vision, interacting regularly with members, and focusing on quality engagement over sales.
How To Turn Customers into Evangelists With Online Communities
1. Evangelism starts
with: Community
Yes, it’s a real job.
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2. Community Buzz Words
• Engagement
• Nurturing
• Seeding
• Listening
• Loyalty
True Story: I’m very sick of these words
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3. Fun Facts
• Community Managers are 2 x more
likely to work for B2C
• Community Managers are 2 x more
likely to work directly for the brand
• Community Managers actually get
paid pretty well (the good ones)
True Story: 100% of normal people have no idea what they do
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4. What do CM’s do all day?
• Write Stuff
• Interact About Stuff
• Plan Stuff
• Help People With Stuff
• Analyze and Report Stuff
True Story: If you can’t read a spreadsheet, you can’t be a good CM
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5. How Are CM’s Measured?
• Engagement
• Community Growth
• Leads
• Sales
• Share of Voice
• Cost Savings
True Story: This stuff all = revenue based on page views, time on page, CTA
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6. Figure Out & Get To
Know Your Audience
True Story: The best way to do this = visiting other communities & data
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7. Have Some Goals for
Your Community
True Story: If they aren’t measurable, potential fans won’t talk to you.
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8. Be Damn Sure You Have
Guidelines for
Participation
**and put them in writing
True Story: You will still get spam and marriage proposals.
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9. Don’t Sell Stuff
**really do, but be subtle
True Story: People will buy stuff if they trust you.
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10. People connect with
people, not businesses
**Tell them who you are.
True Story: Making up fake names are ok, just be consistent.
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11. Check your ego.
True Story: It’s not your community, it’s theirs.
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12. Be friendly, helpful and
responsive.
Reply Always. Always.
True Story: People like that.
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13. Have a conversation
based on your strategy.
True Story: To do that you need compelling content.
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14. Let people have a voice.
True Story: But there will always be douchebaggery, so you need
moderators.
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15. Ask people questions.
True Story: People love to show how smart they are.
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16. Reward loyalty.
Starve trolls.
True Story: You wouldn’t believe what people will do for a t-shirt.
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17. Fun Trends in CM
• Visual Communities
• Hidden monetization
• Community Driven Content
• Optimizing for Mobile
• Perfect Timing
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18. Don’t do this:
Ignore metrics
Ignore legacy content assets
Ignore backend systems
Ignore social tie ins and monitoring
Ignore email marketing
Ignore CRM systems
Ignore monetization
Ignore mobile
Ignore specialization
True Story: Ignorance is not bliss.
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19. Do this:
Establish a community vision
Design your taxonomy around the vision
Develop your SEO/SEM/Social strategy
Seek out members
Reward early adopters
Determine your measurement & problem solving systems
Seed content
Set your monetization plan
Establish moderation and community guidelines
True Story: It works!
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20. Questions?
Connect with us!
@dowmediagroup
True Story: We will reply!
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