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Many community managers are either too slow or too fast to remove antagonistic members. They either remove the antagonistic member without fully realizing the role this individual plays within the community, or they spend copious amounts of time trying to convert the antagonist into a happy member.
One community manager I spoke with a few weeks ago had recently spent half a day resolving a problem with antagonistic members. That’s insane, what happens when you have 20 antagonistic members a week? Are you going to spend ALL your time on your community’s unhappy participants?
Antagonistic members aren’t always bad. They can provoke discussions, highlight topics that other members were hesitant to address, put forward opposing (if unpopular) view- points, and prevent groupthink in communities. Communities where everyone agrees and gets along are dull.
Even the most antagonistic members can unite the community against them. This sounds crazy (and I’ve received plenty of criticism for it), but a community united against a few individuals can actually derive benefits.
The question you need to ask is: Does this antagonistic member kill or boost discussions?
Antagonistic members might not be breaking any rules, but may still have to go simply by virtue of squelching every discussion they participate in. Otherwise, antagonistic members should be allowed to stay because they have a beneficial impact upon the community.
Don’t fall into the reactivity trap. Don’t get sucked in to spending hours of your time trying to deal with antagonistic members. Make quick decisions and take quick actions.
I often offer clients a six-step escalation process:
The goal of this process is to move from one stage to the next whilst spending as little time on antagonistic members as possible. The danger is rarely antagonistic members themselves; it’s the amount of time you spend on them. Over time, you neglect your happy members and can lose many members as a result. Make sure that doesn’t happen to you.
Business Fights Poverty was established in March of 2008 to pioneer new ways of fighting poverty utilizing economic and business opportunities by groups and individuals. Founder and Director, Zahid Torres-Rahman discovered and implemented the perfect platform for his idea through a chance conversation and a day’s worth of work. “A technology guru friend of mine first told me about Ning over breakfast, and by dinner I had set up the community.” Since its creation, the community has continued to evolve and expand its public profile. Business Fights Poverty has bloomed from 1,000 members after one year to more than 10,000 members today.
Openness, community, professionalism, respect, and integrity are the five core values that drive this vibrant network of business professionals, academics, philanthropists, and non-government organizations – all of whom share a passion for fighting poverty through business. Business Fights Poverty utilizes inspiring blogs from members, face-to-face events, and a powerful resource hub to captivate potential members and engage current ones. Their community also serves as the central station for public outreach via social outlets like Twitter, Facebook, and Linkedin. All these components have come together to make it the largest organization of its kind and a vital resource in the fight against poverty.
We reached out to Zahid Torres-Rahman to get the inside scoop on how his community has grown and helped created a brand with public impact:
What made you start your Ning community?
All around the world exceptional people are finding new ways to fight poverty – by creating new jobs and economic opportunities in low-income communities. The challenge we set ourselves back in 2008 was to help turn these individual acts of inspiration into a broader movement for change. We wanted to build a sense of community by connecting these intense, but often dispersed pockets of energy. We wanted people to be able to find, engage with, learn from and be inspired by like-minded peers. Ning made this all possible for us – by offering an affordable and easy way to build an online community.
Have you achieved this original objective? How else has your community helped you and your business, brand or mission?
I think we have come a long way. We’re now the largest community of our kind, with a brand that is steadily growing in profile. We publish a great story every day, and pretty much all of these come from community members. We are increasingly active in the real world too, with face-to-face events and publications. At the same time, I feel that we are only at the beginning of an exciting journey. We are constantly trying to learn and improve. We recently hired FeverBee, following a Ning webinar (which you can watch again here), and they have been giving us some great advice on enhancing our member engagement.
If you had to pick one measure of the success or impact of your community, what would it be?
We track all the usual metrics about visits and member engagement, but for me nothing beats the personal stories that I hear from members about howthe community has helped them – whether to find a new job; connect with potential project partners; or just to be inspired by what others are doing. I enjoy reading what our Members of the Week say they hope to get out of being part of the community.
How long did it take your community to reach critical mass?
It took us a year to reach 1,000 and four more to reach 10,000. But one thing we have come to appreciate is that it’s the number of actively engaged members that matters, and that’s where our energy is now focused. The great thing about Ning is that by massively bringing down the costs of organizing online, it has made it possible to create successful, small, specialist communities.
What tactics drove the most growth and activity in your community?
We have focused our energy on three areas. The first has been on building the community brand. We worked with professional graphic designers to develop a strong look and feel for the site, and we invest in great photography to illustrate stories on the site. The second area is around content. We have put a lot of energy into our editorial calendar – to build up a strong flow of timely, high quality and interesting content, primarily from our own members. We drive traffic to this content through our weekl
y broadcast messages, and we are also very active on Twitter (@FightPoverty) and other social media sites. The third area is around member engagement. Every year, we have an active programme of face-to-face and online events, such as webinars. Through our “Member of Week” and “Star Member” initiatives, we profile our most active members. We have high hopes for our new member’s Forum, and have other ideas in the pipeline to encourage member interaction.
What feature(s) are most important to your members?
Right now, our blog is the most popular feature on our site, followed by our events. Over the next few months, we are looking to grow our forum as a way to generate more member-to-member engagement. We’ll also be more closely integrating our offline and online activities – so for example, we’ll be running online discussions linked to our face-to-face events. Following member feedback, we’ll also be launching a jobs board.
Do you have any advice for other people building online communities?
We recognized early on that community management is a full-time and professional activity! Continuous investment of time and effort is needed to encourage member activity and network growth. On top of that, listening and responding to what your members want is critical. Recognizing when things are not working is important too! For us, we have been on a continuous learning journey, and are constantly looking to improve the site. I am a fan of the Ning Creators Network – and have picked up many great tips there.
What’s the craziest story you have about your community?
The craziest story is from our first day. A technology guru friend of mine first told me about Ning over breakfast, and by dinner I had set up the community. I was the first member and my wife was the second. I remember telling the third member – a colleague of mine who was working for a charity at the time, “I know you are only member number 3, but I promise that one day there will be many more of us!”
There is an African proverb that has been an inspiration to me: if you want to travel fast, travel alone. If you want to travel far, travel together. For me that is at the heart of what the global Business Fights Poverty community is about, and I am excited about what the future holds. I believe that for all the amazing things we are doing individually, if we can do more together – as part of a movement for change, the possibilities are limitless.
We will be performing some planned maintenance on the Ning Platform on Wednesday, February 20, from 10pm-2am Pacific Time. During this time, all Ning Networks will be offline and display branded maintenance pages. Ning.com will be down for maintenance as well.
We strive to offer a consistently high uptime and need to perform some crucial hardware and database updates to ensure that reliability continues. We also strive to keep longer planned maintenance windows like this one to a minimum and schedule them for low-traffic hours.
During this 4-hour window:
Not sure when 10pm Pacific is in your time zone? Use Every Time Zone to find out!
You may want to let your members know about this downtime in advance via a Broadcast Message or notice on the Main Page of your network. Feel free to make use of the language below, filling in your network details.
Formal: We will be performing maintenance on [network_name] on Wednesday, February 20 between 10pm and 2am Pacific Time. During this time, [network_name] will be unavailable. We hope this won’t be too much of an inconvenience as we work to perform some necessary upgrades.
Informal: Just wanted to give everyone a heads-up that we need to perform some simple but necessary maintenance on [network_name] on Wednesday, February 20. We’ll need to take the site down at 10 p.m. Pacific for about 4 hours during which we’ll simply show a message asking folks to check back later. Thanks in advance for your patience while we tune up the site!
By Patrick O’Keefe
Online community guidelines detail the types of behaviors that are and are not appropriate on your community. They include things that some might consider obvious, but they also include items that are somewhat unique to you and your community. I liken an online community to a country. Each country has culture, laws and social norms that make it different from every other country.
I believe user guidelines are pretty important. Let’s discuss why.
The absence of guidelines leads to people making up their own or thinking that anything goes. With no official set of guidelines that is applied consistently, you instead get everyone else’s interpretation of what they believe “should” be alright. In some cases, this may also lead to them defending their interpretation against the interpretation of another member. Certainly, that can get messy. But the uncertainty of it all is a big turn off because most people aren’t going to be the ones bold enough to try to set their own guidelines. They are more likely to join a timid group that is unsure of what is acceptable and, as such, just tries to play it as safe as possible. For some, this will just mean that they decide to go elsewhere, to another community that has a more established structure that matches with what they are looking for in a community.
Good guidelines, like good rules and laws, tend to help us to all participate on a level playing field.Once we know the ground rules, we are free to express ourselves in a manner that respects them. Some may view guidelines as restrictive but, just as much, they free people up because they no longer need to worry about what might or might not be OK.
Now, I know what you are thinking. “No one reads them.” You’ve probably heard someone say it before. However, the truth is that some people do read them. I’m not saying it is a lot of people, but some members do seek them out, especially new members, but also veterans in search for a refresher. Those people who do look for them are trying to do the right thing. They want to make sure that something is OK. This is why it is not only important to have guidelines, but to link them in visible areas, such as your header, footer, near areas where contributions are made (like reply boxes), in staff member signatures, etc. If everyone knows where they are housed, it maximizes the usefulness of your guidelines.
Community guidelines are a living document and, more than a set of rules, they speak to the type of community you are and the audience that will most appreciate what you have to offer. No community is for everyone. Even a community for everyone isn’t because not everyone wants that. Your guidelines help to demonstrate this and help people to come to that understanding sooner. Vision statements tell people where an organization wants to go in the future. Your guidelines should speak to that. And if a part of your guidelines ever stops speaking to that, you should change it.
This may be the biggest one. If you try to apply any sort of standards to your community and you don’t have any sort of public guidelines, it feels unfair and arbitrary. How can people know that something violates the guidelines if there aren’t any guidelines? If you remove content without guidelines to refer members to, then it looks like you are removing content based on imaginary rules that only exist in your head. It doesn’t inspire confidence. When you remove content, you notify the person who posted it and tell them why. When you tell them why, you include a link to your guidelines, so they can see the publicly posted standards that all members must adhere to.
To sum it up, having guidelines isn’t about making sure that everyone reads them. Instead, they exist to serve as a point of reference, so that everyone knows what standards exist and what is expected. There is no guess work, there is no mystery. This helps to create an environment of honesty and fairness.
Patrick O’Keefe is the author of “Managing Online Forums,” a practical guide to managing online communities, and “Monetizing Online Forums,” a guide to generating revenue from them in the right way. He blogs at ManagingCommunities.com and can be found on Twitter at @iFroggy.
Are you struggling to stimulate activity in your online community? Do you have lots of members but little participation? Try asking the sorts of questions that stimulate discussion in every online community.
Here are 20 to get you started:
Your mileage with any of these questions will vary depending upon the topic sector and the progress of your community. However, if you’re looking to generate some activity, you can try a few of these basic conversation starters to get going.
The more open-ended the question, the more everyone can participate. When you post a question, try prodding a few members to reply and get the activity started.
Images courtesy of Zorba the Geek and Horia Varlan
As the year comes to a close, it’s a great time to look to a few Ning Networks that have had great success throughout 2012 for inspiration. We asked Network Creators on our Creators Network to let us know how their year went, and we received some exciting stories of success and lessons learned.
These Ning Networks were led by creative, hard-working teams and have achieved their own forms of success due to their dynamic leadership. Using the words of wellkunnected.com Network Creator, Armani Rouse: “There isn’t a hack for had work and creativity!”
The eCoronado team showing off their schwag!
eCoronado.com is the most popular newspaper website and online community resource for Coronado, Calif. During 2012, the eCoronado team looked beyond their online tools and developed successful strategies to incorporate their community with offline events/ giveaways/ discount cards/ sponsors/ pretty-much-anything-they-set-their-mind-to.
In brief, they hired two paid writers, a site admin, and interviewed many candidates to bring on their 13th intern. They now have 20+ paid sponsors and have launched over 40 physical photo/scavenger hunt contests to drive activity. In their spare time, they hosted an anniversary party and bought hundreds of local members ice cream, created a local discount card in partnership with public schools and started rewarding top photo contributors with badges and company schwag.
We’re not sure when the eCoronado.com team finds time sleep between advancing their development strategy and hosting ice cream giveaways!
Some networks define their success by the number of members they attract, while iava.communityofveterans.org has amassed 24,500+ members, this is not where they see their triumph. The IAVA community is part of the largest nonprofit organization helping Iraq and Afghanistan war veterans.
The IAVA community team sees their triumph in the very real resources they have developed for their members. They implemented a Crisis Response SOP (Standard Operating Procedure) this year which was used to connect members with suicidal urges to life-saving resources. As Jason, the Network Creator, puts it: “Running a mental health / veteran network provided endless excitement. It’s been a crazy year on our network.”
They also had the opportunity to personally officiate a wedding of two long-time and active members of the community — who actually met because of the network — and secure a couple of grants to get some part-time support and a redesign for 2013. We look forward to continue to hear inspiring stories from this community in 2013. If you’d like to support an organization that Time magazine says remains the most important organization representing the new generation of veterans, please head to their donate page.
Image by Riccardo Rossini
Italian photographer network fotografiapuntodincontro.com defines its success by the elegant, clean and efficient community they have created thanks to their decision this year to enable the option to have all new photos approved by administrators before they become visible. Riccardo believes this enables fotografiapuntodincontro.com to deliver the highest quality photos to enrich the member experience. “We are proud to offer in Italy something different about photography site, thanks to approval photo.”
Check out some of their featured photos; they truly are stunning. We’ll be keeping an eye on their network to see them grow and to enjoy more of their masterful shots in 2013.
Parent-chat.com is looking for founding members.
Three weeks ago, self-proclaimed web novice Jennifer realized her dream of managing an online parenting community with parent-chat.com. Having no experience whatsoever, she set about getting her network up and running and now has a solid founding-member base. The Network Creator, Jennifer, promises: “I am only related to 5 of them!” Creating something tangible from an abstract idea is definitely a great leap forward, so we’d like to congratulate parent-chat.com for launching their network in 2012!
It’s important to remember that each community defines success differently. The end of the year marks a great point to look at your own community and decide what you define as success. Whether it is defined by page views, engagement, or financial profit, we wish you the best of luck in 2013!
This week, we held the second webinar in our series with Richard Millington, one of the most respected voices in the field of community management. The first one was about increasing activity, and it was definitely the most successful webinar Ning has ever held. If you missed it, you can find it on YouTube or Vimeo. I absolutely recommend sitting down with a cup of something and watching it if you want to hear about increasing engagement in your community. It was a good one.
This one was a good one, too! And, like the last one, Richard gave away a PDF version of half of his new book, Buzzing Communities: How to Build Bigger, Better, and More Active Online Communities. I’ve been reading the book (and online reviews of the book) and it’s getting a great reception, as it should. It’s got a lot of advice that no one tells you when you start out managing a community, but even better than that it points to a lot of social science studies that put data behind ideas and hunches. Richard has a knack for pointing out things that question conventional wisdom and make you realize that conventional wisdom can be completely bogus. Simply put: His book is an excellent resource, and we’re thrilled to have Richard sharing his expertise with Ning Creators.
Or anyone else! Richard’s talks aren’t specific to Ning. Whether you’re a Ning customer, someone who runs a community on some other platform, or just someone who’s curious about how community works — or should work — we hope you’ll get something good out of this talk. Give it a watch!
How to Grow an Online Community from Ning on Vimeo.
A few things covered in this talk:
If you run an online community, what are you doing to mark the season? The last candle of the Menorah will be lit on Saturday, and many are eagerly awaiting a visit from St. Nick. Historically, there is a sharp downturn in web traffic for non-ecommerce websites around Christmas time. A jolly atmosphere that reflects shifts in your real-world environment creates new potential to bridge this lull and may even boost engagement in your community. Give members a reason to spread the joy with you.
Brick and mortar establishments don’t have a monopoly on holiday decorations. You can break out the twinkly lights, poinsettias and dreidels and set your online community ablaze with winter warmth and merriment.
Consider your community, however—you’ll want to update the look of your network in a way that adds holiday spirit but doesn’t overshadow your members’ main reason for visiting. Adding animated auto-play carolers to the main page could scare some people off, but including a festive banner, virtual mistletoe or twinkly lights can be charming and memorable.
Twinkly lights with CSS
Ning Superstar soaringeagle shared the following CSS code that you can use to make twinkly lights brighten up your community.
#xn_bar,.xg_theme .xg_module_head {background-image:url(“http://webdeveloper.com/animations/holiday/christmas/gifs/xmas_light.gif”);background-repeat:repeat-x;}
See the festive holiday decoration live here.
Snowstorm with JavaScript
Scott Schillman has been “bringing snow to the web since 2003.” Even if you’re in Australia this December, you can enjoy a light snowfall with Schillman’s JavaScript hack. To add the snow effect to your network, you’ll need to upload the original file, grab the new URL for the snowstorm, paste it into the code (see below), and then add that code to the Custom Code section on the dashboard of your network. If this sounds complicated, head to our Creators community for some extra guidance.
<script type=”text/javascript” src=”Replace-this-text-with-the-snowstorm-URL”></script>
Seasonal header or banner images
Don’t want to introduce a cold front or controlled blizzard into your community? You’ve got options! You can pack quite a holiday punch into a banner or redesigned header image.
If you’re not already using the Instant Ad Boxes on your network, you can repurpose them for just about anything—holiday banners included. The Instant Ad Boxes are as versatile as a text box and up to three times as wide. To open up space above and below the header on your network, head to Dashboard > Settings > Features Layout. The, check the box(es) next to Instant Ad Boxes (at the bottom of the page) and click “Save.”
Next, you’ll need to find your holly jolly imagery. Creative Commons has a great search tool that will help you find images licensed for commercial reuse and modification. Christmas Stock Images is another helpful resource this time of year. If you want these graphics to stretch across the width of the page, resize them to 960px.
You can thread season’s greetings throughout your community by adding similarly themed images to text boxes elsewhere on the main page. Or, maybe try this: Update the default member profile image to a snowman.
Holiday-themed discussions
Invite your members to share tidbits of their own. Most embarrassing holiday moments? Most magnificent holiday moments? Favorite holiday cookie recipes? Point visitors to these timely discussions by linking directly to them from a text box on the main page. If you’ve already got a tight-knit group, you can use the Forum or a Message Broadcast to start a gift exchange or mobilize a charitable event.
When you’re taking down the decorations this year, leave a little something behind. The new year is a great opportunity to thank all your members for making the community what it is today. You can hang a ‘Best Wishes’ note to express your gratitude and issue one more gesture of good will before it’s back to business as usual.
Custom NingBot holiday cards
Head to holiday.ning.com to assemble your own NingBot holiday card. Choose a backdrop and dress up your NingBot with a rosy nose, elf shoes, a corncob pipe, nerdy glasses, angel wings, bunny slippers…the list goes on. Include a personal note and send season’s greetings to friends and loved ones who make your spirit bright.
Happy holidays!
Images courtesy of sammydavisdog and Christmas Stock Images
One of our absolute favorite movements/sites/events/unique-things-that-can’t-be-pigeon-holed-into-a-simple-category is One Day on Earth. If you haven’t heard of it, it involves many thousands of people (anyone who wants to participate, really) from all over the world filming snippets of video on one single day. People record what they think, what they do, what they need, what they love — whatever’s on their mind. Then, everyone uploads their clip to create a compelling time capsule that may just live forever. After the big day is done, the people behind the One Day on Earth project get to work editing it all into a movie masterpiece. It’s a brilliant idea that we look forward to at Ning every year.
I first stumbled across this Ning-driven site in 2010. I thought 10/10/10 was a very neat and brilliant idea. Since then, they’ve kept going. It’s no flash in the pan. On 11/11/11, they expanded their reach by sending 1,000 video cameras to places around the world where cameras are hard to come by. This year, they’ve gone even further and created a full-length film that compiles the past two years’ footage, which debuted on Earth Day earlier this year.
One Day on Earth is only going to get bigger, and you can be part of it. There’s still plenty of time to join in and participate (6 more days, in fact). Chances are you can accomplish this by simply taking video footage with your phone.
So, what are you waiting for? Take 15 minutes out of your day next Wednesday to film something extraordinary — or even just plain ordinary. Show the world who you are, where you live, what you do, what you care about — anything that’s important to you. If you’re a Ning customer, we’ve got an even better idea: Why not encourage your community to join in and film yourselves doing whatever it is all of you do best.
Everyone who contributes at least one minute of footage gets to watch the final film! But more importantly, everyone who participates gets to be part of something bigger than themselves. It’s community on the grandest scale imaginable. And it only costs a little bit of creativity.
One Day on Earth – Film on 12.12.12 from One Day on Earth on Vimeo.
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