The summer holiday season is starting here in Europe, if you’re a community manager you might feel it’s time for a break to recharge your batteries. Especially as it’s likely you’re burning out. That’s at least according to the Community Roundtable state of Community Management report:
“A full 50% of community professionals experienced a high degree of burnout over the past 12 months.”
I recently joined Bind as a Community Management Consultant, but what does that mean? What is Community Management?
If communities are people who share a common focus, then Community Management is the proactive design, development, activation and ongoing cultivation of the community. It’s a professional approach, backed up by relevant data, to connect people around a common goal. It’s about building bridges and creating value.
No two communities are the same, but there are still a number of standard ingredients which are essential for any type of community to become a success. One of these is for instance the presence of a community manager. This article will tell you which other elements are needed.
Looking at an online community like Wikipedia from the outside, it might seem like a tightly organized group of millions of people working toward the same goal. But look more closely, and you’ll see all kinds of members working on a wide range of activities, with varying motivations. Collaborations, various networks, cooperations and coordinated activities run in parallel. For good community management it is essential to understand the differences between them.
The general public may not be all that clear on the difference between social media and online communities. Although a huge number of real communities have been created on social media, we generally would not recommend using social media if the option of a proprietary social platform is also available. But the new Facebook groups may change all this.