Chapter 19
Ten Best Practices of a Community Manager
In This Chapter
- Being a neutral party
- Being accessible to your community
- Setting the right tone
Your success as a community manager is contingent upon your actions. If you go through the motions and put in the bare minimum of effort, you'll achieve the same results in return. If you have a good work ethic and follow some best practices, you'll achieve even better results. It's not enough to go to work every day and talk to people online. Your habits and work ethic are what set you apart from the rest.
To succeed as a community manager, you have to go beyond skill. Your habits also have to stand out.
Staying Impartial
As a community manager, you have to be fair. In fact, that should be the number one rule of community management. Even if you don't like a person or don't agree with him, you have to be fair. You can't side with your friends simply because they're your friends or roll with the popular kids because they're more fun. Everyone in your community have to be treated with equal respect.
Being impartial goes far beyond moderating community comments, though that's a big part of it. It's also inviting a diverse group of people into your community. It's making sure that you have a true community and not a clique.
Your community looks at you to be the voice of reason. Though they're most likely adults and old enough to fight their own battles, you may have to step in and guide a heated argument back to a productive discussion ...
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