Community Management

 Managing online communities can be enjoyable but also requires a delicate dance to make sure users are engaged and avoid negativity. For now I will use library demographic to build a community management. Best practices can be developing content that surrounds a certain theme and to leave it open ended to give a welcoming sense for people comment. The content should be set up like opening that leads to a group conversation. This does take time to see how the community takes content and where the discussion leads. Through the learning gained the community manager then can better prepare content that caters to the people participating. This is one thing many organizations fail to notice is that they build the architecture of this community envisioning a certain type of personas is setting up to fail because you cannot choose who becomes part of your community. So the main importance of community management is to evolve rapidly.

The community manager needs to realize that there are both extremes of who are contributing to your community. Anonymous users who are either reading but not participating or those out to cause trouble is every community managers struggle in getting the good ones and expelling the bad ones. This is the normal package of maintaining a community, the only thing is to sway away bad community members and foster the most welcoming environment for those to shy to participate. Aside from that I believe everyone at one point was a lurker it takes a great community manager to make the steps of registering and participating.

My fondest experience on a great community management is from Pennyarcade.com for gaming environment without the teenage immaturity many will assume it will be about. It fosters a great community where I have personally grown through the advice and information shared.  Just recently went to the forum to get some feedback about preparing myself on career change now that I am almost completing MLIS program. I feel the information I get from this site is not biased or skewed but fairly given compared to some news communities many would use for information.

Building a community can be daunting but if there are basic guidelines such as Rules of Conduct that all new community members must follow in being respectful and non-abusive to other members. Through constant evolution in adapting to what community is becoming will allow for an engagement community.