A great community manager can build a great online community. That being said, a community shouldn’t be reliant on one person for its success. Yes, it needs a leader – but it shouldn’t depend on that leader for its daily survival.

Here’s a quick and easy way you can determine just how independent your community is – find your community’s total post count, and figure out how many of those posts were made by you.

When you’re building a new community from scratch, it will be largely reliant on its manager – you need to encourage the development of existing conversations and get new ones started. In the early days, it’s likely that you’ll contribute up to around 75% of the community’s content (perhaps even more).

As the community develops, you want to get this percentage down.

• Insomnia Land is two years old. 22% of forum posts were written by me
• Female Forum is three years old. 4% of forum posts were written by me
• Just Chat is twelve years old. 0.17% of forum posts were written by me

There’s an obvious pattern here – the older the community (and typically, the stronger it becomes), the less it relies on contributions from the community manager. As a community grows, more of your work as a community manager shifts ‘behind the scenes‘. That being said, it’s important to interpret these numbers correctly. Your aim isn’t to get your contribution percentage as low as possible.

Insomnia Land is two years old, but it’s clear that it still relies on my contributions to keep it going. This community is one of the most challenging I have ever built, yet I am seeing a clear trend as the community ages – I see more members posting as the days and week go by, so I know the community is on the right track.

Female Forum is three years old and it’s clear that this is a community that is now self-sustaining. That being said, it’s important that I remain involved and visible as the community manager.

Just Chat is a strong, well-developed community with its own culture and dedicated members. That being said, the fact that only 0.17% of forum posts were written by me suggests that I need to be more visible in the community.

It’s impossible (and perhaps, irresponsible) for me to tell you what percentage of contributions should be made by you based on the age of your community. Run the numbers yourself and see if you’re happy with what they say.

Movie-Vault does a great job at highlighting its weaknesses. Take a look at the homepage; as of Wednesday January 11th, in the left column we see 67 RSS readers and 55 Twitter followers. In the articles section, we are repeatedly reminded that nobody is commenting on the articles -there are four articles all with a large button proclaiming ’0 Comments’ (apart from one article lucky enough to attract the attention of a spammer). Furthermore, on every article we have the opportunity to be the first to ‘Like’ the content on Facebook.

Not all online communities have the audience or level of interaction to support the social proof tools we commonly see online today. Unfortunately, because they’re so prevalent, the temptation to integrate them into our own websites or online communities can often be irresistible. It’s worth thinking this through for a bit first, though.

• Why draw attention to the fact nobody comments on your content?
• Why draw attention to the fact your audience is (or appears to be) small?
• Why give another website (such as Facebook or Twitter) space on your site to draw attention to the fact nobody is engaged with your content?

Move-Vault has drawn attention to the following weaknesses:

• Nobody comments on their content
• They have a small readership
• There is no active community management
• The site attracts spammers (and potentially, scammers)

Get rid of the social proof tools that are only highlighting your community’s weaknesses. If you really need them (they can be great for cross-promotion and sharing) then remove the numbers if they’re only going to show a zero.

Social proof is all about numbers (and big ones at that unless you’re operating in a tight niche). Only use the tools if you have the numbers to play the game.

Woot does a great job with its online community.

Not only does the community content appear prominently on the homepage, the site highlights what it considers ‘quality posts’ – only posts it deems to be useful, interesting or otherwise valuable to the community make it to the homepage.

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Furthermore, when you delve into a product discussion thread, things look a little different. Before you even see the discussion thread, you see the quality posts.

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If you scroll down further, you get to the actual discussion thread. In a typical forum you’ll see a member’s username, title, avatar, location and post count. Woot does things differently. The post count is very different to what you’d expect. We only see ‘quality posts’ tallied under the username. Only when you hover over the shapes under each username do you see more of the ‘traditional’ statistics.

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Woot does a great job at giving its community the respect it deserves. They’re proving how much value they place in their community by giving it pride of place on the homepage. They’re also ensuring they recognize quality over quantity – a community culture that should always be encouraged, but is still relatively rare.

Is your community recognizing (and rewarding) quality or quantity? The former is better than the latter.

UPDATE – December 7, 2011

Yesterday, Woot had a 2012 calendar for sale. Each month features a member of the Woot community and brings attention to significant dates in Woot history. What a fantastic way of recognizing community members and building a community history and culture by drawing attention to milestones. This kind of recognition also gives other members motivation to ‘up their game’ for a chance to be featured in the calendar for 2013.

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Woot is a leading example of community building in an ecommerce environment done right.

It’s impossible to be a great community manager if the community you manage doesn’t have a mission statement. Without a mission statement, how do you know what kind of culture you’re trying to develop? How do you know what kind of content should be encouraged? How do you know what kind of members you want to attract?

A mission statement is critical if you want to build a successful online community. The mission statement will influence your community’s rules and guidelines. It will determine how you grow and it will remind you (and your members) of the community’s purpose.

So, how do you come up with a mission statement? I like to come up with the mission statement myself when building a community from scratch. As the community grows, I’ll revisit it and see if it needs to be adjusted (normally, it will).

At this stage you can also invite members to band together to write the mission statement themselves.

However you do it, just make sure your community has one.

One of the most important traits of a good community manager is patience. You need to be patient with members, you need to be patient when encouraging relationship building and you need to be patient waiting for conversations to develop.

Unfortunately, patience is rarely seen on the list of desirable skills for a community manager (normally because employers want quick results). Consequently, I come across a large number of online communities where the community manager is effectively running the show.

As a community manager, you shouldn’t be at the top of the ‘Top Posters’ list. You shouldn’t be the one starting all the conversations. You shouldn’t be the first (or only) responder to every conversation. A good community manager is more involved ‘behind the scenes’ – they’ll alert members to relevant discussions and encourage members to get involved instead.

If you’re the loudest voice in your online community, vow to make a change (yes, you can do this even if your community is small). Instead of responding immediately to new discussions, reach out to other members and invite them to respond instead. If you think of a good idea for a new discussion topic, nominate another member to share their thoughts on the subject and get the conversation started.

Don’t be the loudest voice in your online community. Work hard to make sure you don’t become your community’s most important member. Patience and being able to wait are powerful (and rare) skills.

The mindless criminality in England has now spread from London to Manchester, Salford, Liverpool, Nottingham and Birmingham. Unrest is taking place exclusively (according to news reports) in the cities. Where are the reports of small coastal communities being ransacked? Where are the reports of cars in rural villages being set on fire?

The fact is, disorder is far more likely to take place in huge communities – places that afford anonymity. If you misbehave in a community where most people are strangers, you can’t be ostracized. There is no perceived social stigma attached to your actions since you don’t know the people who disapprove of what you’re doing. Why should you care what strangers think?

This is one reason why keeping your online community small is a good idea. If you can’t resist the temptation to grow, make sure you have a robust strategy for growth. A small community where everyone knows each other is always going to be a far more positive environment than a large community full of strangers.

If you manage a large community, work hard to bring members closer together. Divide the community up into smaller groups to maximize the number of relationships that are formed.

Relationships are the key to your community’s survival.

Home Brew Talk is a great online community for those who enjoy brewing their own beer. Unfortunately they’re wasting time when they wish their members a happy birthday. Here’s the email they send:

Hello,

We at Home Brew Forums would like to wish you a happy birthday today!

There’s nothing unique or personal there – all they’re doing is reminding the recipient that it’s their birthday. This email won’t make a member feel special. In fact, it’ll probably been seen as more of an annoyance than anything else.

When your community is small, you should be sending personalized birthday messages. As it grows, this can become more difficult, but not impossible. Remember, you don’t need to do all the work yourself.

Here’s a better email:

James

I just wanted to wish you all the best on your 43rd birthday! I hope you managed to find the time to brew that Whiskey Barrel Porter that’s been on your ‘to do’ list for so long! It would be great if you could post a review when it’s finally ready to drink!

Thanks for being a member of Home Brew Talk!

[Your Name]
Community Manager

Oh, and make sure the email comes from a real email address.

Want to go even further? To make a member feel extra special, send something in the mail (keep it simple; a card or a hand scrawled note is perfect).

If this all sounds like too much effort, here’s a simple action you can take. Stop sending automated birthday messages. You’re not fooling anyone. You’re just wasting time (and opportunity).

Add this to your community manager ‘to do’ list – bring back one inactive member every single day. Instead of trying to attract new members, focus on getting existing members to return and contribute.

A few ways you can do this:

• Find a discussion you think they’ll find interesting and tell them about it.
• Find a discussion about a subject they’re an expert in and encourage them to share their wisdom.
• Find other members they formed friendships with and get those members to drop your AWOL member a line.

You can even bring the entire community in on this. Let’s say a particularly prominent member disappears – make it a community goal for that member to be lured back. Get other members to compete to see who can bring back the most members – special prominence goes to the member who can bring back the really valuable members who have drifted away.

Even if you can’t bring every member back, you’re likely to end up with some valuable feedback.

Insomnia Land has a mailing list for those interested in keeping up to date with the latest insomnia news and research. The content of the emails that are sent is exclusive to mailing list subscribers. Sometimes, subscribers who are also members of the community get confused when they want to discuss the content of those emails.

Here’s a recent email I received from a member/subscriber:

I’m finding it hard to find your emails on the website to start a thread about them. Also, I’m finding conflicting info on <subject matter of the email>.

Now, the normal response would probably be something like this:

We don’t post the emails on our website – they’re exclusive to our mailing list subscribers.

If you wish to discuss specific topics (for example <subject matter of the email>), I suggest you post in the forums (I see that you’re already a member). Simply go to the insomnia category and post away – don’t be shy!

Let me know if I can be of any further assistance.

Unfortunately, this still leaves potential for confusion and keeps the onus on the member to follow through and contribute.

As an alternative (or a supplement) to the email above, how about asking them for their thoughts and offering to post them on their behalf?

Other scenarios:

If someone is too shy to introduce themselves, why not take some of the information from their profile and create a post all about them, welcoming them to the community?

If someone tells you they love a thread started by another member, why not post that comment to the thread yourself?

Sure, posting on behalf of your members may seem counter-intuitive, but you won’t be doing it all the time. Besides, it’s all about getting the conversation started (and keeping it going).

You (should) already know that your blog isn’t just another channel for sharing press releases and promotional material. You should be using your blog to share content that will be of value to your readers, and you should be using your blog to draw attention to members of your online community.

Too many online communities have blogs but don’t use them to their full potential. As a community manager, you want to bring the community to your blog. Write about your members; talk about the great things they’ve done. Link to their websites and get your members to submit content.

Just Epals is a website dedicated to helping people make friends, so the blog offers advice on how to make friends. It needs to start sharing community news and talking about specific members who have made an outstanding contribution to the community.

Insomnia Land is an online community for insomniacs, so the blog shares the latest news and information about insomnia. Members of the community write product reviews and have their creative work featured on the blog.

These two blogs (for online communities I manage) rarely share promotional material. Instead, the focus is on providing value and talking about the community.

Your blog isn’t a place for churning out self-aggrandizing promotional material, or for talking about yourself.