Online Community Management For Dummies

Learn to manage, grow, and communicate with your online community Online community management is a growing profession and companies are investing in online communities in order to gain consumer insights into products and to test new products. An effective and dedicated community manager is essential to engage and manage a successful online consumer community. This straightforward-but-fun guide shows you how to effectively manage, grow, and communicate with your online community. Clear coverage shares tips for dealing with customers and fans through Twitter, Facebook, forums, and blogs. A practical approach shows you how to ensure that visitors to your site are satisfied, kept happy, and return. You'll explore the various types of online communities and benefit from learning an assortment of tips and tools that will help you stand out above the competition, attract more visitors and gain the attention of potential advertisers and investors. Aims at providing community managers the information they need to get a handle on their online communities and make them successful Addresses the role of the community manager, the core community management tasks, and how to create an online community Highlights ways to build relationships within your community, evaluate return on investment, and handle and respond to criticism Offers advice for establishing policies and transparency and encouraging community interaction Online Community Management For Dummies is the ideal introductory guide for making sure that visitors to your site have a good experience and return for more.

Learn to manage, grow, and communicate with your online community Online community management is a growing profession and companies are investing in online communities in order to gain consumer insights into products and to test new products. An effective and dedicated community manager is essential to engage and manage a successful online consumer community. Clear coverage shares tips for dealing with customers and fans through Twitter, Facebook, forums, and blogs. A practical approach shows you how to ensure that visitors to your site are satisfied, kept happy, and return. You'll explore the various types of online communities and benefit from learning an assortment of tips and tools that will help you stand out above the competition, attract more visitors and gain the attention of potential advertisers and investors. Addresses the role of the community manager, the core community management tasks, and how to create an online community. Highlights ways to build relationships within your community, evaluate return on investment, and handle and respond to criticism. Offers advice for establishing policies and transparency and encouraging community interaction.

What's the point of creating a great Web site if no one goes there-or worse, if people come but never return? How do some sites, such as America Online, EBay, and GeoCities, develop into Internet communities with loyal followings and regular repeat traffic? How can Web page designers and developers create sites that are vibrant and rewarding? Amy Jo Kim, author of Community Building on the Web and consultant to some of the most successful Internet communities, is an expert at teaching how to design sites that succeed by making new visitors feel welcome, rewarding member participation, and building a sense of their own history. She discusses important design strategies, interviews influential Web community-builders, and provides the reader with templates and questionnaires to use in building their own communities.

Every day, millions of users log on to their favorite online forums and interact with others to get advice and discuss everything from the latest news and trends to their hobbies, professions, and whatever else strikes their fancy. Admin­istrators have to lead these communities, deal with difficult users, and choose moderators. Legal constraints, spammers, and technical issues can turn the excitement of running an online community into chaos. With the right guidance, however, running forums can be a pleasure. Patrick O’Keefe has spent years developing and managing online communities. Now, he shows readers how to make the right decisions about every aspect of their forums, including: • choosing a name and domain name • picking the right software • deciding on user options like avatars and private messaging • setting guidelines and dealing with violators • ensuring that posts stay on topic • settling online disputes among users • involving users and keeping the site interesting Managing Online Forums is the one book that shows site owners and administrators how to create a safe and entertaining community that users will return to again and again.

This series presents and discusses new and innovative approaches to knowledge sharing used by organizational management in all fields of work. The authors provide critical analysis of issues and present solutions to selected knowledge leadership challenges in all workplace environments. It thereby contributes to improvements in knowledge management, knowledge services, knowledge strategy development, and knowledge sharing within the organization.

This book is an in-depth tutorial on how to make communities work to really improve business performance. It covers principles and proven practices that ensure community success and longevity, provides tips and techniques for leading communities and communities programs that the reader can apply immediately, looks at different types of communities and the technologies that support them, and illustrates communities in practice.

Savvy companies recognize the value of a strong community. Think of Nike and its community of runners, Nike+, and you’ll quickly understand that creating and fostering an online community around a product or brand is a powerful way to boost marketing efforts, gain valuable insight into consumers, increase revenue, improve consumer loyalty, and enhance customer service efforts. Companies now have the unprecedented opportunity to integrate their brand’s messaging into the everyday lives of their target audiences. But while supporting the growth of online communities should be at the top of every company’s priority list, all too often it falls by the wayside. That’s why brand strategy expert and digital marketer Lauren Perkins wrote The Community Manager’s Playbook (#CMplaybook on Twitter), a must-read guide for business and brand builders who need to strengthen their approach to online B2C community management and customer engagement. As Perkins explains, if companies want to create thriving online communities focused on their product or brand, they must do more than simply issue a few tweets a day, create (and then abandon) a Facebook page, and blog every once in a while. Instead, organizations of all sizes must treat community management as a central component of their overall marketing strategy. When they do, they will be rewarded handsomely with greater brand awareness, increased customer use and retention, lower acquisition costs, and a tribe of consumers who can’t wait to purchase their next product. Perkins not only teaches readers how to build an engaging community strategy from the ground up, but she also provides them with the tactical community management activities they need to acquire and retain customers, create compelling content, and track their results along the way. Distinctive in its comprehensive, step-by-step approach to creating online communities that are fully consistent with a company’s existing brand voice, The Community Manager’s Playbook: Explains how excellent community management provides a competitive advantage with a large impact on sales Provides an in-depth overview of brand and business alignment Teaches readers how to identify their community's online target audience and influence their needs and wants Details the appropriate online channels through which content should be distributed Champions the use of an agile approach through repeated testing to maximize the return on every company investment Discusses the many diverse metrics that can be used to measure community scope Today, there is no brand strategy without a community strategy. Companies that are not developing communities are losing control of their brands and missing opportunities to optimize their marketing investments. With The Community Manager’s Playbook as their guide, however, marketing professionals and the companies and brands they represent will be equipped with the tools they need to manage their online marketing efforts, engage their core customers at every level, leverage community insights into the product development cycle, and ensure that their messaging is heard across all corners of the digital landscape.

A unique approach to today's hottest new job in social media Today's social community managers use social media platforms and act as brand evangelists and community advocates. From creating viral content to crisis communication to leveraging community content, social managers manage online social communities and deal with what comes. Luckily, The Complete Social Media Community Manager's Guide: Essential Tools and Tactics for Business Success is the perfect resource for how to do this increasingly high-profile and crucial job. The book features proven tactics and techniques for effective management and includes more than 40 field-tested tools and templates. If you're a social community manager, learn how to grow a community and achieve the results you need. Topics include a detailed guide to today's social media platforms, how to organize and successfully share content, using metrics and reporting, and more. Helps social media community managers develop, cultivate, and convert their social media communities Does a deep dive into today's crucial social media platforms Provides a complete toolkit of over 40 field-tested tools and templates on everything from how to craft a plan to developing an editorial calendar, tracking results, and more Explains how you can organize and successfully share content among your target community and how to leverage that content to further amplify your message The Complete Social Media Community Manager's Guide: Essential Tools and Tactics for Business Success is a must-have resource for one of the hottest new careers in today's social world.