Community is just like a wild party
A guest post from Marc Thomas of Plastik Magazine
Imagine this for a moment. You’re at a party. It’s a wonderful party – full of people you haven’t seen in a long time. Someone’s showing pictures of their trip to Barcelona, another guy is retelling a hilarious joke he heard in work earlier in the day, there’s another person offering to get the drinks in.
And then there’s Brian.
Brian’s a normal guy. He’s got a job at a management consultancy firm, he likes rugby and ales. Brian’s already been to Barcelona so he doesn’t want to see any pictures of it, he was the guy who told the joke in the first place and he brought his own six pack to the party so he doesn’t need a drink.
Weirdly, Brian’s standing in the corner loudly reading the news headlines from the Daily Mail.
“HOW USING FACEBOOK COULD INCREASE YOUR RISK OF CANCER” he shrieks, “GHOST OF DAMBUSTERS DOG: PICTURE SHOWS LONG-DEAD LABRADOR AT MEMORIAL TO WWII HEROES”
No one likes Brian because at every social gathering, he always ends up doing things like this. Recently, he spent the evening trying to sell Jane, a friend of a friend, a fake Rolex watch at a karaoke party – and then he sang Abba.
Brian’s not good at community. Don’t be like Brian.
When you’re thinking about how you should conduct yourself with your audience/community, one of the best tips anyone can give you is to imagine what’s acceptable social behaviour at a party.
In case you’ve never considered it, here are some tips:
Treat people as people
There’s a tendency – and you’ll easily fall into it if you’re not careful – to see the numbers on your Twitter profile as followers rather than people who are following you.
People follow other people for two reasons: either they’re doing it to get a follow back (lame!) or because they’re interested in you as a person or your opinions.
It’s only fair that you give them the same respect back. Treat them like people – talk to them.
Don’t try and sell them a Rolex
The internet is free choice. You can go where you want, look at what you want, listen to what you want and you can also read whatever you want.
That’s important for you as journalists and community managers.
Don’t force people to read something if they don’t want to. Post your link once around lunchtime but don’t post it ten minutes later too! Wait until the evening.
No-one likes the guy trying to sell them a watch at a party. They like witty conversation.
Don’t separate online and offline community
Once you’re in a community of readers, you’re going to go to the same events that they are, read the same books they do, drink at the same bars.
When you see @personwhofollowsyou don’t treat them as a stranger.
If you recognise them from their profile picture/avatar, introduce yourself. Some of the best connections I’ve ever made have come as a result of speaking to people who follow me on Twitter or who I’ve been following.
Don’t be afraid to say, ‘Hey, I’m @yourtwittername. You’re @personwhofollowsyou right? Nice to meet you finally!’
They’ll appreciate it (most of the time).
- Start conversations
Ever had one of those really awkward moments where you’re introduced to someone and then neither of the other two people in the conversation say anything?
Online it can sometimes feel like the same thing.
To avoid such occasions in your online community management, remember you’ve got the tools available to stoke a conversation around a topic.
Last year, Plastik Magazine (then called Journal of Plastik) created a two-question survey to find out where the happiest people in Cardiff are. We asked “What’s your postcode” and “How happy are you on a scale of 1-10.” Within 24 hours we had over a hundred responses.
Taking that data, we wrote a news story complete with a map showing the distribution of happiness across the city. The response was overwhelming for a news story.
The form is a Google Doc (one of the best tools I use for journalism today) and the map is done by inputting the spreadsheet into a mapping website.
Easy community!
Those are some rules to get you started. Community building is about bringing your audience closer to your work. You’ll have to work out what goes down well and what bombs. You’ll manage it – don’t worry!
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