

Ask HN: How can I become a better Community Manager? - LiveFoundry

Currently I am a Community Manager and Social Media worker for a small and unfunded tech startup. I have experience working in community management before this but I seem to have stalled a bit in my learnings. Currently I do customer outreach and PR on Twitter/FB/Blog posts as well as contact small to midsize startup blogs for press coverage.<p>If all goes well, this might turn into an equity position for me at my current gig and want to really knock it out of the ballpark. However, I could use some tips and pointers from you all about what you expect from a community manager or what your current one does that I could try and adopt in my work routine?
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mzbridget
What exactly are you trying to accomplish? Are you trying to build the
community and engage the existing users? I'm going to assume both is true. But
the first thing you need to ask yourself is what are your goals with the
community. Then ask yourself what tone do you want to set for it? Start by
reviewing the communities of similar sites in your market. Some great examples
would be the 37 Signals and Zappos communities. Balsamiq also has a great
community too. All of them share a common trait: There is a personable
approach in their writing and sharing.

A few things: Instead of asking for PR at blogs, offer to guest blog at those
places. It opens your company to a broader audience. Make sure to follow up on
every single comment too. Then offer other companies' community managers to
guest blog on your site. They will make sure to tweet/FB their posts to their
audiences and it starts a reciprocal relationship.

Email is underrated. Yeah, I know people think its dead but we send out an
email each week and highlight product developments, share articles relevant to
our users, and highlight our blog posts. We have a very high open/click-
through rate and see an increase in Twitter chatter for about 3 days post-
mail.

Next, highlight your users: show the community how people are using your
site/product/widget and ask your community to guest blog for you. Highlight
your users in your weekly emails and tweet out their stories/contributions.

Have webinars or twitter chats that scheduled and have a unique hashtag. They
don't have to be directly related to your product but a general discussion
about the industry. Reach out to businesses in your field and ask them to co-
host these with you in a roundtable fashion or Q&A setting.

The above should get you started and spark more ideas along the way. And the
best part is you can do all of these at no cost except the time you spend.
Good luck!

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inthecompanyof
Clearly define what your aim is (not "grow the twitter followers by 50%") in a
business context. "I am going to build a relationship with 50 bloggers
pertinent to our product"

Your community is likely to be very nascent, and so you'll need to complete
grok the space your in, really take the time to understand what the "continual
conversations" are between the community (there's always one. Think Python vs
Ruby on HN)make sure you understand it, the key players who takes which
view...

Once you've fully groked the environment, use being the "twiter dude" as a way
to meet people for coffee's and beers, then scale to being a biz dev.

Simples.

Remember, you there to make money not have a natter. :)

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olegious
I recommend you attend Meetup events relevant to your field- meet the
organizers and the attendees, find out what's important to them. If your
startup has their own space, talk to the organizers and offer to host a future
Meetup at your location (throwing in free beer and or pizza always helps
sweeten the deal ;) ) or ask if you can present your product to the group at a
future event.

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LiveFoundry
In regards to having our own space we do not as of the moment. But we
anticipate that time coming soon and this is a great idea, writing this one
down now. Thanks for the idea!

