Thanks to Flickr user m&m2009 for submitting this photo for the Offbeat Bride Flickr pool.
There’s nothing more exciting than having an online community that’s growing to the point where your members are invested and excited about your brand. So excited, in fact, that they start sharing their ideas for what you could do next.
“What if you sold headbands?”
That was the gist of an email I recently received from a reader of my site, Offbeat Bride. “I make these headbands,” her email went on to say. “I’d like to partner with you to sell a custom line exclusively for your readers.”
To be fair, they were lovely headbands. My readers and community members would probably really like them … but I’m a web content producer. I am not a retailer. I had to stop and ask myself, “Do headbands help me achieve my mission of helping non-traditional brides plan their weddings?”
Suggestions from readers and community members can be a wonderful gift. It’s remarkable to have a hive mind of members giving you clear feedback about what they want from you and your community. That said, with larger communities (I’m at 15,000 registered members and 200,000 monthly readers) the sad truth is this:
You can’t be everything to everyone. It can feel like an admission of defeat, but instead view it as a rallying call to do what you do with impeccable laser focus. Be your one thing to a few people.
Print it out. Repeat it to yourself often: You can’t be everything to everyone. I hope that anyone even considering an online community knows this simple truth, but it’s one of those things that’s easy to say and hard to live by, especially when you’re in a community growth cycle.
My members have made it clear that they enjoy my online wedding community because I work hard to maintain it as a positive, constructive environment … an atmosphere that can be difficult to find in online communities. Because of this, some members wish the community’s tone could be applied to non-wedding topics — recent suggestions have included a sub-group dedicated to discussing medical and health conditions, and a sub-group about home decor.
These subjects would doubtless make for fascinating discussions, and I have no doubt that a few of my members could really benefit from them — just like a few would love headbands. But ultimately I’m in the wedding business, and my skills are aligned to that work.
If I broaden the focus of my community to include medical issues and interior decorating and headbands, the purpose of my community starts to get lost. Suddenly the on-topic discussions are buried in a sea of chatter about fibromyalgia and shag carpeting — both interesting subjects, but not related to my mission of supporting women in planning their non-traditional weddings.
When I get receive these requests and suggestions from members, I always take the time to acknowledge them. I thank them profusely for taking the time to share their idea with me, and then explain that, in order to keep the community functioning at its best, I’ve chosen to keep it (and me!) focused. I always make a point to acknowledge that this doubtless means I’m missing out on wonderful opportunities, and encourage them to pursue the idea on their own.
In one instance, an article on my site Offbeat Mama prompted a reader to ask me if I would start a community dedicated to nontraditional military families. I explained I didn’t have the resources or background to do so, but offered to link a Facebook group, if they decided to start one. (Which they did!)
Because, repeat after me: you can’t be everything to everyone. It can feel like an admission of defeat, but instead hold it up as a rallying cry. Stay focused on being one really great thing to a few dedicated people.
…Even if the headbands are pretty.
Ariel Meadow Stallings is the author of "Offbeat Bride: Creative Alternatives for Independent Brides." She has been published in magazines and newspapers including Modern Bride, ReadyMade, and Seattle Weekly. Her work has been featured by the New York Times, "The Today Show," NPR, and The Guardian. She currently publishes two websites for women, Offbeat Bride and Offbeat Mama.
When you’re doing something big and interesting (like, oh, say, organizing an online community) and are looking for people to help, please, for the love of niches and all that matters to you, understand that not all yeah totallys are created equal.
Here are some of the ones I’ve come across:
“Yeah, I totally think what you’re doing is great, and I’m going to be super supportive whenever you talk to me about it. I’ll even Twitter about it!”
“Yeah, I totally want to hear more about how I can help. Please give me more info so I can think seriously about the details.”
“Yeah, totally, I’m excited to help in whatever way you need! But you should know that I get excited about lots of things, and something else might be more exciting to me next week, and that might take up some of the time I’m promising you. You understand, right?”
“Yeah, I totally want to help, but only if I find the work satisfying.”
“Yeah, I totally want to help, but only when I’m available.”
“Yeah, I totally want to help, but only if it’s something I’m really good at.”
“Yeah, I totally want you to feel supported. I also know that you know I’m really busy, so by ‘help,’ you’re just asking me to be interested, think about it sometimes, and offer a hand or idea if the moment seems right… right?”
“Yeah, totally. And that job description you just asked me to commit to seems fair enough. But I also know you contacted me because I’m bringing my own skills and interests to the table, so I’m just going to adjust it to fit what works for me. That’s cool, right?”
“Yeah, totally. … and by ‘help’ you mean ‘sleep together,’ right? Oh, I knew you were looking at me that way for a reason. Of course! Just tell me where I ‘sign up’ *wink wink*.”
“Yeah, totally. And that means you’ll help on my project just as much, right?”
“Yeah, totally. I’m committed to your project and I trust your judgment. I’ll let you know if your requests don’t fit what I’m able to do, but overall, yes, I’m in. Tell me where and how.“
That last one is gold. But it’s not the same as all the ones before it, even if you want it to be.
And here’s the real kicker. The person saying “Yeah, totally” probably doesn’t know which one they mean. All they know is that they’re interested. Chances are they need to know what committing will feel like before they can affirm what they’re in for. It’s your job to help them feel it out.
It’s also your job to stay alert to the possibility that their yeah totally might mean something other than what you’re hoping for, and to work with that whenever their real interest is as soon as it becomes evident.
Accept their real interest. Be grateful for it. Don’t get bitter about it.
Unless they’re just trying to sleep with you. Then you can slap them.
Very few conductors organize an online community alone. We work with volunteers, paid staff, collaborators, and power members who want to help keep things on track. The following interview is with Amanda Richardson, an experienced team manager coming from a corporate environment. While she’s not discussing online communities directly, everything she says here about team management is directly applicable. Enjoy! ~Sarah Dopp
Q: What personality traits would you say are most useful in people who manage teams?
Lack of ego: to help with delegation and let go of attachment to outcome.
Vulnerability: it’s tough to earn trust when you aren’t being genuinely trusting yourself.
Decisiveness.
A sense of humor, particularly of the sort that can point inward.
Accountability! Managers who aren’t accountable to themselves are going to have a rough time achieving it in others.
Patience, patience, and more patience.
“The ability to distinguish the important from the urgent is of huge benefit for any type of leader.”
Q: How important is it to you to build trust with your teams? What are some of the ways you do that?
Really, it’s pretty much the number one job. People management is the subtext of your day in, day out work and it’s threaded throughout your interactions with your team and with everyone you engage with. Your integrity is under scrutiny, as is your consistency.
Be present and be yourself, and try to stay true to that regardless of your audience.
As for dealing directly with your team, be sure they know they can bring issues to you, even ones they may feel they should know how to handle. It should always be safe to ask questions and get clarity. Be incredibly accessible.
Q: What would you say is one the biggest or most common problems team managers run into?
It can be tough to switch gears from the strategic to the tactical and back again, constantly throughout your day. A lot of managers are naturally inclined toward one or the other, and it can be a challenge not to get so caught up in the nuts and bolts of their team’s work that they lose the big picture, or to step out of planning land and realize you’ve become distanced from your team.
Q: How do you recommend they solve or avoid that problem?
Editor’s Note: I’d like you to meet Ariel Meadow Stallings, the unstoppable writer behind Offbeat Bride. She’s generously agreed to write a series of articles about her experiences managing the large online communities that have gathered around her work. I hope you enjoy this first post as much as I do! ~Sarah Dopp
Thanks to Kate DePalma for submitting this photo for the Offbeat Bride Flickr pool. Photo by Stephanie Saujon Baltz at La Photographie.
In 2007, I created an online community component for my website, Offbeat Bride. The goal was to give women planning nontraditional weddings a venue to network, share inspiration, and compare notes … and it quickly grew to 15,000 members.
Inevitably, I knew some of the notes being compared would be frustration and anger. Planning any wedding can be a difficult process, but when you’re planning a non-traditional wedding, there’s the added challenge of family conflict and swimming upstream against cultural norms and traditions.
I knew that I wanted to keep the community from spiraling into a cess-pool of negativity, but I couldn’t quite put my finger on why. “Let’s keep things constructive!” I’d shout into the growing storm of venting and rants. I worried that new members joining the community would be walking into the digital equivalent of a grumpy shouting match, and that instead of inspiration they’d be finding a chorus of people shouting “Everything suuuuucks!”
It wasn’t until I read a New York Times article about a psychology concept called “co-rumination” that I finally had a word to attach to spiral of negativity that can drag down online communities:
The term researchers use is “co-rumination” to describe frequently or obsessively discussing the same problem. The behavior is typical among teens — Why didn’t he call? Should I break up with him? And, psychologists say, it has intensified significantly with e-mail, text messaging, instant messaging and Facebook. And in certain cases it can spin into a potentially contagious and unhealthy emotional angst, experts say.
The research distinguishes between sharing or “self-disclosure,” which is associated with positive friendships and positive feelings, and dwelling on problems, concerns and frustrations. Dwelling and rehashing issues can keep women, who are more prone to depression and anxiety than men, stuck in negative thinking patterns, psychologists say.
While the article specifically addresses how young women are prone to the dangers of co-rumination, I strongly believe that the concept can be applied to any online community.
Co-rumination is highly contagious. When your members see each other using your community as a platform to vent and rant, they want to join in either by chiming “me too!” or by practicing grievance one-upsmanship, with members crowing, “Oh, you think YOU’VE got it bad!? Take a listen to this…”
Before you know it, your online community can morph from a platform for sharing and networking, to a circle jerk of complaints and anger, filled with tooth-gnashing and arm waving at the awfulness and injustice of absolutely everything.
Now of course there are some communities where this kind of conversation is perfectly appropriate — groups supporting people in times of grief or loss, or consumer communities about tracking frustrations. In some communities, commiseration is just fine.
But in many online communities, co-rumination can lead the tone of the group into a downward spiral, creating a grumbling, grinching negative space where more interesting conversation is ignored in lieu of “Yeah, I hate that too!” and “Listen to how bad *I* have it.”
I dealt with the challenge by creating a very specific sub-section of my online community for negative discussion. The sub-group is called “Bridal Bitching,” and I’m clear with all my new members that THAT’S the one place where they can vent and complain all they want. I wanted to recognize that there is some community value in commiseration — the “us vs. them” mentality isn’t always great, but there’s no denying it can foster a sense of camaraderie.
So while the bulk of my community remains focused on brides supporting each other and celebrating inspiration, the “Bridal Bitching” sub-group is the darker corner of the website that members can enter at their own risk. They know what they’re in for when they click into the group. And when members post negative rants outside the sub-group, my moderators have a place to direct them — it feels important to have a release valve, rather than just saying “YOU CAN’T DO THAT HERE, AT ALL. EVER!”
No denying, this method requires pretty hands-on moderation — especially initially. I found that if I explained my motives to members (I even linked the co-rumination New York Times article!) people generally understood the logic behind the policy, and within a month or so most members were self-policing, directing new members to the “Bridal Bitching” sub-group when needed.
In a bit of divine comedy (because how the fates do laugh at my attempts at moderation. HA HA HA!) it shouldn’t be any surprise that “Bridal Bitching” is the most popular sub-group in the Offbeat Bride community.
But by keeping the negativity in its own little corner, I encourage members to focus their frustration in constructive ways. For instance, instead of complaining, “My mother-in-law doesn’t understand me! Why does she want me to spend $10,000 on the flowers when I just want to use blooms from our garden??” I encourage members to focus on what they’ve learned from their challenges, i.e., “When my mother-in-law wanted us to go big-budget on our flowers, I found that talking to her about why I wanted to for a more sustainable, less flashy option wasn’t working. Instead, I needed to show her a spreadsheet of our budget.”
Encouraging members to focus on what they’ve learned keeps the tone of the group more positive, and I hope I’m making the group more useful to members. People love complaining and sharing their frustrations, and it would be a thankless task to try to eliminate negative discussion completely. But by giving your members a safe way to approach it, you can avoid dragging the rest of your community down.
Ariel Meadow Stallings is the author of "Offbeat Bride: Creative Alternatives for Independent Brides." She has been published in magazines and newspapers including Modern Bride, ReadyMade, and Seattle Weekly. Her work has been featured by the New York Times, "The Today Show," NPR, and The Guardian. She currently publishes two websites for women, Offbeat Bride and Offbeat Mama.
A little over a month ago, Meitar “maymay” Moscovitz and I gave a collaborative talk about “free culture” online communities, and how corporations can find them and benefit from them without hurting them.
We presented this at Forum One Network’s “Online Community Unconference” in Mountain View, CA. The whole session (which is also available) was about 50 minutes. Above is a 17-minute abridged version, boiled down to our main points:
What (and “who”) is free culture? (“We follow our passions.” “We find value in things other than money.” “We’re the ones who edit Wikipedia.” “We give our ideas away for free.” “We don’t let our jobs interfere with our work.” “We are the market makers. We’re creating the trends before they are capitalized on.” And so on.)
When trying to promote to a community, go to the community itself, rather than to the community manager.
When trying to sell to a community, don’t start with what your selling. Start with what you know about the community and why your product matters to them.
Rather than poaching a free culture community manager, support that manager where they need it, and invite them to advise you.
Rather than try to absorb or adopt a free culture community, set up your shop next door and be a good neighbor.
You don’t need to be a long-time member of the community to engage with it. But you do need to be familiar enough with the community to engage with it respectfully, in accordance with its customs, values, and norms.
The point is not that we’re free. The point is that wehave a culture, and it’s our own.
(The sound is a little crackly — sorry; I blame the outdated version of iMovie I was using. If it’s bugging you, go view the full talk instead.)
I’m intrigued by the relationship between corporate and free culture and want to dig up more examples. Open source software is the most obvious one. Threadless also seems like an interesting case study. Any other juicy ones come to mind?
The same day we launched this site, I was also a guest on the weekly Internet webcast, Tummelvision. Take a good look at these cuties, cuz I’m gonna be talking about them again around here:
Mitosis: Core community members become disenfranchised with new participants who don’t share the same values. These core community members seek more focus as they gravitate towards specific topics and relationships. Successful communities enable this and allow the community to split into smaller nodes, thus returning to an Established phase and repeating the life cycle process.
While the value of the community to its creators increases as membership increases, the value to individual members may diminish. Disregard for, or lack of understanding of these behaviors can lead to the failure of a community.
The author, Rob Howard from Telligent, offers a community lifecycles infographic and everything:
This is absolutely real and true and okay. When something gets too big, it stops being what a lot of people were looking for. You can either stop caring about those people and let them leave (and probably blog angrily about what a sellout monopolizing set of jerkheads you are), or support them in creating new, smaller spaces within the eco-system. The latter is more awesome.
Howard also lays out the three cardinal sins of mindset, often committed by community builders:
Genderfork.com, a community expression blog about gender-nonconformity and androgyny, is one of my own projects. Here’s how it turned from a solo art blog into a community project. It was all about the volunteers. – SD
Before Volunteers: The Solo Year
Genderfork started as a solo project, and I wrote one rule in stone for myself on Day One:
This will not require more than two hours a month of my time.
If I chose to spend more than two hours a month, that was fine, but the bare minimum amount of work needed to keep the site consistent and stable would have to fit into that time slot. I could commit to two hours a month. If the project needed more than that from me, it was too likely to die.
For a year, I blogged a photo a day, and I kept my time commitment promise to myself by doing the work in batches. I would dig through Flickr once a month, find 30 photos, blog them all as “draft” posts, and then schedule them to appear one a day, every day, at 10am. It took about two hours a month to maintain, and it was beautiful.
But when people started gathering around the site in larger numbers and asking for ways to connect with each other, “two hours a month” began to sound idiotic. I started adding new ways to contribute and increased my time commitment to two hours a week. (“But that’s it!”)
That plan lasted, oh, about three days before I realized I was screwed. Not only were the new contributions turning into a disorganized pile, but blogging photos was becoming much more time-consuming — I had found all the easy photos, and now I had to dig deeper. In order to go any further down this path, it was clear that I needed to ask for help.
(Sidenote: I should add right now that Genderfork has always been a money-free [or money-super-minimal] project, and that this simplified any ethical question around “paid vs. volunteer staff” for me considerably. We’ll talk more about that potential can of worms sometime. It’s an issue that needs a lot of careful thought.)
Volunteers: Phase One
On a whim, I put up a blog post explaining that I wanted to do more with the site, but that my time was too limited to handle all the work. Would anybody like to help? Three people I had never met or heard of before (Adisson, Erica, and Jakk) emailed me right away to ask what they could do.
I divided the photo blogging work between them (“please blog 10-12 photos each per month”), and made the requirements very concrete, basing them on everything I had learned from doing the work myself. This meant I had to write out everything from our editorial guidelines, to how to set up the Flickr-to-Genderfork account connection, to how to avoid accidentally offending photographers. It was a lot of writing, but it was worth it.
Communicating all of that to them and helping them get their first photos blogged took about a week or two. But once they got into it, they handled the responsibilities easily. Blogging photos was officially off my plate.
Want more juicy news, ideas, and resources for building online communities? With your help, we keep a running feed of useful stuff from the rest of the web...
m
l
r)
Recent Comments
— watchgleeonline on “Passing Notes, Playing Dead, Saying Thanks”
— RanTipz on “Kickstarter Fundraising: Myths, Facts, and Alternatives”
— freelancejoe on “Kickstarter Fundraising: Myths, Facts, and Alternatives”
— Joan on “Kickstarter Fundraising: Myths, Facts, and Alternatives”
— electrical on “FIRST POST! How the First Comment Sets the Tone for the Entire Conversation”