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4 Factors of Successful Community Management

Contributed Post: David Stribling, Co-Founder of Lasuni.

Small companies will often build small communities during development. As a small company, your community is your greatest asset. The way you manage, and interact with your community is incredibly important to the growth and success of your brand. Ensuring you cultivate a close-knit community can have many benefits. First, your community creates the best and most effective marketing tool you can have: word of mouth. Engaging your community will keep your customers coming back time and time again. They will feel personally connected to your product and brand. Here are the four factors that I consider vital when managing a community.

1. Honesty The most important thing when communicating with your audience is that you’re always honest. Consumers aren’t stupid. Trying to avoid answering questions or obvious issues won’t build trust. Every company will experience bumps along the way, both large and small. By quickly addressing these issues in an open and honest manner, you will reassure your community that you’re tackling the problem directly.

A perfect example of this done poorly, is the recent PSN (PlayStation Network) outage. On April 20th, some parts of the network weren’t working and Sony stated it was "undergoing maintenence". It wasn’t until April 26th that Sony finally revealed that there had been a "compromise of personal information as a result of an illegal intrusion on [their] systems." The attack occurred between April 17th and 19th, which means their community was in the dark about the theft of their personal information for up to 9 days. In the age of social networks and instant communication, that kind of delay isn’t acceptable. You should aim to let your community know what’s going on as soon as you know. Be sure to tell them what you’re going to do about it.