When you’re booking your next flight and wondering about your in-terminal dining options or which seat will give you the best takeoff and landing views, check to see if you’re preferred airline has a community that can help out with those questions. Southwest Airlines does, and it might be the only online community hosted by a major airline. 

Airlines are always managing customer-facing and public relations issues so how exactly does one make the case for building a community? In this episode, Lindsey Duncan, who oversees the moderation and management of the Southwest Airlines Community, explains the unique relationships and conversations that it has fostered. The community thrives when it comes to topics that involve a unique point of view that can’t always be provided by a Southwest staff member. For example, help traveling with children and getting tips as a first-time air traveler. These conversations also help Southwest Airlines create memorable brand moments and long-lasting customers.

Lindsay also shares:

• The ROI of a community-driven knowledge base
• Using community to connect customers and create memorable brand moments
• How two Southwest Community Champions connected and went on a trip to Disney together

Continue reading “Why Southwest Airlines Has an Online Forum”

With a global network of content moderators, it seems that Facebook might be the largest employer of community professionals in the world. But even with these resources, their content moderation practices continue to make headlines. Outsourcing this work barely seems to help Facebook keep up with the volume of content that needs to be reviewed, not to mention the toll that this takes on the often undervalued and underpaid people that are responsible for it. To this Ben Whitelaw, the engagement lead for the Engaged Journalism Accelerator, asks when Facebook is going to start taking bigger risks to solve this problem?

While Facebook’s moderation practices have lots of room for improvement, Ben also shares how the platform proved to be an asset when Times readers needed a space for discourse around Brexit. For newsrooms organizing communities today, Ben shares that Facebook’s ease of use makes it easy to spin up new groups and show proof of concept, but that this isn’t a full solution for long-term reader engagement. Patrick and Ben also discuss:

• How Brexit played out in comments section at The Times and led to internal advocacy for readers
• Scaling the work of moderation and the importance of consistency and credibility in community management
• Whether or not big platforms like Facebook should be allowed to self-moderate

Continue reading “The Role of Credibility in Community Management”

In 2018, a common thread across Community Signal conversations was knowing how to clearly communicate the success of community across an organization. It’s fitting that for our first show of 2019, we’re joined by Tammy Armstrong, someone who is passionate about using data to solve problems.

Tammy and Patrick met on KarateForums.com and from her years as a community member and moderator, she learned a valuable lesson (care of Oprah): “When we know better, we do better.” This lesson carries throughout the entire episode. When we mature and become more empathetic, we become better community members. When we know more about our community goals and shortcomings, we can use the data at our disposal to do better. When we’re using the internet ourselves, we should be cognizant of the trade offs that we’re making with our data and whether or not it’s worth it.

Tammy also shares several tips and tools [22:30] for those that are just starting to unravel the data behind their online communities, but her greatest (and cheapest?) bit of advice involves understanding the goals and vision for your community. From there, data is just another tool to help you reach your desired outcome [40:36].

Tammy and Patrick also discuss:

• The positive impact of teenagers within online communities
• Best practices for data visualization
• How to start unpacking the wealth of data behind online communities

Continue reading “How Data and Teenagers Power the Future of Online Community”

This week, Patrick and Scott Moore continue their conversation commemorating three years of Community Signal, touching on a topic that’s important to the work of all community professionals but that doesn’t necessarily get a lot of attention: the laws and regulations that govern our work.

You’re probably familiar with GDPR and Section 230 of the Telecommunications Decency Act. And for those of us that are paid community professionals working for established companies, we likely have resources internally that help us address legal concerns. But Patrick also raises the point that many communities are small, run by volunteers, and have minimal tech and financial resources. Are the laws protecting community members also protecting communities and community professionals, regardless of their size or backing?

And let’s get real, it’s clear that not all of our government leaders are caught up on the online community landscape, or even on the internet itself. So how are we informing them and letting them know how these laws impact the communities we serve, for better or for worse?

Scott and Patrick also discuss:

• The other laws and regulations that impact the work we do
• The “right to be forgotten” and what it means for communities as a whole
• Patrick’s Community Signal dream guests for 2019
• Our collective responsibility to raise up community as a profession and Patrick’s promise to give a pep talk to anyone who needs one

Continue reading “Threats to Section 230 Should Unleash the Political Power of Community Professionals”

This week, Community Signal proudly celebrates three years of conversations with community professionals. We’re taking this opportunity to talk to Patrick about his experience running the show and giving him a chance to reflect on the state of online community management and how he’s seen it develop over these past few years. We’re also grateful to be joined by past guest, Scott Moore, for this conversation.

Combined, Patrick and Scott have over four decades of experience in community and a recurring topic in this conversation is how we can learn from industry veterans and those who came before us, as well as recognizing that the community problems of today likely have past occurrences that we can learn from. As Patrick mentions towards the end of this episode, hosting this show has been a way for him to stay up to date on the themes, tools, struggles, and triumphs that the community landscape is seeing and we hope that these conversations are useful for you, too.

I know that I can confidently speak for Karn, Patrick, and myself in saying that we’re all looking forward to continuing to ask the tough questions when it comes to community. It’s our duty to push the profession forward.

We’re breaking this conversation up into two episodes. In part one, Patrick and Scott talk about:

• Choosing metrics that matter
• The career trajectory for community professionals and how he approaches managing his team
• His go-to resources for staying current on all things community

Continue reading “Retaining Talented Community Pros and What Makes a Great Boss? (3 Years of Community Signal)”

Over the past few months, Patrick has spoken to several leaders in the world of journalism and for this episode, we’re welcoming back Bassey Etim, community editor at the New York Times. Bassey was originally on Community Signal in December of 2015 and it’s overwhelming to think about how public perception of the media and the Times, in particular, has changed since then. To give you some context, Barack Obama was still in office at the time of that interview and Donald Trump had yet to win a primary.

Patrick brings up an important question during this conversation: How are moderators at the New York Times doing? And perhaps that question can largely be answered by how Bassey manages his 14-person team. He shares how the team blows off steam, what he does to advance people within his team, and how he views AI as a human-powered tool to moderation, not a human-replacing one. Is it Bassey’s emphasis on people and objectivist journalism that powers a positive environment amongst his team and the comment sections at the Times? I think so! Bassey also shares:

• The impact of the midterm elections and politics in general on moderators at the Times
• His own career path at the Times and how he elevates others for growth opportunities
• Getting AI machines to ask humans for help

Continue reading “How The New York Times is Building Thoughtful Comment Sections in the Trump Era”

Local newsrooms are tasked with representing their local communities and the issues and topics that matter to them. For that reason, it seems especially important for there to be reader advisory boards and feedback loops in place to ensure that the local community can share feedback with the newsroom. But if your newsroom or publication is in a pre-community state, Rebecca Quarl has suggestions on scalable measures that you can take to let your audience know that you value their readership.

Rebecca has the unique vantage of having worked across 28 for and non-profit news organizations with the News Revenue Hub, originally starting her career as a journalist. Her firsthand experience with news membership as a community model raises an interesting approach for scaling community tactics across the newsroom.

Patrick and Rebecca also discuss:

• Why Rebecca left the agency world to rejoin newsrooms
• The readership survey that Rebecca conducted with those 28 news organizations
• Membership as a shared responsibility across the newsroom

Continue reading “News Membership as a Community Model”

As community professionals, we have more tools than ever to help us do our jobs. That said, the qualities that make an online community and an online community professional successful are likely largely the same today as they were 10, 20, or even 30 years ago. This episode of Community Signal focuses on those exact qualities and opportunities to delight.

If you’re applying for a job in community, Patrick and our guest, Angela Connor, have some tips on standing out [00:30:13]:

• Point to specific communities that you’ve worked in
• If you don’t have direct experience in community, start one!
• Skills from other fields translate, but you should still be eager to learn and grow

And if you’ve been working in community for a while, but are looking to refresh (or rewind) your approach, Patrick and Angela suggest [00:37:48 and throughout]:

• Revisiting how you talk to your community
• Leaving room in macros and canned responses for customization
• Approaching each conversation as an opportunity to invite in new community members
• Visiting outside communities where your members might be talking about you

In addition to these qualities and skills, Angela also surfaces the topic of knowing her worth and the value of the communications skills that she brings to the table. This worth translates to a certain salary, but as with all roles, it also requires internal buy-in and the right resources to make sure you can get the job done. There are many companies that think they can’t afford someone at this skill level, but that doesn’t mean they don’t need someone at this skill level.

Continue reading “The Community Manager You Think You Can’t Afford”

What if the intro song to Cheers wasn’t about a bar, but instead about an online community where everyone knows your name? That’s what Stacy Horn created when she launched Echo, an online community that sought to connect New Yorkers.

But Echo wasn’t Stacy’s first go at creating a community. While studying at NYU’s ITP (Interactive Telecommunications Program), she was working in the telecommunications department at Mobil and had an idea to connect employees and improve processes by way of an internal community. The community failed but throughout this conversation, Stacy’s learnings from this first experience come up over and over again: the importance of actively seeking out a diversity of voices and experiences to be represented in your community, having a clear intention and set of community guidelines, and creating a space for the best in people.

Today, Echo is nearly 30 years old. Its archives are on record with the New York Historical Society and the historians that look back on its conversations will be in for treat. In fact, it’ll be like they stumbled into a neighborhood bar full of people that have been chatting with each other for years.

Stacy also shares:

• Why she failed when it came to starting an internal community for Mobil’s employees
• The costs and infrastructure behind Echo, including an NYC street excavation
• How she made Echo an inclusive space for women
• Echo as an archive to pivotal moments in NYC’s history, including 9/11

Continue reading “A New York City Dive Bar in Online Community Form”

Consider this episode of Community Signal your community career advisor on speed dial. If you’re looking for a new job, growing your team, or thinking about your career advancement options, Patrick, Daniel Marotta, Jenn Chen, and Marjorie Anderson share great advice and observations from their own career journeys.

What skills and experiences created the foundation for your career in community management? [2:04]

“If you marry customer service with website release management and content management… those [skills] are the basis for a great community manager.” –@massmarotta

“[Don’t] just cut and paste a response from some template that your company printed out. Put a little bit of yourself in your responses. Build up a personality that really shines through with how you correspond with your member base.” –@massmarotta

Continue reading “The State of Online Community as a Career”