Monday, January 27 marks the fifth annual Community Manager Appreciation Day (CMAD). CMAD is a day to appreciate the people who work tirelessly behind the scenes making online communities succeed. At Higher Logic, we have nothing but respect and admiration for the people who run the 100,000+ communities powered by our platform, not to mention just community managers as a whole. We know the work that goes into managing online communities, from getting users to adopt a new system to mitigating disputes among community members to convincing staff and volunteer leaders to lead by example and participate to navigating new relationships with IT departments….community management is definitely a challenging job.
One of the things that strikes me the most about community managers is their passion for building community and making their organization’s online community the best it can be. We try hard to provide as much support as possible to help our client’s community managers succeed, and our user group, HUG, is incredibly active. No matter how detailed or technical the question, almost every single question posted by a client gets answered by a fellow community manager, often before a Higher Logic success team member can even jump in. The depth of the answers is amazing, with users going into detail about which snippet of code to edit and how, or providing examples of documentation or other resources that others might not have the budget to obtain otherwise. The HUG is absolutely a community in the best sense of the word, a place where each member wants to help others succeed.
For CMAD, Higher Logic would like to offer community managers--or community manager wannabees--a resource to help them succeed, so we've developed a new Tip Sheet for our Engagement Success Kit series: the Community Management Tip Sheet. Download it today with our thanks for all you do to make online communities awesome. It contains tips for helping get a new community started as well as tips for keeping your existing community going strong. And of course the #1 tip is to hire a dedicated community manager, with a link to a sample community manager job description.
Happy CMAD--here’s to you and all you do behind the scenes to make your community members’ experience the best it can be.