quick tips

Best Practices, Community Spotlights, Community Management Talks, Ning News, Social Media, Quick Tips, Tools & Tech

quick tips (42)

The 5 Worst Community Guidelines

Posted by Crystal on September 27, 2013 at 9:00am in quick tips

Community Guidelines can be a struggle to write, especially since they're so specific to your community and its members. Here are some really terrible ways to phrase your guidelines.

How You Should be Spending Your Time Doing PPC

Posted by Guest Contributor on September 25, 2013 at 7:00am in quick tips

If you are unsure about how to spend your time doing PPC management, you need to stop and ask yourself a few questions: 1. What am I trying to accomplish? 2. What am I doing that produces the most value? 3. What can I automate so I can increase sales?

Driving Traffic To Your Community: Why SiteWit Works

Posted by Guest Contributor on September 18, 2013 at 6:30am in quick tips

One of the best (and quickest) ways to drive traffic to your website is to build a paid search campaign on one of the big search engines such as Google or Bing & Yahoo!. Paid search is a great way to drive traffic to your site because it will bring in visitors that are already looking for your specific kind of product and/or service. Best of all, it can happen right away! You could have people coming to your website just hours after it has gone live.

Infographic: The Value of Community Management

Posted by Allison Leahy on September 12, 2013 at 7:40am in quick tips

TheCR Network's 2013 State of Community Management Report offers a quantitative look at how community management functions within organizations and the value to expect from those efforts over time. The infographic makes all this great data accessible

Unpopular Communities

Posted by Crystal on August 23, 2013 at 12:13pm in quick tips

I recently read "The Power of Unpopular" by Erika Napoletano, the no holds barred brand strategist who makes a splash in the marketing world with her frank, uncensored advice. While the advice in her book is primarily aimed at brands and companies, I found that much of the wisdom could easily be applied to online community. Here are my favorite takeaways for cultivating an "unpopular" community.

"Culture eats strategy for lunch" - Community Lessons from Whole Foods

Posted by Crystal on August 8, 2013 at 11:22am in quick tips

How does Whole Foods Markets balance its overall brand social media efforts with those of local markets? Director of Social Media and Digital Marketing Natanya Anderson shares insight on the overarching ideology and regional practices at BlogWell Bay Area.

3 Perfectly Acceptable Ways To Invite Someone To Join Your Community

Posted by Richard Millington on July 16, 2013 at 9:00am in quick tips

You can’t mass-invite people to join your community. That’s spam. It’s ineffective and does more harm than good. Do you want a deleted e-mail to be someone’s first impression of your community? There are 3 very good and very effective ways to invite someone to join your community.

ForumCon 2013: Nir Eyal on How to Hook Your Community

Posted by Crystal on July 10, 2013 at 9:00am in quick tips

A writer, lecturer at Stanford University and frequent speaker, Nir Eyal's specialty is educating companies and consumers on habits and behaviors that help and hinder their lives, both online and off. In talking about what traits apps need to "hook" users, much of his information was directly relevant to building communities that keep members coming back .

The 90-9-1 Rule: Dead, Different, or a Distraction?

Posted by Crystal on July 8, 2013 at 10:00am in quick tips

There seem to be two different conclusions that people have come to regarding the current state of the 90-9-1: either it's completely dead or it needs to be updated. I propose a third option.

Setting Objectives For Your Online Community

Posted by Richard Millington on July 3, 2013 at 10:30am in quick tips

Fight the pressure to set clear objectives for your online community. Especially objectives with measurable metrics.

Growing An Online Community: Attracting Clusters

Posted by Richard Millington on July 2, 2013 at 8:30am in quick tips

We all gather in interconnected clusters. You’ve probably seen a cluster map somewhere. Think of it like social groups in a playground. Friends gather in circles of 8 to 12 people, but one of those people might have connections to another group of similar size.

What Julia Child Can Teach You About Community Management.

Posted by Crystal on June 21, 2013 at 9:00am in quick tips

Reading Julia Child's memoir, I found myself thinking that I could really learn a lot from her - and not just as a cook. Her life experience is amazing and her writing is full of tidbits that can be used as life lessons. I found that some of her philosophies can even be lessons for community managers.

Ideas to Prevent the Summer Community Doldrums

Posted by Crystal on June 11, 2013 at 9:00am in quick tips

How do you keep your community active and engaged when all they want to do is be at the beach?

14 Events You Can Organize And Celebrate In Your Community

Posted by Richard Millington on June 10, 2013 at 9:00am in quick tips

Shared experiences are vital for community development. They solidify bonds, stimulate activity and provide easy sources of content.

Grammar or Personality?

Posted by Crystal on June 5, 2013 at 9:00am in quick tips

With more and more companies trying to use social media as a "human" face of their business, is there a growing place for conversational writing?

How to Find your Community’s First Members

Posted by Richard Millington on May 24, 2013 at 11:15am in quick tips

To get going, you want people who are interested in your company or your industry. You want people who are comfortable with technology. Here is some fertile recruiting ground:

20 Fantastic Content Ideas For Your Online Community

Posted by Richard Millington on May 20, 2013 at 7:30am in quick tips

Too many communities focus on advice or industry news when they should be focused on community people and activities. The best content for any online community is content about the community. Here are 20 content ideas you can use.

Are you a Professional or an Amateur?

Posted by Crystal on May 8, 2013 at 10:30am in quick tips

These are actors (thankfully), but with Community Manager being such a new career path, there are those self-proclaimed experts that are just a load of talk at the end of the day. Fortunately, they are vastly outnumbered by the awesome, talented, always learning, always sharing community managers that make up the majority.

How To Help Members Overcome Their Fear of Participation

Posted by Richard Millington on May 2, 2013 at 12:00pm in quick tips

Members need both the motivation to initiate and to overcome their fear of starting a discussion. Their motivation to initiate will be to either learn something (e.g. "Does anyone know how to....?"), to impress others (e.g. "does anyone else think business class travel isn't as great as it used to be?" or to bond with others (e.g. "I'm upset Kelly got fired from the Apprentice").

The Secret Of Awesome Content

Posted by Richard Millington on April 25, 2013 at 8:10am in quick tips

The best content for an online community is content about the online community. Stop copying content from bigger or smaller news sites. Instead, write about what your members are doing.

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Community Picks

Webinar: Community Platform Design and Development

Community Spotlight: The Peace and Collaborative Development Network

Series: Organizing an Unruly Community

Infographic: The Value of Online Community

Ning News: Unleash the Power of Groups on Ning 3.0

Every few weeks, Ning invites a leading expert to discuss trending topics and best practices for community management. Watch the recordings here.

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