10 Community Management Lessons I've Learned Along The Way

Humans are messy and organizing humans around a product with business objectives is challenging and unpredictable. Here are a few of the lessons I have learned along the way (sometimes the hard way).

1. Always prove it with metrics! If you have a hypothesis or you are looking for extra dev resources in a particular area, you aren’t going to get very far without metrics. Your metrics need to signal alignment with your hypothesis.

2. Self-care is important! Take good care of yourself and don’t hesitate to ask for help!

3. Proactively problem solve. What works in one community, may not work for yours. If you borrow an idea from another community, you don’t have to take it at face value. Tweak, adapt and iterate, till the idea meets the best interest of your community.

4. Change is constant. Change is inherently difficult, especially when you are guiding your community members through it. Take time to over communicate during transitions in your community.

5. Your community guidelines are never complete. As your community grows and evolves, you will continue to learn new guidelines to put in place. And in some cases remove guidelines that are no longer needed. Proactively update your guidelines.

6. Know your Boundaries! Sometimes individuals in your community will want to suck up your time. Don’t let them. Pay attention to the clock, don’t let one individual take too much of your time. It’s always okay to let them know you need to hop off in a professional way.

7. Take time at the start of each week to plan. Your time is very precious, plan it with accuracy.

8. Figure out ways to include different departments from your company in the community. Community is a naturally inclusive activity, be deliberate about inviting others who are not directly connected to your community in.

9. You don’t always need to wait for permission. If you have an idea that you want to try, figure out the simplest version of that idea and give it a try with small sample of users. Don’t wait for permission from the product or marketing team because you may never get it. Instead, use your experiment as a way to prove future community needs, learn and iterate.

10. Always find ways to make it fun! Throw your community a party, celebrate a community anniversary, how a social media take over, invent an awards ceremony…! Get creative! The more unique and creative your ideas and activities are, the more likely you are to create a special community experience.

The interaction of humans and technology is profoundly interesting, beautiful and messy, but when done diligently and with care, magic can happen.