Beyond Death and Taxes, you can rest assured you'll get Trolls in your community.
Especially in gaming communities.
Handling trolls is simple, but not very well documented.
First of all - You should be a Troll if you're a Community Manager.
If you're not, become one.
Find a random gaming forum, register and start agreeing with trolls in their threads.
Push a few limits, get banned, repeat.
This is not only to understand trolls but also to understand yourself and your users.
Again - Trolls are also humans.
They're not happy with something and they'll try to ruin your day because of it.
Not only need you understand how to get rid of them. You need to PREVENT them.
Study Trolls in general. Understand their motivations and drive.
Become a Troll, and study yourself. Patterns, habits, motivations. Know it.
It will let you find flaws in your product,
because people turn into Trolls because they're upset.
Very few Trolls are true Trolls that Troll for the sake of Trolling.
And those we ban.
The ones that turn on the other hand, we talk to, we discuss with, always calm,
always helpful and never in a rude manner.
See Trolls feed on the same energy as any bully. Because that's what they are.
They feed on attention and hatred. By pissing you off, they grow stronger.
They get reactions out of you and the community.
So. Like a swift kick in the groin, talk to them.
Listen to them and force them into feeling a connection.
Make them feel appreciated for what they do.
A simple truth is that you don't Troll your friends.
Trolling a friend is an internal joke, not Trolling.
So approach them. As if in some half-arsed romantic drama,
sit down and show them they're valuable to you,
and that you understand that they're upset.
Discuss how things could improve and how to make them happy.
Far to few companies approach this style and instead just moan about Trolls,
send out bans, moderate etc.
Just like trying to stop bullying in a school be having talks with the kids.
Even if one stops, guess what happens next year when there's a new class?
Now, if the big muscled kid, who stuffed the smaller kids in the snow,
feels a sense of responsibility for *his* school and *his* class,
it's going to take a bigger kid to even try something.
And if he does. Rinse and repeat.
It's simple psychology. It's human behaviour and it's a defense mechanism.
Everyone wants attention and if you're bigger than the rest but not very bright,
you'll use the means you have to get noticed.
SO NOTICE THEM!
Trolls want something, they have a reason for being there, give it to them.
Do bargain with the terrorists. Becaue it's more often than not,
something you can afford, and you're in effect creating an anti-troll army.
Converted Trolls retain their Troll habits but it's focused elsewhere.
If they feel like they're part of your community,
and responsible for things in your community,
you can rest assured they'll attack any attempts to invade their territory.
lördag 9 oktober 2010
Community Management - Tweet Tweet little bird, whisper in my ear
TWITTER
If you don't use it personally - Go sign up. Now. I'll wait here.
Done?
Search for a few companies you like, a few celebrities
and maybe some people that are big in your industry.
Look through their Tweets.
Now compare those to Tim Schafer @TimOfLegend
See the difference?
Tim Schafer is a grand example of how to market your ass off via Twitter.
He posts personal things, official things,
pictures of him and friends or celebs and most importantly, he responds to mentions.
Be The Tim
I'm not endorsed by, related to, living near or in any way connected to Tim,
I just follow him on Twitter. That's important to note.
I do however study those I follow and Tim shows the best parts of how to be a profile.
Your company should do this to.
John does it. The Twitter account is named after the company,
but John isn't shy of letting people know he's sitting there.
Again making people directly relate to his personal and friendly persona.
Here's the thing about Twitter you may not know or want to know:
People follow celebs on Twitter because it makes them feel closer to them.
Getting updates from their lives and talk to their favorite star makes them feel
like they know their hero/rolemodel/whatever, a little more than 'the rest'.
It's an annoying reality, I know, but real none the less.
Comparison:
@TimOfLegend:
Making a break for the bathroom. So is John Romero. This could be magic.
@Microsoft:
Video: Oscar-winning director Davis Guggenheim discusses education reform http://bit.ly/9c4iuF
Which one feels more special?
A lot of people do the same mistake Microsoft does: Think about money.
If people want to see your news and links - They go to your website.
Twitter isn't your website. It's not your blog. It's not your news feed.
Don't treat it as such.
Be the Tim.
Stop Stalking Him!
Another common Twitter mistake I see is celebs trying to reach out. A lot.
So they follow 1000-2000+ people just to have a hook.
Make people think "Well if he follows me I can't stop following him.."
It works. But it's not optimal.
In reality, any normal human being can, at most keep track of 150 friends.
AT MOST.
If you're planning on nurturing your personality, don't follow more than 150 people.
It doesn't feel real and your follows won't feel special.
Instead, follow things that matter to you, and your product.
Follow people who post things that may be useful to your users.
Again, taking a load off you.
Say you're in the same industry as Tim Schafer (That is - Console games),
follow him.
When he posts something that has *anything* to do with Your product. ReTweet it.
By this you force other people to endorse your product in a context
which it might not have been intended.
This also applies if you know someone famous is near you,
attending to a convention or such, follow them during that time.
Example:
Tim Schafer shortly discussed the spelling of the gaming-term "Nerf"
(To reduce the power of something in a game) and stated
"I like Nurf better. Might I suggest "Nurph?""
Now, if you're the owner of the company Nurf....
ReTweet that, Tim Schafer just said he likes Nurf better..
Doesn't matter What he liked it better than, or that he wasn't talking about Nurf,
he just endorsed you.
So, be on Twitter, talk about nothing, chat with your followers and ask them questions.
You'll get tons of feedback, your profile will grow
and all this at the price of an hour a day.
If you don't use it personally - Go sign up. Now. I'll wait here.
Done?
Search for a few companies you like, a few celebrities
and maybe some people that are big in your industry.
Look through their Tweets.
Now compare those to Tim Schafer @TimOfLegend
See the difference?
Tim Schafer is a grand example of how to market your ass off via Twitter.
He posts personal things, official things,
pictures of him and friends or celebs and most importantly, he responds to mentions.
Be The Tim
I'm not endorsed by, related to, living near or in any way connected to Tim,
I just follow him on Twitter. That's important to note.
I do however study those I follow and Tim shows the best parts of how to be a profile.
Your company should do this to.
John does it. The Twitter account is named after the company,
but John isn't shy of letting people know he's sitting there.
Again making people directly relate to his personal and friendly persona.
Here's the thing about Twitter you may not know or want to know:
People follow celebs on Twitter because it makes them feel closer to them.
Getting updates from their lives and talk to their favorite star makes them feel
like they know their hero/rolemodel/whatever, a little more than 'the rest'.
It's an annoying reality, I know, but real none the less.
Comparison:
@TimOfLegend:
Making a break for the bathroom. So is John Romero. This could be magic.
@Microsoft:
Video: Oscar-winning director Davis Guggenheim discusses education reform http://bit.ly/9c4iuF
Which one feels more special?
A lot of people do the same mistake Microsoft does: Think about money.
If people want to see your news and links - They go to your website.
Twitter isn't your website. It's not your blog. It's not your news feed.
Don't treat it as such.
Be the Tim.
Stop Stalking Him!
Another common Twitter mistake I see is celebs trying to reach out. A lot.
So they follow 1000-2000+ people just to have a hook.
Make people think "Well if he follows me I can't stop following him.."
It works. But it's not optimal.
In reality, any normal human being can, at most keep track of 150 friends.
AT MOST.
If you're planning on nurturing your personality, don't follow more than 150 people.
It doesn't feel real and your follows won't feel special.
Instead, follow things that matter to you, and your product.
Follow people who post things that may be useful to your users.
Again, taking a load off you.
Say you're in the same industry as Tim Schafer (That is - Console games),
follow him.
When he posts something that has *anything* to do with Your product. ReTweet it.
By this you force other people to endorse your product in a context
which it might not have been intended.
This also applies if you know someone famous is near you,
attending to a convention or such, follow them during that time.
Example:
Tim Schafer shortly discussed the spelling of the gaming-term "Nerf"
(To reduce the power of something in a game) and stated
"I like Nurf better. Might I suggest "Nurph?""
Now, if you're the owner of the company Nurf....
ReTweet that, Tim Schafer just said he likes Nurf better..
Doesn't matter What he liked it better than, or that he wasn't talking about Nurf,
he just endorsed you.
So, be on Twitter, talk about nothing, chat with your followers and ask them questions.
You'll get tons of feedback, your profile will grow
and all this at the price of an hour a day.
Community Management 103 - Say more than words
At the office we have a list. It's called the "leak list". And it's a good list.
On that list is a number of 'details' that I'm allowed to 'leak' to the community.
Things we plan in the future, things we scrapped, data about certain parts of our product.
All sanctioned by the boss, all meaningless if it gets out or not, all invaluable.
With the profile of being personal and a friend comes friendly smalltalk. Bonding.
When someone asks something that relates to a part of our leak list, I 'carelessly' say something like "Yeah, we plan to..." "... but don't hold me to it, it's just something we talk about around the office"
Suddenly, we have another PR machine. Rumors. Controlled by us.
People tend to enjoy being special, and even more-so when they can say "I talked to John at ... the other day and he said.."
and suddenly that person is special because *HE* got to talk with me in person and *HE* got to hear this and that so it must be real. So spread it, because it's not in any news! oh my god! Special information! Secrets!
All sanctioned by us, all PR, all for free.
Say more than words
With this in mind, it's important to point out how very much you say in not saying anything or by saying a little.
Which brings me to Twitter.
Twitter is the single most amazing advertisement you can have.
However, a lot of companies and celebrities treat it like a bloody billboard.
The fools.
I'll dedicate a whole post to Twitter for this reason..
On that list is a number of 'details' that I'm allowed to 'leak' to the community.
Things we plan in the future, things we scrapped, data about certain parts of our product.
All sanctioned by the boss, all meaningless if it gets out or not, all invaluable.
With the profile of being personal and a friend comes friendly smalltalk. Bonding.
When someone asks something that relates to a part of our leak list, I 'carelessly' say something like "Yeah, we plan to..." "... but don't hold me to it, it's just something we talk about around the office"
Suddenly, we have another PR machine. Rumors. Controlled by us.
People tend to enjoy being special, and even more-so when they can say "I talked to John at ... the other day and he said.."
and suddenly that person is special because *HE* got to talk with me in person and *HE* got to hear this and that so it must be real. So spread it, because it's not in any news! oh my god! Special information! Secrets!
All sanctioned by us, all PR, all for free.
Say more than words
With this in mind, it's important to point out how very much you say in not saying anything or by saying a little.
Which brings me to Twitter.
Twitter is the single most amazing advertisement you can have.
However, a lot of companies and celebrities treat it like a bloody billboard.
The fools.
I'll dedicate a whole post to Twitter for this reason..
Community Management 102 - Never be there, ever
Continuing on Facebook as a medium, there are also a few things you should know.
Blame everyone else.
WHAT?! Yes. Most companies and products rely on other companies to function in one way or another. If your team messed up and you now have to cover for a few days while they get their act together, point the issues at something random.
Like your testers, a shipment or anything else.
This sounds mean and evil. And it is. Welcome to crowd-control. You're a CM, that's what you do.
The reason for this is that we are humans. You're a scapegoat for your company.
As the face of the company, you'll also be enjoying the tomatoes thrown at the company.
Human nature is to always blame someone. The Nazis blamed the Jews. Mothers blame videogames. Everyone blames the government. Fat people blame the food. Alcoholics blame their situation. Kids blame their parents... And so on.
Your community is no different. They're all humans. They WILL blame someone.
There's no reason to take all that blame. It drags your company image down and it drags you down. Instead, blame something. Preferably something that doesn't exist.
Your community will blame *it* and show more patience towards you, as it's no longer your fault.
However - When nothing can be blamed, take the bullet. Say "I'm sorry!" and crawl.
Be human. Your community is.
Never be there, ever
Another important thing I learned was to fire myself. The first chance I got.
WHAT?! Yes.
No, not quit my job. I just fired myself infront of the community.
This is on Facebook, remember. We all have our personal pages and it represents our private lives. That is NOT a good thing.
Instead, we hired "John" as I will call him.
"John" is named something different and doesn't exist. He's my company profile.
This way I can separate my private life from my job, even on Facebook.
The direct benefit in this is that I can live my life normally while still maintaining a "personal" profile with the community. As the community very much thinks "John" is a real person.
With this I can also keep my cool, always be friendly and never throw a tantrum infront of the community.
Even if I do on my own Facebook profile.
And if I just can't handle the stupidity some days tend to impose on me, I just log out for an hour. Our community is okay with that, because I'm just ONE person!
To sum it up this has given our company a reputation of "friendly", "caring", "personal", "engaged" and "relatable".
John will always help you. John will always be nice and he'll treat you with love.
John is very much your friend and John makes you feel happy about using the product.
(Note that you're free to add people as friends or not, John doesn't, and people are ok with that because "I have my private life too!")
Yes, this is Community Management, you lie to people, you're not real. Deal with it.
One might argue 'honesty' and 'morals' here, which is fair.
But do consider this: Is it worse than having 300 people get a copypaste mail every week without any sense of there being a human on the other side?
I prefer to make people happy. And I do so best by not being myself.
Heck I'm a rude, short-tempered cynic in private. I swear and rant about meaningless things.
Is that someone you'd like to help you?
No, you'd like someone who takes his time to talk to you, figure out what's wrong, talk it through and then solves the problem. Without making you feel like a moron.
Blame everyone else.
WHAT?! Yes. Most companies and products rely on other companies to function in one way or another. If your team messed up and you now have to cover for a few days while they get their act together, point the issues at something random.
Like your testers, a shipment or anything else.
This sounds mean and evil. And it is. Welcome to crowd-control. You're a CM, that's what you do.
The reason for this is that we are humans. You're a scapegoat for your company.
As the face of the company, you'll also be enjoying the tomatoes thrown at the company.
Human nature is to always blame someone. The Nazis blamed the Jews. Mothers blame videogames. Everyone blames the government. Fat people blame the food. Alcoholics blame their situation. Kids blame their parents... And so on.
Your community is no different. They're all humans. They WILL blame someone.
There's no reason to take all that blame. It drags your company image down and it drags you down. Instead, blame something. Preferably something that doesn't exist.
Your community will blame *it* and show more patience towards you, as it's no longer your fault.
However - When nothing can be blamed, take the bullet. Say "I'm sorry!" and crawl.
Be human. Your community is.
Never be there, ever
Another important thing I learned was to fire myself. The first chance I got.
WHAT?! Yes.
No, not quit my job. I just fired myself infront of the community.
This is on Facebook, remember. We all have our personal pages and it represents our private lives. That is NOT a good thing.
Instead, we hired "John" as I will call him.
"John" is named something different and doesn't exist. He's my company profile.
This way I can separate my private life from my job, even on Facebook.
The direct benefit in this is that I can live my life normally while still maintaining a "personal" profile with the community. As the community very much thinks "John" is a real person.
With this I can also keep my cool, always be friendly and never throw a tantrum infront of the community.
Even if I do on my own Facebook profile.
And if I just can't handle the stupidity some days tend to impose on me, I just log out for an hour. Our community is okay with that, because I'm just ONE person!
To sum it up this has given our company a reputation of "friendly", "caring", "personal", "engaged" and "relatable".
John will always help you. John will always be nice and he'll treat you with love.
John is very much your friend and John makes you feel happy about using the product.
(Note that you're free to add people as friends or not, John doesn't, and people are ok with that because "I have my private life too!")
Yes, this is Community Management, you lie to people, you're not real. Deal with it.
One might argue 'honesty' and 'morals' here, which is fair.
But do consider this: Is it worse than having 300 people get a copypaste mail every week without any sense of there being a human on the other side?
I prefer to make people happy. And I do so best by not being myself.
Heck I'm a rude, short-tempered cynic in private. I swear and rant about meaningless things.
Is that someone you'd like to help you?
No, you'd like someone who takes his time to talk to you, figure out what's wrong, talk it through and then solves the problem. Without making you feel like a moron.
Community Management 101 - Be there, always
I'm not going to bother with what companies do wrong, it's just too much, instead I aim to present ways to do it right.
Saves us time and you can evaluate your support on the way.
First of all: Welcome to 2010. We've gone beyond forms and copypaste mail responses that users have to wait a week to get, again.
Everyone needs a hand to hold when it's dark
If you're going to manage a community, don't try to drag your community to your $15,000 website with forum and whatnot.
Go to your community.
Our main and only line of communication is Facebook.
We have a page there, it comes with a discussion board and a wall to post on.
Our announcements can be commented on and all our users can send me direct messages.
The reason - Almost all of our users have Facebook. It's free. And we get free PR in that all their friends can easily see that they like us, we pop up in recommendation lists and our community can just 'Share' our announcements with their friends instantly.
Also by being there, our users don't have to sign up anywhere if they want help, they don't have to find our website (We have one, but I'm sure 9/10 users don't know what the address is) and it's always there for them.
As such, they don't need it so desperate.
Think of it as a teacher in school.
She's always there if you need her, just raise your hand. If she's helping someone else, you just keep your hand up and she'll get there, no hurry, you can see she's busy right now. She'll be with you soon.
Did she miss or ignore you? OH HELL NO!!! HEY LOOK AT ME I NEED HELP HERE!!!
Remember how it was? It's the same still, people grow up but they don't stop being humans.
By being on Facebook and by only having an open support, all our users can see if their issue is already there, if I'm there at the moment and if I'm helping someone.
As such, they stay calm and wait until I'm done. If they're ignored they freak out.
For that reason, I don't ignore anyone. I always stay calm and I'm no stranger to repeating the same answer 20-30 times a day in different topics even when it's already answered somewhere.
Why? Because I'm just repeating the same thing, which is obvious to anyone who reads all the topics, because it's the same question. Yet I make every user feel appreciated by answering THEIR question in THEIR topic. Not just pointing them to SOMEONE ELSE like they're just another face in the crowd.
They are, don't get me wrong, but I'm not going to let anyone feel like it.
By doing this I've also noticed people start helping each other, answering others who have the same issues as they had, simply because they felt good about getting nice and friendly help. Thus doing half my job while I get paid.
The net profit of this is that if we have One big issue during a week, instead of having 300 mails to go through one by one, answering the same questions, repeating the same lines, I get 30 of them. As people look around for their issue first, or they get help from someone else in the community.
For this reason - Find out what the common nominator for Your community is.
Is it Facebook? Orkut? Both?
Go there, make a page, make yourself a part of it and get all the benefits of being a friend rather than a product.
Saves us time and you can evaluate your support on the way.
First of all: Welcome to 2010. We've gone beyond forms and copypaste mail responses that users have to wait a week to get, again.
Everyone needs a hand to hold when it's dark
If you're going to manage a community, don't try to drag your community to your $15,000 website with forum and whatnot.
Go to your community.
Our main and only line of communication is Facebook.
We have a page there, it comes with a discussion board and a wall to post on.
Our announcements can be commented on and all our users can send me direct messages.
The reason - Almost all of our users have Facebook. It's free. And we get free PR in that all their friends can easily see that they like us, we pop up in recommendation lists and our community can just 'Share' our announcements with their friends instantly.
Also by being there, our users don't have to sign up anywhere if they want help, they don't have to find our website (We have one, but I'm sure 9/10 users don't know what the address is) and it's always there for them.
As such, they don't need it so desperate.
Think of it as a teacher in school.
She's always there if you need her, just raise your hand. If she's helping someone else, you just keep your hand up and she'll get there, no hurry, you can see she's busy right now. She'll be with you soon.
Did she miss or ignore you? OH HELL NO!!! HEY LOOK AT ME I NEED HELP HERE!!!
Remember how it was? It's the same still, people grow up but they don't stop being humans.
By being on Facebook and by only having an open support, all our users can see if their issue is already there, if I'm there at the moment and if I'm helping someone.
As such, they stay calm and wait until I'm done. If they're ignored they freak out.
For that reason, I don't ignore anyone. I always stay calm and I'm no stranger to repeating the same answer 20-30 times a day in different topics even when it's already answered somewhere.
Why? Because I'm just repeating the same thing, which is obvious to anyone who reads all the topics, because it's the same question. Yet I make every user feel appreciated by answering THEIR question in THEIR topic. Not just pointing them to SOMEONE ELSE like they're just another face in the crowd.
They are, don't get me wrong, but I'm not going to let anyone feel like it.
By doing this I've also noticed people start helping each other, answering others who have the same issues as they had, simply because they felt good about getting nice and friendly help. Thus doing half my job while I get paid.
The net profit of this is that if we have One big issue during a week, instead of having 300 mails to go through one by one, answering the same questions, repeating the same lines, I get 30 of them. As people look around for their issue first, or they get help from someone else in the community.
For this reason - Find out what the common nominator for Your community is.
Is it Facebook? Orkut? Both?
Go there, make a page, make yourself a part of it and get all the benefits of being a friend rather than a product.
Community Management - The story so far..
It's been nearly a year since I started working as a Community Manager now,
and I just wanted to take the time to share with you the things I've learned, the pains I've gone through and how it has changed me.
Me in short - I'm nearing 30, I've studied psychology at a university level, I never held a job before, I'm an avid forum troll and many many bans have been imposed on me through my years.
I was hired at random by a small company with the need of someone to keep track of their users issues, ideas and bugs.
The company, which will be unnamed, for reasons detailed in just a bit, has 1,5 million users monthly and a total of about 6 million users.
To some companies it's amazing, to other companies, it's a really tiny number.
However, what IS amazing is that the entire support team, is one person. Me.
This is my story, of how I handle an entire community alone. And in this story I aim to detail how You and Your company can greatly increase productivity and customer satisfaction without paying anything extra.
and I just wanted to take the time to share with you the things I've learned, the pains I've gone through and how it has changed me.
Me in short - I'm nearing 30, I've studied psychology at a university level, I never held a job before, I'm an avid forum troll and many many bans have been imposed on me through my years.
I was hired at random by a small company with the need of someone to keep track of their users issues, ideas and bugs.
The company, which will be unnamed, for reasons detailed in just a bit, has 1,5 million users monthly and a total of about 6 million users.
To some companies it's amazing, to other companies, it's a really tiny number.
However, what IS amazing is that the entire support team, is one person. Me.
This is my story, of how I handle an entire community alone. And in this story I aim to detail how You and Your company can greatly increase productivity and customer satisfaction without paying anything extra.
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