A primer on the role of community managers, presented to an Associations organisation in APAC to build understanding of the importance of the community management function.

1. Community
managers:
What do they do &
what makes a good one?
Venessa Paech
Director, Australian Community Managers
Founder & Chief Consultant, PeerSense

2. What we’ll cover
* What is community management?
* The importance of community management
* What makes a good Community Manager?
* Running online community with limited resources
* How to access professional development
Photo by Vonecia Carswell on Unsplash

3. Steering purpose and shared value
Ensuring productive communities
Photo: SWARM Conference 2012
What is community management?

4. Photo by Zoe Schaeffer on Unsplash
What is community management?
Strategy: Purpose, Value, Org/Biz alignment & integration
Design: Interaction & information architecture, Platform
Set-up: Founding Members, Seeding, Boundaries, Messaging
Engagement: Motivation, Content, Shared Experiences, Moderation
Governance: Risk & Issue Processes, Moderation
Measurement: Org/Biz, Activity, Social Health

5. Why community
management matters
● Drives strategic, sustainable
behaviour and activities
● Creates and maintains social
norms and culture necessary
for participants to meet needs
● Supports safety and minimises
harm via governance (inc.
moderation)
(Communities struggle to self-
manage)
Image: Feverbee

6. Great community
managers are...
● Happiest connecting people
● Empathetic and diplomatic
● Clear, adaptive communicators
● Persistent and resilient
● Open-minded and curious
● Good at seeing interconnection
and bigger pictures (systems
thinkers)
● Comfortable with conflict
● Comfortable with data

7. They’re not...
● Ego-driven
● Party hosts
● Pushy or coercive
● Social media mavens
● Salespeople
● Tech gurus
Photo by Phil Botha on Unsplash

8. Community = social media
Community = tools & tech
The atomic unit of a community (wherever it
lives) is a relationship.
Online community builders and stewards
curate connections around purpose.
Photo by Hian Oliveira on Unsplash

9. Guiding principles
● Engage strategically
● Motivate intrinsically
● Moderate thoughtfully
● Leverage ethically
Photo by Daniil Silantev on Unsplash

10. Specific value
Ensure you’re crystal
clear in purpose, shared
value and outcomes.
Content, experience,
conversation should fill
explicit, indispensable
needs.
Nurture P2P
Curate conversations to
build peer-to-peer
relationships.
Use match-making to
drive value and scale.

11. Online community
management in Australia
Photo by John Schnobrich on Unsplash
● Professional discipline for 15 years
● Combines social science, psychology,
communications, technology
● Diverse industries, organisational types
● Growing, still nascent
● 71% female
● 68% millennial
● 82% graduate qualified
● Where understood, well-paid
● Coordinator to Chief Community Officer
Australian Community Managers 2019 Survey

12. Where to next?
www.australiancommunitymanagers.com.au http://bit.ly/swarm20
Web: Web: venessapaech.com
Twitter: @venessapaech
LinkedIn: /venessapaech