Community Management Is A Skill-Based Art Form
By 
Hib in
community, features, mmorpg on
August 7th, 2008
Sanya Weathers has an interesting post up over at Eating Bees about the way some MMORPG developers interacting with their game’s community on forums. (Her “25 Point Drama” is both true and hilarious.)
As I’ve said before, I’m a 20+year veteran of broadcast radio, and the entire “devs should post too” argument has a parallel in our business.
To set up my credentials, I’ve won over twenty state and national awards for radio copywriting and commercial production; I’ve been published in various trade magazines on the subject of how to create effective radio ads; I’ve had a long, successful career…I’ve learned quite a bit about how to create an effective radio commercial.
I’ve also lost count of the number of “Mom and Pop” clients that have come into our station, purchased an advertising schedule, and then present the copy they’ve written and say “I’m a-gonna record this!”
Mind you, there are no absolutes, and sometimes they have in their hands an excellent piece of copy, and then do a fantastic job of recording that copy.
And then there’s the other 99.9999%.
When a client buys advertising with us, my goal is to make sure their ad is as effective as it can be for them. Notice I didn’t say “sounds the best,” “is really funny” or “has rockin’ music,” I said “as effective as it can be“. This is because my employment depends on repeat business, and if the first commercial I produce for a client doesn’t give them visible results in their business, they’ll spend their advertising budget somewhere else.
I have had more than one client look me in the eye while I’m trying to help them with their ad and say “I know my business better than you do; I built it from the ground up. I know what should be said about it better than you ever will, so we’ll do it my way.”
Well, in this particular situation, no, you don’t.
You definitely know more about YOUR business than I do, yes. But I know more about MY business than you, for the same reasons.
If a community manager tried to tell a development team how to design a game, write code or manage a server, they’d be treated to a hearty chorus of “What do you know about it? Shut up.”, and rightly so. They haven’t put the time, the effort, the blood, sweat and tears into learning those things that it takes to have an opinion on the subject.
However, because dealing with a community looks simple, for some reason some developers tend to think they know how to do a community manager’s job as well (if not better) than someone who’s put five, ten, even fifteen years of their life into learning how to do it properly.
Does this mean that developers shouldn’t interact with the community? Of course not. Devs should be active in their community, but you know what? In my opinion, they should take direction from their community manager on how best to do that, and actually follow the advice they’re given.
I’ve had five calls from the same member of my radio station’s “community” this week, lodging a complaint about the classic country music we play that mentions drinking (which, if you’re familiar with country music, you know is pretty much the entire playlist). He actually suggested I edit the drinking references out of various songs by Merle Haggard, George Jones and Waylon Jennings, so we can stop “giving kids the wrong idea.”
The first time he called, he spoke with a salesperson at our company, who told him “Well, that’s just country music, and that’s what we play,” which is the broadcasting version of “Working as intended.” That didn’t help, and the complaints continued.
Finally, I got to speak with the gentleman, discussed it with him, and found out that the root of the problem was that he was a member of Al-Anon (an alcoholic support group), and was upset that we seemed to promote drinking, yet didn’t do enough in his opinion to discuss the negative aspects of alcohol.
So, I invited him in for an interview on the morning show, we talked about his experience on the air, he was thrilled, and he’s sent two new clients our way who have bought advertising.
The salesperson knows our business backward and forward…from his side of it. However, he doesn’t understand the “dealing with the public” aspect of it.
When you don’t understand how to deal with your community, it leads to “Working as intended,” which doesn’t solve anything.
Do me a favor and head over to Sanya’s blog and weigh in on the “Jellybeans Community Project“…I’ll be interested in the results.
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If you liked this, then you should seek medical attention - right after you subscribe to my RSS feed!!
August 18th, 2008 at 11:30 pm
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