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Are we all politicians? – managing the Community

By Hanns Kohler-Kruner posted 07-07-2010 05:04

  

 

CommunitiesIn Germany, where I live and in the Netherlands, where I lived for a long time, we had regional / national  election that included the usual collection of twitter and other traffic about the candidates as well as the necessary noise on various Social Media channels . As I finished  watching the final throes of a 9 hour ordeal to vote for the new German President, I was  also watching various social media sites. Everyone has something to say about what is going on and what all of this means. Even now, rumours fly about who will win the election as we are entering a second and a third round of voting to finally find the winner. In the end the candidate from the majority government won, but it was not an easy victory. As I am watching the spectacle I was wondering how long it will take until we have the first online party, completely run online and using modern media channels to broadcast its message and integrate its voters into the decision making process far more effectively and broadly then the traditional parties are doing now.

But this is not about German or Dutch or anyone else’s elections, it is about the voice of the individuals out there. No longer an unseen and unheard mass, but every face, every voice,  every opinion can be heard next to those of experts.

With the new possibilities of open collaboration and making your voice heard, you have to realise that everyone voice in an organization is potentially an important one, as well as a noise factor. How do we deal with this diversity effectively and how do we separate one from the other? Over last the last year we have heard a lot about culture change when it comes to Social Media. In a post, borrowing stereotypes from Seth Godin I described one kind of participant as The Ego, a self-serving contributor, that wants to hear their own voice. But of course there are also the ones that contribute, but really have very little relevant content to say.  What do we do with those? Potentially they provide a lot of noise.

One of the factors that we need to integrate into any type of social media that is to provide business value and interest inside of an organization is a carefully chosen group of community managers and gardeners, but probably also some easy to use and effective social voting. Letting peers decide what is a valuable contribution is imperative and also to let them decide what is more or less additional filler and mark it accordingly. Otherwise the risk is that you have valuable content sitting right next to less valuable content and someone else not being able to decide what is the difference between the two. Effective social controls and peer controls are also far more effective than a top-down approach or strict rules without proper voluntary enforcement inside the community.

If we are to leverage the full value of a Social Media type of initiative we need to think not just about the rules, the enablers, but also the peer control factors that filter out some of the less then useful contributions... although what constitutes useful and how to recognize it is probably a completely new post all by itself .

What are your experiences with effective Community Management? How critical are they? How do you get people to make effective contributions and not play the politician?



#pruning #community #gardener
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