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Module 5: Community Management

in journalism

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Why engage community?• Readers want to be part of the process• Encouraging comments, polls, Q & As,

blogs, live chats within the news site makes the site more dynamic and interactive

• Providing spaces for readers to contribute tips, ideas, sources, interview subjects, expertise and feedback improves the users’ experience

• Eg: http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree

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The value of user media

“You need to realise that only a small number are really going to communicate. But that small number makes it much more interesting for everyone else,”

Simon Waldman, Former director of digital strategy,

Guardian Media Group

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Community terms• Moderator: Filters comments before

posting, enforces forum policy• Aggregator and curator: Sifts through,

organizes and manages the data deluge and puts it into context, highlights gems or the obscure into a playlist. Eg: Yahoo News, Google News, Drudge Report, Huffington Post.

• Webmaster: Designs, develops and manages and maintains a website

• Community Manager: Grows and manages an online community

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Tips on growing a community1. Make it easy to participate:

Eg 1: CNN iReport has 412,000 registered users. Posts a new topic or call-to-action weekly to its Assignment Desk page for people to respond to by submitting photos, video or audio. http://www.ireport.com/community/assignment.

Adapted: Leah Betancourt http://mashable.com/2009/12/16/community-engagement/

Eg 2: VG.no, Norway largest news site, has a four-digit number 2200 to receive SMS, digital photos and video.

Eg 3: Huffpost.com

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2. Provide guidelines, stick to it• Welcome debate but don’t tolerate personal

attacks, death threats, racism, sexism, homophobia, religious or hate-speech.

• Remove any content that could put the paper in legal jeopardy, such as potentially libellous, defamatory, seditious, plagiarised, or in breach of copyright.

• Try not to be heavy-handed on first-time offenders but ban users who have been warned.

• Delete spam or anything promoting a product, brand or service

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3. Interact with the community• Welcome newbies

• Tweet replies, respond to wall-to-wall comments, answer email promptly from community members.

• Apologize fast, if you mess up.

• Organise a sponsored offline event, tweetup orblogger outreachprogramme.

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EG: Vita.mn, owned by Star Tribune, is the local guide to arts and entertainment in Minneapolis, St Paul. Has a scoring system called Karma. The more users contribute, tag, write a review, submit photos and the more others respond to the contributions, the higher the karma score.

4. Reward the super-contributors

• Nurture power users. Feature one a month.

• Highlight contributions, most-viewed

• Offer a rating system

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5. Leverage on the big networks• Don’t try to reinvent the wheel. Engage

readers in their communities: Facebook, Twitter or YouTube. Use Facebook Connect or Open Social to lower barrier to entry.

•EG: YouTube Direct allows any site to run a direct upload service on its site on their dime. NPR uses it to create curated content galleries for its WonderScope project. Other news orgs using it include ABC News, The Washington Post, and San Francisco Chronicle

http://www.youtube.com/direct

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Example: Community guidelines• Use common sense

• Do not post entries that are personal attacks or culturally sensitive or religiously offensive

• Any post deemed as a commercial advertisement of a brand, product or service will be deleted

• If you are releasing information about a company and you are in its employ, please disclose your affiliation

• If you post all or parts of an internal email, conceal the names of the sender and recipients

• When expressing an opinion, emphasize that you speak only for yourself, beginning a sentence with "IMHO"

• If you doubt the appropriateness of a post, ask a peer what they think and then read it again the next day as if it were headline in a newspaper.

• Do not post too much noise (ie: inane accounts of your boredom with life)

• Respect the platform, be an adult

• Keep it friendly, and have fun

• Be wary of copyright issuesEG: http://www.guardian.co.uk/community-standardshttp://channel9.msdn.com/About http://womma.org/blogger/readhttp://www.intel.com/sites/sitewide/en_US/social-media.htm

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Dealing with the critics and trolls

Source: Forrester Research

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Why some communities flounder• Difficult to register• No promos, blurbs• Replicates existing community• No compelling content, not updated• Poor navigation, design• No incentives to contribute• No clear mission objectives, focus• Community manager not a leader, resourceful• Forums, website running on autopilot• Does not solve a community problem• Does not leverage on big networks

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A good newspaper is a nation talking to itself

~ Arthur Miller