Stars, Champions, Trolls and Your Event Community

We know much more about setting up and managing an event community than we did a year ago.

The report “Best Practices in Online Community Management” produced by Pathable reads like a secret decoder ring for first time event community managers.

While the report is loaded with with helpful advice, I thought these four things stood out:

Recruit the Stars

The report recommends that you go find “stars” to come hangout in your community and contribute to it. Just like in night clubs, these stars draw others into the conversations and to the community, etc. The report offers seven different tips for recruiting stars and engaging them.

Find A Champion

This is the internal leader that is committed to make sure that the online community succeeds. Based on my experience in corporate america, the stronger the champion the better the project result.

Control the Trolls

This report offers strategies to contain and mitigate negative actions by troublemakers (trolls or Wild Things) that want to pollute your event’s social network. Think about the tips in this section like “Rodent Killer.”

Cross-Pollinate

Most event communities allow attendees to connect their friends/contacts, status updates, etc with other social networks (think Linkedin or Twitter). This allows attendees to leverage their connections and engagement in other places with the event social network.

Bottom Line

If you find a champion that can bring the stars into your online event community and squash the trolls – then you will increase your odds of ending up with a rich thriving event community.

You can download the original report from Pathable directly here: Best Practices in Online Community Management (sorry, you must register with Pathable.)

What other resources would you recommend to first time community managers?

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