I ran across an interesting blog post from the ubiquitous Chris Brogan I thought I'd share: 19 Presence Management Chores You COULD Do Every Day

Chris titles his approach as "Presence Management", which struck me as odd initially, since it's about reaching out and responding to the community, not about pushing yourself on others. But upon reflection I can see how defining it as a discipline can help - especially for someone like Chris with such a huge following. Putting yourself out there every day is an effort that needs to be performed religiously, which is really what his post is about. And the tips he provides are useful examples of those hundreds of little things that add up over time. Here's a few for reference:

1. Find seven things worth retweeting in your general feed and share.

3. Point out a few people that you admire. It shows your mindset, too.

10. Share at least 3 interesting updates that you find.

13. Drop into Q&A and see if you can volunteer 2-3 answers.

(see the full article for the other 15)

This is one of those areas that is often tough for newcomers to social media to grasp; that it's not about the killer content, the ultimate blog post or your perfect design. Its about the constant stream of little things that keep people connected to you or to your community. Like a snowball rolling downhill and growing larger as it travels, those little connections are the way your members come to know who you are and what your community is about, and grow closer as a result. So be sure to keep in touch, keep it real, and keep it coming!

Are you inside your community, whether its your corporate site, your facebook page or twitter feed, interacting with others and sharing with them? How do they know who you are?

Photo by redjar

Moving is a confusing and anxious experience. It feels like you just got your collection of limited edition Elvis dinner plates mounted on the wall, and now you are packing up boxes, forwarding your mail, and trying to find out where the power outlets are in your new place. It can feel the same way to your members when you move your community to a new platform.

But just as we outgrow the starter apartments we lived in after college, you may decide the community platform you started with no longer meets the needs of your community (or your business). You need to transition to a new site, but you want to bring the best of your community with you - how do you make it work?

In our experience, successful transitions to new community platforms do the following 8 things well:

1. Reconcile goals and objectives: be sure that you understand how the objectives of the new community are different in any way from the old one - even healthy communities' objectives will shift over time with the needs of the organization.
2. Focus on the active membership: Don't try to target everyone, identify and reach out to members who have been active on the site in the last 3-6 months.
3. Recognize members' prior participation: Even if the objectives of the old and new communities are completely different, the reputations that members built in your old community are very valuable to them. Make sure you recognize that value in an equivalent way on your new community, while still giving members room to grow.
4. Have a simple plan for the logistics of moving members: The more complicated it is, the harder it is to execute. A welcoming committee for your community is a good idea in general, and they can be invaluable in helping people through the rough edges of the transition. Prepare them!
5. Communicate the change early and often: Clearly articulate in a positive way why you are making the change and how the members will benefit from it. Then take that message to every channel you have, on multiple occasions, so that members aren't caught by surprise.
6. Bring the most active members in early: Find ways to make your superusers a part of the birthing process of the new community so they can make it their own. Invite them in early to help seed the site for the rest of the members.
7. Listen and respond: While you are reaching out to your members, be sure you have channels open to solicit feedback from them as well. Then acknowledge and respond to their feedback - this does not mean you implement every request, but you need to let members know they are heard.
8. Measure the right things: Define and track what are the relevant success criteria to measure following the transition. As stated above, your new community may be trying to achieve different things than before. Be sure to take into account that direct comparisons may not always be appropriate.

You may have noticed that the majority of these (#2-7) are about your membership, not your content. Its common to get caught up in the details of moving content, but remember that content doesn't make an active community, members do. If you focus your efforts on bringing members over, you can enlist them to help select and bring over the valuable content (see #6).

Moving can be a trying experience for anyone, but sometimes it is necessary in order to grow - so make your move as positive as possible!

Photo by TheMuuj

I've been remiss in reporting back on the Online Community Unconference, so here goes:

This Unconference is without a doubt my favorite conference of the year. There is such a participatory atmosphere there that really gets people engaged and talking on a practical level about the problems we face as online community practitioners. Nowhere else can I so completely step outside of my own experience and still feel that almost everything is relevant to what I do. So with that, here's some thoughts on how it all went:

The Good:

• As I mentioned in my last blog before I went, I did spend more time connecting with others and participating in the sessions of others rather than presenting my own. This helped me personally get more from the conference, but I wonder if that was somewhat oddly selfish of me in retrospect. See more below.
• In a session titled "What Metrics Should be Used to Measure Community Health", Lithium's Community Health Index was called out as the only measurement based on data - everything else was described as a 'black art'.
• Scott Moore was a diva that day, with acclaimed sessions on "Social Psychology 101 for Community Managers", "What is Community Leadership" and an interesting shared session with Gail Ann Williams titled "Are we a Community Too? Ways Community Practitioners Stay Connected. What's next?"

The Less Good:

• While I focused on participating more in other people's groups this time around, I felt like there were gaps in the sessions that I could have addressed, especially with all the good work we are doing here on the Lithosphere. If I am able to go back next year, I will go back to presenting at least one session.
• There was a lot of the same information presented as last year, with a number of returnees expressing frustration that we failed to move the needle on some important topics. I think it was more a frustration on the limits of one-time events than on the conference itself - without some persistence it is tough to keep momentum going.
• No pictures on Flickr.com with Creative Commons licensing for the west coast! UPDATE: Bill Johnston at ForumOne heard and corrected this - Thanks Bill!

The Fun:

• Help people out and you get a bottle of wine. It's that simple.
• Saw quite a few familiar faces, and met some new hires of current Lithium customers!
• Ding dongs, Ho-hos and Twinkies! (Maybe the health-conscious would classify this in the "Less Good" category, but I thought it was fun and helped keep everything from getting too stuffy )

Links:

Pictures: http://www.flickr.com/search/?q=ocu2009

Wiki: http://www.socialtext.net/ocu2009 (authorization required today, was told it will be available to the public in read-only form on Friday, 6/19)

Photo by redplasticmonkey

So in just over 9 hours I'll be at the Online Community Unconference hosted by Forum One Networks. Last year's event was both fun and informative, and I'm interested to see how this year's conference fares in the face of the current economy. But it definitely seemed that that the degree of intimacy was one of the stronger points of last years conference - quite a feat with a attendance of around 250.

The Unconference encourages participation, but looking back on last year I think I tried to do too much. This year I'm planning to take my time and hop around a bit, maybe do some note-taking to help contribute to the conference wiki pages. But as my kindergarten teacher once expressed, "Scott's not afraid to share his opinion with the rest of the class." With the launch of the Lithosphere and everything that's happened since, there's plenty of fun things to share - I'm sure I won't be fading into any backgrounds :smilelywink:

Definitely looking forward to it - look me up if you are there!

Photo by DrBacchus

Right on the heels of last week's news from Redfin on their community success comes the announcement that two more of Lithium's customers have been recognized for their accomplishments: Robert Pearson of Future Shop and Maryellen Abreu of iRobot have both been named Customer Champions by 1to1 Magazine!

Future Shop and iRobot were 2 of the 3 companies specifically recognized for their engagement in social media efforts (the 3rd being Wells Fargo), and their vibrant communites are a testament to their strong commitment to the value of customer relationships. Here's how they are realizing that value:

• iRobot successfully built relationships with superusers on their community, the Robot Lords, and through community feedback they were able to develop a whole new line of products and a new product version specifically for developers.
• Future Shop relies on its community to provide peer support and a "continuous feedback loop to improve the customer experience," according to the 1to1 article. Our recent case study with Future Shop illustrates a whole range of areas that Future Shop's community helps their business, from Customer Support, to Marketing, to Corporate Communications and Recruitment.

It's great to see these champions at iRobot and Future Shop getting some much deserved recognition, and I feel personally very fortunate to count leaders such as these as customers!

Congratulations Maryellen and Robert, and to their entire teams who helped make it happen!

Photo by edwin.11