Hump Day: what are some of your community pain points?

[Matt]

7 hours ago, Dll said:

One of the pain points I see is this new found, deeper entrenchment of views and opinions that some people have gained in recent years - in part I assume it is related to social media and how easy it is to create an echo chamber for those views.

To give an example -  some people are so entrenched in their viewpoint that they don't really engage in a discussion other than to disagree with those who suggest anything different, restate their points and ultimately just go around in circles regardless of evidence, suggestions and information being fed back into the discussion by other participants. This can make discussions more fractious, and ultimately hurts engagement within them as people tire of the circular arguments being regurgitated and just step away from them. 

From a moderation perspective I think it's really tricky to know where to draw the line - different viewpoints and a bit of drama can add spice to debates, but when and how to stop that when it does start to become circular? And what to do about those with a tendency to take discussions in that direction? 

I'd be interested to know how other communities deal with this sort of thing.

This is a great question, so I asked it on Twitter to get some advice from some experienced community managers: 

 

[Jordan Miller]

1 hour ago, Dll said:

@marklcfc - we use this, it uses the first image in the thread as the image used on shares. Maybe not the control you may want over the images, but we find it's pretty useful. 

 

I personally use this in my community, too. It works great cause my members aren't allowed to upload images, so I always have control over what image shows for social media.

If you want to have a featured image, but don't want members to see it, insert it into a post but set the size dimensions to 0 pixels and voila. 

[Jordan Miller]

12 hours ago, Marc Stridgen said:

Its interesting, as Ive seen many sites launched on the back of social media. I think the key (and probably the biggest pain point) is finding that reason people want to move from social media and engage on your community. Working with social media platforms rather than seeing them as a competitor will always serve an advantage. After all, they are likely your single largest source of traffic, especially in the initial period of community building.

Great points. I think social media can be a suuuuper powerful to build community outside your main community page, but use it as a tool to ultimately inspire them to circle back to the website versus staying on the social platform. For example, some of my Facebook posts can reach a million people in a day - that reach is something I can't recreate in my community. However, the goal is to get those reached people to visit the community, register and engage. Often times on social media you throw your comment out there then continue scrolling (which isn't the best path for a thriving community). Thanks for weighing in @Marc Stridgen!

[marklcfc]

37 minutes ago, Jordan Miller said:

I personally use this in my community, too. It works great cause my members aren't allowed to upload images, so I always have control over what image shows for social media.

If you want to have a featured image, but don't want members to see it, insert it into a post but set the size dimensions to 0 pixels and voila. 

It won’t work for me then as my members can upload, plus that sounds a bit of a faff just to get something working which should be possible.

[AlexWebsites]

19 hours ago, Marc Stridgen said:

Its interesting, as Ive seen many sites launched on the back of social media. I think the key (and probably the biggest pain point) is finding that reason people want to move from social media and engage on your community. Working with social media platforms rather than seeing them as a competitor will always serve an advantage. After all, they are likely your single largest source of traffic, especially in the initial period of community building.

Facebook groups is the issue. Find a way to incorporate facebook groups into IPS forums, simultanious posts, zapier maybe, IDK... but figure that one out and you can really launch on the back of social media. People join facebook groups pretty fast and easy, they also engage because they are already on facebook. 

[jesuralem]

On an admin level, spam through the conact-us is the worst problem i have. I basically do not read any contact-us message anymore and wait for people really wanting to contact me to find the email address.

For my community i would join others :

- people tend to be more and more assertive and less open to contradiction, this basically kills the interest of a forum

- It is hard to find a balance between the core group of regular users and newcomers or occasionnal users that may hesitate to parcipate because they don't belong to the "core".

[opentype]

21 hours ago, Dll said:

From a moderation perspective I think it's really tricky to know where to draw the line - different viewpoints and a bit of drama can add spice to debates, but when and how to stop that when it does start to become circular? And what to do about those with a tendency to take discussions in that direction? 

I'd be interested to know how other communities deal with this sort of thing.

I don’t think that discussions going in circles is something that would require moderation. I only step in when things escalate, because that can be very damaging for a community. 

Edited July 1, 2022 by opentype

[Pescao6]

@Jordan Miller

For me, it comes down to these:

1. Writing down the things we want to do
2. Scheduling plans to actually do things
3. Attempting to meet planned deadlines

@Marc Stridgen

A big struggle for me recently has been trying to figure out where to post what. Does it go on Discord, does it go on Social Media, does it go on the Website? Where would the content get the best kind of engagement? Am I looking for short term high activity or to preserve content for the long term? And even within the website, does it go better on the forums, the clubs, the blogs, the articles? A lot of clients probably haven't gotten all of the features, but for those who have them all it's a blessing and a pain to have options on how we want to present our content to our communities. And for communities that are starting out or have small teams, I usually advise them to focus on no more than 2-3 channels.

On 6/30/2022 at 1:21 PM, Jordan Miller said:

I think social media can be a suuuuper powerful to build community outside your main community page, but use it as a tool to ultimately inspire them to circle back to the website versus staying on the social platform.

I'd be cautious to recommend doing this. I see a lot of companies do this thing where they'll post a blog and then share it on Facebook, LinkedIn or Twitter. And I wonder, why? Instead, I think it'd be best to write unique messages on each platform. The occasional backlink is fine, but it should be the exception not the standard especially considering most members probably won't engage in more than 2-3 channels of a community.