Edwina's blog

 

Dear Community,

We're very excited to announce that we have the opportunity to give away five tickets for the Nonick Conference on Social Networks and Online Communities!

Nonick is an international conference on social networks and online communities, taking place in Bilbao, Spain on May 14-15 2010. The conference includes a Community Manager Session with a Roundtable of experienced European community managers, including our Moderator Community members Blaise Grimes-Viort from Hearst Digital, José Antonio Gallego from the Spanish Community Managers Association AERCO, and Mark Ralea from the German Community Managers Association BVCM. 

Special Thanks to the organizers or Nonick from creating this opportunity for our members!

How to enter to win a ticket:

Write us a short paragraph about why you'd like to attend the conference and send it to us at contact@themoderatorcommunity.com. Please send us your paragraph by the 18. of April 2010. Don't forget to include your email address so we can notify you! The winners will be chosen in a random draw.

Rules:

1. Entry to the competition is restricted to one entry per person please. 

2. Automated entries, bulk entries or third party entries will be disqualified! 

3. Competition is open to everyone, regardless of country of residency.

4. Winners will be chosen at random from all valid entries. 

5. Winners will be contacted via email. 

6. The Judges decision is final and no correspondance will be entered in to. 

7. The competition will run from March 31st 2010 until April 18th 2010. 

Dear Community,

 

Below is the newsletter for the month of February that we sent out yesterday. If you are not receiving our newsletter yet but would like to in the future, you may subscribe in your profile settings (Go to your profile --> Edit --> My Newsletters and select the monthly newsletter) .

 

Have a great rest of the week! We look forward to sharing many more discussions and insights on online communities with you!

 

Greetings from sunny Barcelona

Edwina

 

 

1. Welcome to Our New Members!

2. Events Happening in the Community Sector this Month

3. The 5 Most Recent Jobs

4. Top 5 Most Read Items Last Month

5. Recent publications on online communities

 

 

 

1. Welcome to Our New Members!

 

As the Community & Content Manager of The Moderator Community, I'd like to extend a very warm welcome to all new members this month!

 

Please feel free to tap into the community with your questions and post them in one of our groups. Also, we encourage you to add your own blog articles (or those of your favorite bloggers) to our resource section and to promote your community or group in your profile.

 

If you've been a member for a long time, we encourage you to take a look at the community again! Is your profile up to date? Have you introduced yourself to the community yet? Take a look at the discussions that have been taking place, or add your blog articles to our resource section so even more people will find their way to your blog!

 

 

Here are some new members that have joined in the last month:

 

Alex Sass, Community Owner and Head of Digital at Renegade Media, from the United Kingdom

 

Chandler Thomas, Community Manager at Frenzoo, from the United States

 

Craig North, Community Owner at Alestero, from the Netherlands

 

Terrance Barkan, Community Expert

 

Alexa Groener, Community Manager at Weltbeweger, from Germany

 

 

 

2. Events Happening in the Community Sector this Month

 

This month, we'd like to specially mention Europe's first Social Business Summit, an invitation-only event in London on March 18th, which is aimed at business and technology thought leaders interested in the future of social business.

 

About the event: "Today, the use of social tools in business has progressed from the experimental stage to the beginning of mainstream adoption. As with all transformational technologies, organisational culture change and technology adoption are closely related, with both influencing the other in subtle but important ways. We want to look ahead and consider the impact of social tools on the way we organise, structure and manage knowledge- and people-intensive businesses in the future, both internally and externally."

 

If you are interested in participating in this event, you may fill out this form to be considered for the invite list.

 

 

Here is our monthly overview of events in the community sector. If you think we're missing an important event, feel free to add it to our events section!

 

 

Social Media for Government, Ottawa, Canada, March 1-4

 

Legal Aspects of Social Media: SociaLex Conference 2010, Washington, DC, USA, March 2

 

PR + MKTG Camp, Seattle, WA, USA, March 3

 

Girl Geek Boot Camp, Cape Cod, MA, USA, March 6

 

Nevada Interactive Summit, Reno, NV, USA, March 6

 

Digiday: Social, Los Angeles, CA, USA, March 9

 

Social Media World Forum Europe, London, UK, March 15-16

 

Social Business Summit, London, UK, March 18

 

Marketing 2.0 and Social Media Conference 2010, Paris, France, March 22-23

 

 

 

3. The 5 Most Recent Jobs

 

Training Manager (Children Safety) at LEGO Digital in Billund, Denmark

Part Time Forum Host/Moderator at Everyday Health in Brooklyn, NY, USA

 

Social Media Account Executive at Renegade Media in Gloucester, UK

 

Community Development Manager at Sclipo in Barcelona, Spain

 

Community & Social Media Relations Intern at Somesso in Zurich, Switzerland

 

 

Check out our job section in collaboration with Monster for more jobs in the online community and social media space! Our job section is becoming very active, so have a look if you're on the job hunt. If you have a job to offer, we encourage you to add it - it's free!

 

 

 

4. Top 5 Most Read Items last month

 

Here are the Top 5 most read items of the last month!

 

Building and Sustaining Brand Communities

 

The Loneliest Job in Business

 

Value of a Community Manager

 

How to Build an Online Community: The Ultimate List of Resources

 

The Art of Responding to Feedback

 

 

 

5. Recent publications on online communities

 

There have been quite a few publications of white papers and guides that members posted on The Moderator Community in the past, so we'd like to present the latest ones to you separately here:

 

Moderation in Social Networks

"Marketing to consumers on social networks is a fast-growing area for brands, who now want to “fish where the fishes are” as Coca-Cola’s recent social media strategy put it.   The aim of this guide is to arm brands and agencies with the knowledge they need to deal with user-generated content on social network pages.  The white paper linked to from this blog post talks about brand protection, legal/moral responsibility and the practical difficulties of moderating the major social networks."

(Thanks to Tia Fisher for sharing)

 

Online Community Management Guidelines for Associations

"The "Online Community Management Guidelines for Associations" was created to provide organizations with a frame on which to build internal community management policies. The author is requesting feedback on the content of the paper, good, bad or otherwise!"

(Thanks to Terrance Barkan for sharing)

 

We're looking forward to continue discovering the world of online communities with you!

 

On behalf of The Moderator Community Team,

Edwina Dendler

(Community & Content Manager)

 

-------------------------

 

About The Moderator Community

Follow The Moderator Community on Twitter: @themodcom

Suggestions or questions about this newsletter or The Moderator Community? Don't hesitate to contact us!

Dear Community,

 

Below is the newsletter we sent out for the month of January. It's our "birthday edition" newsletter - The Moderator Community is one year old this month! If you are not  receiving our newsletter yet but would like to in the future, you may subscribe in your profile settings (Go to your profile --> Edit --> My Newsletters and select the monthly newsletter) .

 

Looking forward to a great year with many insightful discussions in the community!

 

Edwina

 

 

1. Thank you for one year of The Moderator Community!

2. Events Happening in the Community Sector this Month

3. The 5 Most Recent Jobs

4. Top 5 Most Read Items Last Month

5. Become a part of The Moderator Community Team!

 

 

 

1. Thank you for one year of The Moderator Community!

 

This week, we celebrated our first birthday! After almost six months of researching resources, creating wireframes and implementing our site with Drupal, The Moderator Community "officially" opened its doors to the public on January 21st 2009.

 

A lot has happened in the last year; we now have over 1,500 resources on community management and social media, and over 500 members. The site has seen some redesigns, new features (like our job board in collaboration with Monster) and we've published our first paper - a guide on social media for business. We're excited about this project, and hope to bring it even further in the next year.

 

If you're a new member, Welcome to The Moderator Community! Please feel free to tap into the community with your questions and post them in one of our groups. Also, we encourage you to add your own blog articles (or those of your favorite bloggers) to our resource section and promote your community or group in your profile.

 

If you've been a member for a long time, we encourage you to take a look at the community again! Is your profile up to date? Have you introduced yourself to the community yet? Take a look at the discussions that have been taking place, or add your blog articles to our resource section so even more people will find their way to your blog!

 

 

 

2. Events Happening in the Community Sector this Month

 

Here is our monthly overview of events in the community sector. If you think we're missing an important event, feel free to add it to our events section!

 

 

Social Media at the Beach, Virginia Beach, VA, USA, January 23

 

Social Networking Conference 2010, Miami, FL, USA, January 27-29

 

Online Community Unconference East, New York, NY, USA, February 11

 

London Community Manager Tweetup: The emintup, London, UK, February 11

 

Social Media Forum, Hamburg, Germany, February 22-24

 

 

 

3. The 5 Most Recent Jobs

 

Director of Community at Zynga in San Francisco, CA, USA

 

Community Manager at Forum One Communications in San Francisco, CA, USA

 

Community Management Internship at The Moderator Community in Barcelona, Spain

 

Senior Community Manager at Ning in Silicon Valley, CA, USA

 

Spanish Community Manager at MundiJuegos in Barcelona, Spain

 

Check out our job section in collaboration with Monster for more jobs in the online community and social media space! Our job section is becoming very active, so have a look if you're on the job hunt. If you have a job to offer, we encourage you to add it - it's free!

 

 

 

4. Top 5 Most Read Items last month

 

Here are the Top 5 most read items that we started the year off with!

 

Building a Community Within A Corporation

 

5 Companies Using Facebook Pages Well

 

The Principles of Niche Online Communities

 

8 Things to Avoid When Building a Community

 

Facebook's Zuckerberg Says The Age of Privacy is Over

 

 

 

5. Become a part of The Moderator Community Team!

 

As we are inundated with projects, we'd like to find a helping hand for The Moderator Community! We're looking for a Barcelona based intern to start immediately. You would be assisting with research and management for The Moderator Community. Additionally, there is an opportunity to become involved in our other project, Linqia, and assist the team with integrated social media campaigns. We're looking for someone who speaks English and Spanish, and could work out of our Barcelona, Spain office (part time or full time). If you're interested, see details here. We look forward to hearing from you!

 

 

We're looking forward to continue discovering the world of online communities with you!

 

On behalf of The Moderator Community Team,

Edwina Dendler

(Community & Content Manager)

 

-------------------------

 

About The Moderator Community

Follow The Moderator Community on Twitter: @themodcom

Suggestions or questions about this newsletter or The Moderator Community? Don't hesitate to contact us!

Dear Community,

 

First of all - Happy new year!

 

Below is the newsletter for the month of December that we sent out before the new year. If you are not  receiving our newsletter yet but would like to in the future, you may subscribe in your profile settings (Go to your profile --> Edit --> My Newsletters and select the monthly newsletter) .

 

Have a great rest of the week, and a great start to the new year. We look forward to sharing many more discussions and insights on online communities with you!

 

Snowy winter greetings from Germany

Edwina

 

 

1. Welcome to our Latest Members!

2. Events Happening in the Community Sector this Month

3. The 5 Most Recent Jobs

4. Top 10 Most Read Items of the Year

5. Report on Spanish Online Communities

6. Our First Moderator Community Get Together

7. A little note from the Team

 

 

1. Welcome to our Latest Members!

 

To finish the year on a high note, we'd like to extend a warm welcome to all new members who signed up in the last few weeks. Welcome to The Moderator Community! Please feel free to tap into the community with your questions and post them in one of our groups. Also, we encourage you to add your own blog articles (or those of your favorite bloggers) to our resource section and promote your community or group in your profile.

 

Welcome to all of our new members! Here are just a few who signed up since our last newsletter:

 

Jurr ter Horst, Group Moderator from the Netherlands

 

Indigo Mertel, Community Manager at East River Community on Secondlife, from Italy

 

James Arnold, Community Enthusiast and Manager at Lumin Creative, from the USA

 

Federico Imparatta, Community Manager at Startups.com, from the USA

 

Jonathan Atkinson, Community Manager at Jagex Games Studios, from the UK

 

 

 

2. Events Happening in the Community Sector this Month

 

Here is our monthly overview of events in the community sector. If you think we're missing an important event, feel free to add it to our events section!

 

Social Fresh, Nashville, Tennessee, USA, January 11

 

PluggedIn NYC, New York, NY, USA, January 12

 

Social Integration, New York, NY, USA, January 13

 

Social Networking Conference 2010, Miami, FL, USA, January 27-29

 

 

 

3. The 5 Most Recent Jobs

 

Social Media Manager at Discovery Communications, in Silver Spring, MD, USA

 

Online Community Marketing Manager at Activagers, Remote from Europe

 

Manager, European Communications at Facebook in London, UK

 

Director, Social Networking Practice at Opinion Research Corporation in Princeton, NJ, USA

 

Director, Social Media at Travelers.com in Hartford, CT, USA

 

 

Check out our job section in collaboration with Monster for more jobs in the online community and social media space! Our job section is becoming very active, so have a look if you're on the job hunt. If you have a job to offer, we encourage you to add it - it's free!

 

 

 

4. Top 10 Most Read Items of the Year

 

Usually, we give you the Top 5 Most Read Items of the Month here. As this is our last newsletter of the year, we thought it would be nice to review the year a little - so here they are, the Top 10 Most Popular Items of the Year!

 

1. Community Manager Compensation

 

2. 10 Ways to Measure Social Media Success

 

3. 3 Social Media Case Studies for the Pharmaceutical Industry

 

4. Women Leading Women's Communities Who Twitter

 

5. 7 Key Insights into Creating an Effective Group on LinkedIn

 

6. Facebook Friends for Sale: This Time it's not a Game

 

7. The 8 Basic Rules for Getting Involved in Social Media

 

8. How to Identify Fake Profiles

 

9. Social Media Planning: A Simple & Easy to Use Spreadsheet

 

10. 20 Do's and Dont's of Successful Group Moderation

 

 

 

5. Report on Spanish Online Communities

 

In our July Newsletter, we invited you to participate in a survey on Spanish online communities. Miguel Cornejo Castro and his team at Macuarium Networks have now published the resulting report: Estudio de Comunidades Online 2009. We invite you to check out the results on their site! Currently, there is only a Spanish version - we'll notify you on our blog as soon as an English version is available.

 

 

6. Our First Moderator Community Get Together

 

On December 2nd, we had our first little Meetup with Moderator Community members in Barcelona. Although the meeting was organized and announced on short notice, we still had a nice little group of community managers, developers, and social media experts from all over the world. As the meeting was informal, there was no agenda - discussions around the table included how to market your online community, the importance of managing your professional online identity and white label platforms for online communities.

 

Thanks to everyone who attended, it was great to meet you in person! We hope to organize more Meetups in the future, and are looking forward to getting to know more members of our community.

 

 

7. A little note from the Team

 

Well, this is it - our last newsletter for 2009. It's been almost one year since The Moderator Community launched. We had a great year and really enjoyed managing and developing this community. Thank you for supporting the community - all the registrations, posts and comments are always encouraging, and give us reason to continue investing our effort into this project we truly believe in.

 

Thanks for a great year! We wish you a happy festive season and a happy new year!

 

 

We're looking forward to continue discovering the world of online communities with you!

 

On behalf of The Moderator Community Team,

Edwina Dendler

(Community & Content Manager)

 

-------------------------

 

About The Moderator Community

Follow The Moderator Community on Twitter: @themodcom

Suggestions or questions about this newsletter or The Moderator Community? Don't hesitate to contact us!

In summary: What is the FTC regulation all about?

Dear Community,

 

below is the newsletter for the month of November that we sent out yesterday. If you are not  receiving our newsletter yet but would like to in the future, you may subscribe in your profile settings (Go to your profile --> Edit --> My Newsletters and select the monthly newsletter) .

 

Have a great rest of the week, and we look forward to sharing many more discussions and insights on online communities with you!

 

Sunny regards from Barcelona,

Edwina

 

 

 

1. Welcome to our Latest Members!

2. Events Happening in the Community Sector this Month

3. The 5 Most Recent Jobs

4. Top 5 Most Read Items this Month

5. Recent Discussions

 

 

 

1. Welcome to our Latest Members!

 

We'd like to extend a warm welcome to all new members who signed up in the last few weeks. Welcome to The Moderator Community! Please feel free to turn to the community with your questions and post them in one of our groups. Also, we encourage you to add your own blog articles (or those of your favorite bloggers) to our resource section and promote your community or group in your profile.

 

Welcome to all of our new members! Here are just a few of the many new members since our last newsletter:

 

 

Julie Martin, Community Expert at Goodchatting.com, from Canada

 

Vivian Pein, Community Manager at XING, from Germany

 

Joanna S., Community Enthusiast

 

Jade Frank, Community Manager at PulseWire, from the USA

 

Antoine Grillon, Social Media Manager at Splendia, from Spain

 

 

 

2. Events Happening in the Community Sector this Month

 

Here is our monthly overview of events in the community sector. If you think we're missing an important event, feel free to add it to our events section!

 

 

Social Media World Forum North America, Santa Clara, CA, USA, November 9-10

 

SIME Stockholm, Sweden, November 11-12

 

Web 2.0 Expo, New York, NY, USA, November 16-19

 

Cool Twitter Conference, Dubai, UAE, November 18

 

Mobile 2.0 Conference, Berlin, Germany, November 23-25

 

nextMEDIA, Toronto, Canada, November 30 - December 1

 

 

 

3. The 5 Most Recent Jobs

 

Chief Listener - Social Media Team at Kodak, in Rochester, NY, USA

 

Director of Social Media at HFMUS, in New York, NY, USA

 

Junior Product Manager at GuteFrage.net, in Munich, Germany

 

Head of Community & Customer Care at Mind Candy, in London, UK

 

Product Manager for Community at Care2, in Redwood City, CA, USA

 

 

 

Check out our job section in collaboration with Monster for more jobs in the online community and social media space! Our job section is becoming very active, so have a look if you're on the job hunt. If you have a job to offer, we encourage you to add it - it's free!

 

 

 

4. Top 5 Most Read Items this Month

 

Legal guidelines for online marketing in Germany

 

eModeration Whitepaper: Interaction in Advertising

 

HOW TO: Manage a Facebook Group

 

8 Brilliant Posts About Online Communities

 

Say No to Zombie Groups

 

 

 

5. Recent Discussions

 

Gaby Rosario would like to know your advice for customizing Facebook Fanpages.

 

Ziona Etzion posted her thoughts on why a company should employ a community manager. What's your opinion?

 

 

 

Thanks for reading, and we're looking forward to continue discovering the world of online communities with you!

 

On behalf of The Moderator Community Team,

Edwina Dendler

(Community & Content Manager)

 

-------------------------

 

About The Moderator Community

Follow The Moderator Community on Twitter: @themodcom

Suggestions or questions about this newsletter or The Moderator Community? Don't hesitate to contact us!

Dear Community,

 

Another month has gone by and here are our latest news. If you are not  receiving our newsletter yet but would like to in the future, you may subscribe in your profile settings (Go to your profile --> Edit --> My Newsletters and select the monthly newsletter) .

 

Enjoy the rest of your week!

 

Edwina

 

 

Contents

 

1. Welcome to our Latest Members!

2. Events Happening in the Community Sector this Month

3. The 5 Most Recent Jobs

4. Top 5 Most Read Items this Month

5. Recent Discussions

6. Legal Issues for Online Communities: Let's create a resource collection!

7. Review and Rate The Moderator Community for the Groundswell Awards

 

 

 

1. Welcome to our Latest Members!

 

We'd like to extend a warm welcome to all new members who signed up during the last month. Welcome to The Moderator Community! Please feel free to turn to the community with your questions and post them in one of our groups. Also, we encourage you to add your blog articles to our resource section and promote your community or group in your profile.

 

Welcome to all of our new members! Here are just a few of the many new members since our last newsletter:

 

Matt Rhodes, Community Expert at FreshNetworks, from the UK

 

Philipp Sidler, Community Manager at Guzuu.com, from Switzerland

 

Marc-Antoine Ross, Web Developer and Community Manager, from Canada

 

Ferran Güell, Community Enthusiast at Privalia, from Spain

 

Gaby Rosario, Founder of The Storyboard from, South Africa.

 

Angela Connor, Community Manager at Golo, from the USA

 

 

 

2. Featured Event: SOMESSO Zurich

 

We're very happy to announce that SOMESSO Zurich is offering a 20% discount on tickets for members of The Moderator Community! Please go to our event section for the discount code.

 

About the SOMESSO Zurich conference: "SOMESSO (http://www.somesso.com) the recognized neutral platform for corporate stakeholders to explore, share and apply the tools and thinking necessary to benefit from the potential of social media disclosed that this years Zurich conference will take place on November 2 and 3, 2009 at the SwissRe Centre for Global Dialogue. After the second successful conference, which was held at the Emirates Stadium in London, SOMESSO decided to come back to Zurich and further support the advancement of local and (inter)national businesses into the adoption of social media. A special focus is put on: Leveraging Corporate Social Media in the Finance Sector."

 

 

 

3. Events Happening in the Community Sector this Month

 

Here is our monthly overview of events in the community sector. If you think we're missing an important event, feel free to add it to our events section!

 

Glocal: Inside Social Media, Skopje, Macedonia, October 15-17

 

Social Media: Putting it to Work for Your Organization, New York, NY, USA, October 15-16

 

Blog World & New Media Expo, Las Vegas, NV, USA, October 15-17

 

Web 2.0 Summit, San Francisco, CA, USA, October 20-22

 

Social Media in Healthcare & Wellness, Madrid, Spain, October 21

 

TWTRCON DC 09, Washington, DC, USA, October 22

 

The Social Media Business Forum, Durham, NC, USA, October 23

 

TribeCon, New Orleans, LA, USA, October 28-30

 

SOMESSO Zurich 2009, Zurich, Switzerland, November 2-3 (click here for your Moderator Community discount!)

 

Winning with Social Media - ARF Industry Leader Forum, New York, NY, USA, November 3

 

Geekend 2009, Savannah, GA, USA, November 6-8

 

Social Media World Forum North America, Santa Clara, CA, USA, November 9-10

 

SIME Stockholm, Sweden, November 11-12

 

 

 

3. The 5 Most Recent Jobs

 

Brand Advocate Community Manager for an Anti Virus Software Vendor in London, UK (full time)

 

Blog Editor for an Anti Virus Software Vendor in London, UK (full time)

 

Social Media Strategist at Privalia in Barcelona, Spain (full time)

 

Community Manager (Sales) at StudiVZ in Berlin, Germany (full time)

 

Community Manager at FreshBooks in Toronto, Canada (full time)

 

 

Check out our job section in collaboration with Monster for more jobs in the online community and social media space! Our job section is becoming very active, so have a look if you're on the job hunt. If you have a job to offer, we encourage you to add it - it's free!

 

 

 

4. Top 5 Most Read Items this Month

 

Google Wave: 5 Ways it Could Change the Web

 

Staffing: What's the proper moderator-to-community ratio?

 

What Network Stage is Your Community?

 

7  Ways to Make Sites More Social

 

When an Influential Community Member Leaves

 

 

 

5. Recent Discussions

 

As Google started opening the invitations to Google Wave, this has also become a Hot Topic in the Moderator Community... Our fellow member Marc-Antoine has offered to share his invites with members of the Moderator Community. We´d be curious to hear more about your first impressions and thoughts on how Google Wave will evolve.

 

 

6. Legal Issues for Online Communities: Let's create a resource collection!

 

Since we've heard a lot of concerns about legal issues for online communities recently, we have started putting together a collection of resources related to legal matters - links to government websites, blogs about online law, specific cases related to online communities etc. It would be great if we could collaborate on this list as a community! If you have any links to share, or know any specialists in the area, please add them to the list by posting a comment. 

 

 

7. Review and Rate The Moderator Community for the Groundswell Awards

 

We entered The Moderator Community for this year's Groundswell Awards. These awards aim to recognize the "excellent and effective use of social technologies to advance an organizational or corporate goal". Whilst we are still at the beginning of our journey with The Moderator Community, we do think this community has a lot of potential to support, engage and inspire community managers, group moderators and social media experts.

 

We'd like to encourage you to have a look at the Groundswell website, where you can view, rate and review all the entrants for this year's awards in various categories.

 

You can find the details of our entry on our blog and on the Groundswell website.

 

 

Thanks for reading, and we're looking forward to continue discovering the world of online communities with you!

 

On behalf of The Moderator Community Team,

Edwina Dendler

(Community & Content Manager)

 

-------------------------

 

About The Moderator Community

Follow The Moderator Community on Twitter: @themodcom

Suggestions or questions about this newsletter or The Moderator Community? Don't hesitate to contact us!

I have been involved in a number of community creations in the past few years, either as a consultant or just speaking to friends. One thing that always struck me as odd was that many people can list the features they want in the community, but don’t have any idea about what the purpose of their community should be. „I want to build a community, and I really want it to have a wiki, and groups, and subgroups, and sub-subgroups.“ To me, that’s a little bit like saying you’d like to bake a cake, and it should have baking soda and flour and some vanilla in it. The only time you would look at the ingredients this way before baking a cake, is when it’s 10pm on Saturday evening, no stores are open, and you really need a cake right now because your mother in law is coming over on Sunday. Then, you’ll take all the ingredients you have, and try to make something out of it – out of desperation. When you’re planning out a community, you’re usually not that desperate. So why pick out the ingredients before deciding on a cake? Wouldn’t it make much more sense to decide that you’d like a chocolate cake first, and then take the best chocolate cake recipe you can find, to see what ingredients you’ll need? That’s how I like to approach community development. First, I map out my goal – what do I want to achieve with this community? What is my purpose or my end goal? Then, I break this down into sub-goals, little things I need to achieve or that the community needs to enable in order to live up to its purpose. I take this list of sub-goals, and match each one up with the features that are needed to achieve it. For example, with The Moderator Community, one of our goals was to assist community managers with their careers. What would help them with their career? In our view, it was access to jobs, an easy way to connect with peers, and a way to easily find information and knowledge on community management. After establishing this, we thought about the features needed to achieve this. To provide access to jobs, we created a job board, where anyone would be able to post jobs. Later, when we realized our job section was one of the most popular areas of the community, we built on what we already had, and added a job feed from one of the biggest job sites in the world, Monster. For a way to connect with peers, we built user profiles, buddy lists and groups on specific topics. The resource section, which is essentially a link library, serves to provide access to information, and so on. The key is to choose your features wisely, with the end result in mind. A feature shouldn’t be added just because it’s new and the cool thing to have right now. Rather than trying to maximize the number of features in your community, focus having a few key features that will drive the community’s purpose, and on making those as easy to use as possible. Decide on what the community should achieve, and then choose the ingredients that will get you there. If you absolutely have to have that wiki regardless of your goals, then have it (I put vanilla in every cake I make, regardless of the recipe. I just like its flavor). But always remember your community’s purpose and focus on advancing that. The vanilla isn’t going to make a chocolate cake if you forget the chocolate!

Dear Community,

 

On Monday, we sent out our Newsletter for September '09. We had so much to share that not everything fit into the newsletter - for example, we didn't mention our redesign - we have a new logo!

 

Below are our current news for the month of September 2009. If you are not  receiving our newsletter yet but would like to in the future, you may subscribe in your profile settings (Go to your profile --> Edit --> My Newsletters and select the monthly newsletter).

 

 

1. Welcome to our Latest Members!

2. Featured Event: 2nd Annual Digital Media Seminar - receive a €1,000 discount!

3. Events Happening in the Community Sector this Month

4. The 5 Most Recent Jobs

5. Top 5 Most Read Items this Month

6. Recent Popular Discussion Topics

7. Social Media for Business Guide - free for our members!

8. Welcoming our new Partners: Forum One Networks and Online Community Research Network

9. Review and Rate The Moderator Community for the Groundswell Awards

 

 

 

1. Welcome to our Latest Members!

 

We'd like to extend a warm welcome to all new members who signed up during the month of August. Welcome to The Moderator Community! August has been a crazy month for us, with more new members signing up than ever before. Please feel free to turn to the community with your questions and post them in one of our groups. Also, we encourage you to add your blog articles to our resource section and promote your community or group in your profile.

 

Welcome to all of our new members! Here are just a few of the over 80 new members since our last newsletter:

 

Brett Hodges, Community Manager and Owner of Rightpet.com, from the United States

 

Bhanuprakash K, Community Enthusiast and Social Media Strategist, from India

 

Michael Chin, Community Manager and SVP Marketing at Kickapps, from the United States

 

Bert van Meel, Community Manager at Just Airborne, from the Netherlands

 

Matt Owen, Community Manager at Liverpool FC, from the United Kingdom

 

Joseph Bowers, Community Manager at Young Presidents' Organization & World Presidents Organization, from the United States

 

Robert Stanke, Community Manager at Life Time Fitness, from the United States

 

Lars Gugig, Community Manager at Cardlovers, from Sweden

 

Silke Schippmann, Community Manager at XING, from Germany

 

 

 

2. Featured Event: 2nd Annual Digital Media Seminar in Barcelona - receive a €1,000 discount!

 

Great news if you have not registered yet, the organizers have just offered us a special last minute discount for The Moderator Community members. The new price is 995EUR! This Seminar is designed to help any professional involved in on-line and mobile Marketing & Communications, to learn through expert, end-user and practitioner presentations on how best to leverage these forms of Digital Media to both enhance marketing and communications practices.

 

Speakers: Saatchi & Saatchi, Google, Facebook, Coca Cola, Adidas, Telefonica-O2, Co-tweet ...

 

Date & Place: 16th & 17th September 2009, in Barcelona, Spain

 

Details: http://www.themoderatorcommunity.com/event/2nd-annual-digital-media-seminar

 

Discount: Members of The Moderator Community receive a special 1000€ last minute discount to the event and only pay 995€ entry fee!

 

How to register: Just enter the code “LQP4“ into the subject when registering at the site.

 

 

 

3. Events Happening in the Community Sector this Month

 

Social Media for Government Forum, Chicago, IL, USA, September 14-17

 

Social Media Forum, Hamburg, Germany, September 15

 

PR 2.0 Forum, Hamburg, Germany, September 15

 

LIFT: The B2B Social Commerce Summit, Atlanta, GA, USA, September 15-16

 

Community & Marketing Summit, Hamburg, Germany, September 16-17 (with discounts for our members!)

(Meet our CEO Maria Sipka who will be speaking about the Monetization of Social Networks!)

 

2nd Annual Digital Media Seminar, Barcelona, Spain, September 16-17 (look out for the €1,000 discount!)

 

OMMA Global: New York, NY, USA, September 21

 

Social Media: Risks and Rewards, New York, NY, USA, September 22

 

Social Networking Wolrd Forum Asia, Singapore, September 22

 

PICNIC 09, Amsterdam, Netherlands, September 23

 

Social Networking Conference 2009, London, UK, September 24

 

Brand Community FORUM, Hamburg, Germany, September 29

 

SIME Helsinki, Finnland, September 30

 

SIME Copenhagen, Denmark, October 8

 

 

 

4. The 5 Most Recent Jobs

 

Customer Service Representative at Habbo UK, Remote from UK (full time or part time)

 

Community Manager at Station54 in Berlin, Germany (full time)

 

Senior Community Manager (various languages) at PokerStrategy.com in Gibraltar (full time)

 

Community Manager for Online Games at Meteor in West Hollywood, CA, USA (full time)

 

French Community Manager at NCSoft in Seattle, USA (full time)

 

 

Check out our job section in collaboration with Monster for more jobs in the online community and social media space!

 

 

 

5. Top 5 Most Read Items this Month

 

Social Media Planning: A simple & easy to use spreadsheet, shared by one of our members

 

Social Media - Strategy over tools (Part 1)

 

Social Media - Just a Fad?

 

Facebook Friends for Sale: This time it's not a game

 

The Fans Know Best

 

 

 

6. Recent Popular Discussion Topics

 

Can you help out fellow community members with your expertise on online communities and groups?

 

Joseph Bowers would like to know what a proper moderator-to-community ratio would be

 

Mohammad Al-Ubaydli is wondering how clinics could best monitor online communities

 

Angus Parker poses an interesting question: How do you weave a tighter community?

 

For Spanish speakers: Marco Ripanti would like to get your opinion on an article about online identity.

 

A much discussed business idea: Would you buy Facebook friends? Do bought "friends" have a business value?

 

 

 

7. Social Media for Business Guide - free for our members!

 

As part of our research over the last few months, we created a social media guide for businesses. The guide includes advice on engaging in social media, with an emphasis on using social media for listening. It also features a categorized recommended reading list, a list of social media case studies, and a list of social media listening tools with explanations on each one.

 

Click here to download the guide.

 

 

 

8. Welcoming our new Partners: Forum One Networks and Online Community Research Network

 

We are striving to present to you the most interesting and valuable content. A few months ago we reached out to Bill Johnston and Heather Virga from Forum One Networks.Last month we were happy announcing our partnership.

 

Their dedicated team creates valuable studies around the community sector and we´d encourage you to visit their community of world´s leading online professionals.

 

Read more about Forum One Networks and the Online Community Research Network (OCRN) here.

 

 

9. Review and Rate The Moderator Community for the Groundswell Awards

 

We entered The Moderator Community for this year's Groundswell Awards. These awards aim to recognize the "excellent and effective use of social technologies to advance an organizational or corporate goal". Whilst we are still at the beginning of our journey with The Moderator Community, we do think this community has a lot of potential to support, engage and inspire community managers, group moderators and social media experts.

 

We'd like to encourage you to have a look at the Groundswell website, where you can view, rate and review all the entrants for this year's awards in various categories.

 

You can find the details of our entry on our blog and on the Groundswell website.

 

 

Thanks for reading, enjoy the end of your summer (or winter, if you're on the other side of the world!), and we're looking forward to continue discovering the world of online communities with you!

 

On behalf of The Moderator Community Team,

Edwina Dendler

(Community & Content Manager)

 

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About The Moderator Community

Follow The Moderator Community on Twitter: @themodcom

Suggestions or questions about this newsletter or The Moderator Community? Don't hesitate to contact us!