Community relations matter more than anything

Posted by Chris

January 6, 2009

One of the things I dig most about Spout is that there’s a genuine affection within the company for the community that’s taking part in the discussions, making recommendations and doing everything else the site allows them to do. The folks here all genuinely want to hear what people are liking or not liking, what’s working for them and what’s not, address any concerns and graciously accept any compliments.

A post by Josh Hallett on the Voce Communications blog is what has me thinking along these lines this morning. Josh mentions two ways to do brand monitoring:

De-centralized: A number of folks all have their own feedreaders and custom RSS searches. What they monitor and respond too is limited to what interests them, or the work they do. This may be aligned by business units or product groups. There is little or no oversight, coordination or measurement.
Centralized: A person or department such as PR monitors conversations and then responds as needed. In some cases an internal team assists with responding, or best-case scenario the issues are flagged and sent to the appropriate person for response, i.e. customer service, product development, etc.

Both obviously have their strengths and their weaknesses and Josh outlines those pretty well. But here on Spout we actually have to not only define who’s doing the listening but also make sure we’re listening in two different directions at the same time, both internally and externally. We need to make sure the internal community is being cared for and empowered at the same time we’ve got our ears open for what others are saying about us, whether it’s on their own sites or Twitter or in the press.

Other companies with their own communities are doing the same. For us it means that we use the a hybrid of the two strategies Josh mentions, with just about everyone on the Spout team encouraged to keep their eyes and ears open for what’s going on with site members as well as where there might be a discussion off-site about Spout going on.

Those conversations then get filtered appropriately to either Christi, who runs point on our community management effort, or myself if they’re more about external messaging.

Externally, Lee Odden is right that community building is good for SEO efforts. Every good impression you make has the potential to manifest later as a positive link. But when you’re talking about an internal community, such activity is more about rewarding good behavior, reinforcing those behaviors and increasing loyalty. A happy community will tell its neighbors about what’s going on, resulting in decent word of mouth.