Your Community Team’s Personal Brand
Some companies don’t want their employees, even their community team, to have a strong personal brand. They feel like time spent on a personal brand is time away from the business, and that the employee is building their brand on the back of the company.
That’s not the case at Health Union, an owner and operator of communities targeted at health conditions. They encourage their community team to build strong personal brands – during work hours – that they can take with them when they leave. Jenn Lebowitz, senior director of community development, is my guest this episode, during which we also discuss:
- Why we don’t want people to become addicted to our communities
- How Health Union uses a mix of in-office and distributed team members to ensure full coverage of their communities
- Looking for the best in troublesome members
I love what Samuel Hulick is doing at 
With an eye on the conscious and unconscious biases that lead to the contributions of women being overlooked and undervalued, this episode focuses on credit. Sharing it, taking it and ensuring it reaches those who have earned it; not just those who are the loudest.
When a company responds to a complaint posted in an online forum, they receive a greater boost to customer advocacy than when responding to complaints lodged through phone, email, social media or review sites.
Copyright can seem like a big, intimidating topic. But it’s one of the most important areas of law for the online community builder, because we are constantly working with content. Sometimes our own, but mostly the content of others.
Companies mishandle fan sites all the time. If you are lucky enough to have fans building resources and communities around your products, services or talents, you have something really special on your hands. Don’t ruin it.
Filtering technology is essential for large online communities and can be beneficial for communities of all sizes. But I almost never hear community and forum software vendors talk about it. Most communities are simply stuck with a basic word censor. Why?
The principles of good community management can benefit more than just professionals in our industry. They can be applied by managers and executives in other disciplines, helping them to be more effective leaders.