How to manage an online community

Successful online community leaders maintain a genuine interest in the experience, needs and opinions of their readers. They want to know what they readers are doing, have done in the past and want to do in the future. Online community leaders set a positive example with their conduct online, asking smart questions, responding with thoughtful answers and treating other community members with appropriate respect.

Here is additional advice for leaders of online content communities:

Be part of a community before you start one
You wouldn't expect to get a job at a newspaper if you'd never read one. So don't expect to be a success leading an online community if you haven't spent significant time reading and posting to others. The best online community leaders not only have a passion for their topic and interest in their readers, they love interacting online.

Plus, other online communities can provide great places to promote your website, as well. You can start a group on Facebook, set up a MySpace page or, at the very least, link to your community in your signature line or profile page on other discussion boards. Just be cool about it. Never spam another board.

Stay informed about your publishing software
Read and, when you need help, post to support forums for your publishing software.

Discussion boards:
phpBB
vBulletin
SlashCode
Invision Board

Blog and other community software:
Drupal
Expression Engine
Geeklog
Ning
Scoop
WordPress

You might choose to write your own community publishing software, to maintain the highest level of technical control over your community. Good options for developing community publishing applications include:
ColdFusion
php
Ruby on Rails

You're running the board to learn, not to show off
Don't be afraid to let readers discuss stuff you know nothing about. Be humble, be curious and welcome all new posters to the group. Don't immediately dismiss people whose names you do not recognize; they might turn out to be people of great credibility on the topic your community covers.

Set the rules, then explain them up front
It's your decision whether to require registration in order to post, or to ask writers to use their real names. You can also decide what's okay for writers to do, and not. (Foul language, insults, selling stuff, etc.) But whatever you decide, make sure that you are consistent in applying those rules and that you explain them to readers, in an obvious place, before they post.

If people violate your rules, do not be afraid to warn them, isolate them, or, if necessary, suspend or ban them. Read the publishing software suport forums, linked above, to find out how to take these actions using your publishing system.

For more information
Read OJR's archive on managing discussion communities.

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