All posts by Evan Hamilton

The future is not #%*&ing smartwatches

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“The Internet carries a surprising lesson for Intellectual Property theory. Despite the prevalence of infringement and the teachings of IP theory, people are creating and distributing more content now than ever before, by at least an order of magnitude.

The future of technology is likely to look quite a bit like the Internet. Lots of people will create lots of designs, code, and biobricks. Other people will use, repurpose, and improve on those things, often without paying.”

–IP in a World Without Scarcity, by Mark A. Lemley

This is one of the most elucidating things I’ve read lately. It’s worth the time investment.

The punchline? The future isn’t #*%&ing wearables. It’s not some neat new social network. It’s literally changing how economics work when suddenly almost everything can be generated at home. It’s people printing replacement body parts and artificial genes at home. It’s about the change in interactions and communities when we no longer have to commute, go to the store, etc. It’s freedom & chaos & community & creativity. And it’s absolutely something you can picture as utopian or distopian…though probably it’ll be somewhere in between. It’s going to be a fascinating century, and smartwatches will be less than a footnote.

How do you measure the erosion of your brand?

Community, Tech

“This one promotion seems successful — but they have no idea how much money they are losing because millions of customers stopped opening their direct mail. How many people don’t trust the brand because they’ve been tricked (lied to?) about ‘important information’ five or six times a year? How many bank accounts not opened, mortgages not applied for, car loans taken elsewhere, business accounts moved away?”

From Are your profitable programs destroying your brand?

I think most community managers have struggled with this. I’ve dealt with this at every job I’ve ever had. If the benefit can be measured and the damage cannot, how do you make a solid case for ceasing the activity?

Any ideas?

Never underestimate the content backlog

Community,

backlog

I (and many other people) frequently recommend that content creators create a backlog of content before they start any content-creating (or curating) endeavors. I’m pretty sure when I say this people think “oh sure, I suppose that would be nice.” What they don’t realize is that I’m recommending it because I’ve suffered through the pain of not having a backlog. At UserVoice I struggled for almost a year with creating great content on a deadline alongside my other responsibilities. Once I created a content backlog, my stress levels dropped and the quality of my content increased significantly.

First and foremost, a backlog allows you creative breathing room. You don’t have to come up with great ideas on a tight deadline, you don’t have to rush a post out the door before it’s as good as it should be, and you don’t have to use filler (ew).

This also means you can focus on new projects as they occur without your content channels drying up. And you know those new projects will come out of left field and demand all of your time for a week or two.

(Backlog also means you can take vacations, which are pretty cool.)

Vacation - Community Manager Appreciation Day ecard

A backlog doesn’t mean a week’s worth of content. In my opinion, you want a month to two months worth of content. Whatever amount of content you think is enough, at least double it. Things come up, and even seasoned content-creation professionals like myself can find themselves with a quiet blog and an anemic Twitter account. There’s no such thing as too much content backlog.

Has your project already started? Well then find a few weeks (it might have to be next month) where you can temporarily pause most of your other responsibilities and focus on creating that backlog. I did this for UserVoice and I’m currently doing this for my musical project, Kicking Tuesday, which I’ve let run a bit dry.

Take the time to build your content backlog. It’s 150% worth it.

Backlog photo courtesy of Leo Reynolds.
Postcard courtesy of UserVoice.

What we learned (about ourselves) at CMX Summit

Community, , , , , , , ,

David Spinks‘s CMX Summit did something rare yesterday. It gave us the usual community management tips and cheerleading, which are always appreciated…but it also gave us perspective. We learned from seasoned veterans and psychologists. We talked to people from every type of company and every size role. And we discussed community management as a real career, not a novelty.

From Robin Dreeke we learned that empathy, which many of us have considered a cornerstone of community management for years, is not only a powerful way to accomplish goals but so important that it can get you a “head of” title at the FBI!

David McMillan taught is that for a true sense of community there are a lot of elements necessary : shared experiences, complimentary skills, risk, and the much-maligned turnover…a lot more than you’re going to get from simply tweeting cute stuff to your audience a few times a day!

Emily Castor showed how very intentional – and often very tiny – elements can help set the whole culture of a community.

Ligaya Tichy showed us how communities and community management must evolve with a company.

Josh Miller reiterated what even Buzzfeed has admitted: clicks aren’t engagement.

Nir Eyal showed us that getting folks to regularly contribute to a community is not just about good intentions, it’s about carefully building habits.

And Ellen Leanse showed us that none of this is new, that permeability is better than bottlenecking, and that we must persevere.

Who knows what the #%*& Dave McClure taught us.

What I came away with was a much better look at how our skills are more crucial than they’ve ever been…but also a keen sense that we need to step up to our potential and actually hone these skills, use these frameworks, do and read research, push for the right things instead of accepting the status quo, and go kick some ass. We are in such a position to help companies succeed and stay on top…but we need to put on our big person pants. We have the power. Let’s use it.

Happy Community Manager Appreciation Day! Here’s what’s next.

Community,

When I started in Community Management, it was a bit of a novelty.

As “Web 2.0” (which it was referred to without irony at the time) slowly gained momentum, here was this relatively new role* that embodied the hope that this second web boom would be more sustainable, and more caring.

Community management was something you had to explain not just to relatives, but to tech folks as well. Even when Jeremiah Owyang started Community Manager Appreciation Day in 2010, not everyone was positive the role would be around in 5 years.

The Google Trends chart below quantifies what we already know: community management has surged in popularity. I like this chart. 🙂

community management trend

But you can also see that interest has flattened out a bit, and the projection for coming months is pretty similar. The tipping point for community management has already occurred – but that means our work is just starting.

As Twitter, the Atkins diet, and Pauly Shore know, just because you’re popular doesn’t mean you’ve built something good and sustainable. In fact, it’s at these points of mass popularity that the holes start to show: fragmentation in the definition of the role, community managers doing negative things, and a worrisome lack of ROI.

Let’s not let our tipping point be the beginning of the end – let’s take it as a challenge. Let’s make it a springboard. If we’ve succeeded in making community management popular, let’s now succeed at making it amazingly effective, respected, and sustainable. Let’s push our craft forward and live up to all the hype, shall we?

Here’s a few recommendations for you and me (I forget these all the time):

Dream. Dream of what this role could be. Dream of where you can grow to from where you are now. Stop complaining about people not listening to you, or things not getting run past you, or things being done wrong. Instead change them. Become a more core part of the organization. Show your value and leverage that. Think about building a department (or even a company, like Thomas Knoll). Be ambitious!

Learn. Go to CMX Summit and UserConf. Read Buzzing Communities. Read the many amazing blogs that are available (like this OPML file of the blogs of the 2014 top 100 community managers) . Don’t take anything for granted.

Share. At a recent #CMGRchat on Twitter, many community managers were lamenting the availability of key studies and data. But few of them share any of this information! If you want more information out in the world, you have to lead by example. Although it can be a slog to get your company to agree to that push to release this data, do it. Share anecdotes. Start a blog and share thoughts, even if they’re small and seem dumb. Make our craft better and you will be better for it.

We have so much opportunity sitting here waiting for us. Let’s take advantage of it!

*A few folks, like the excellent Randy Farmer, had been doing it for years…but only a few, and they didn’t go by community managers until the 00’s, I believe.