After Madonna recently texted throughout an indie film screening, the famous Alamo Drafthouse made an announcement.

Until she apologizes to movie fans, Madonna is banned from watching movies @drafthouse. http://t.co/cHMeseJxMJ

— Tim League (@timalamo) October 11, 2013

Alamo, a fantastic theater chain (Which I’ve been to!) that serves food and beer during movies (much like Oakland’s Parkway Theater), is well known for it’s strict values about not about disrupting movies. Founded by and patronized by film lovers, the Alamo has famously kicked people out for texting during movies (warning: mature language):

Why? Because this is a value their community cares deeply about. Their extreme adherence to this rule builds a much stronger emotional connection with their customers than anything else they could do.

But banning Madonna? Especially the Madonna who just released an indie film? Isn’t that a bit extreme? Won’t that hurt business?

Absolutely not. This is community-building.

Alamo is sticking to their values – taking them to an extreme, even – and it’s going to make their fans love them even more. For every hardcore Madonna fan who might swear off Alamo there’s going to be 3 passionate filmgoers who will make the extra effort to patronize Alamo.

Is this PR? Sure. Madonna wasn’t in an Alamo Drafthouse; they didn’t have to comment on this story. But it’s community-driven PR. It’s building a story not around whatever’s hip, but around what really, emotionally, honestly resonates with your community. As others have said, community is the new PR.

Don’t go middle of the road to avoid insulting people. Stick to your community’s values and back them up, even if it means doing something extreme like pissing off a major celebrity. It’ll make your fans love you (and bring you return business) even more.

This is a fantastic article on why the lost art of schmoozing led to the government shutdown.

The key lesson: if you start a dialog with key parties before you need to, you’ll be able to deal with the rough patches better.

This is why we build customer communities instead of just having faceless users. This is why we build company culture instead of just a business. This is why lunches and coffees are not a waste of time.

Randall Farmer was one of the first community managers, before it was even a “thing” and long before it was a “hot job”. This experience, along with his intense interest in furthering our craft, means he has a lot of great knowledge to share.

One of the most fascinating things I’ve ever learned from Randall was about 5-star rating systems and the J-curve. When he worked at Yahoo! (back when working there was a “hot job”) they implemented 5-star ratings systems for Yahoo! Sites. They hoped this would help users identify the best sites and avoid the low-quality sites. Instead, this is what they saw:

With one exception, the average rating was 4.5 out of 5 stars. Wow, that’s great content, right? Nope. That’s the J-curve.

There are some major problems with 5-star ratings systems:

• Generally people only rate things if they love them or hate them.  If you love the dustpan you bought you might bother to go online & give it a 5-star rating. If it broke immediately you’ll angrily seek out the ratings system to punish it with a single star. But if it was just ok? You’re not going to bother adding a 3-star rating.
• People are lazy. If you’re highlighting the top-rated items on your site, you’re unlikely to ever get ratings on the other items. Most folks aren’t going to take the time to go rate items on page 2.

(The exception in the above graphs is Yahoo! Autos, because users were rating each other’s work. They knew these ratings would have an effect and keep the quality of the Autos community high, so they took the time to give accurate ratings. Yelp would be another good example of this.)

Takeaways:

1) Don’t use a 5-star rating system to try to determine quality of commodities. Try simpler systems, like thumbs up/thumbs down or positive-neutral-negative.

2) Try to find a way to get users invested in giving multiple, accurate ratings.

Everyone’s up in arms about this story of a librarian asking a 9-year-old boy to “step aside” from a library’s yearly reading contest because he’s won 5 years in a row.

If we can put aside our disgust at a librarian saying this, you can see her challenge. The contest is supposed to be motivation to get her community (children) to engage (read)…but with no chance of winning, they will quickly get demotivated. Little overachieving Tyler could ruin this whole thing!

It’s a challenge community managers run into fairly often: one of your members gets so enthusiastic that they drown out the others. The solution is usually not banning the overactive member, however. The trick is giving them a new job.

If someone is enthusiastic about your community it doesn’t make sense to scare them off. Instead, find something they can to do help the community that pulls them out of the way of other members. It makes them feel special and solves your problem.

I’ve been hosting community manager breakfasts for about 3 years, and occasionally we have an attendee who is really knowledgable and really excited to talk. They mean really well. Unfortunately, most of the other attendees are actually nervous to talk…so said overexcited attendee ends up dominating the conversation.

Instead of kicking them out of the group, I will put them on note-taking duty. Or ask them to help me moderate by asking other members questions. They love it, and it puts our conversation back on track.

The aforementioned librarian should be putting Tyler in charge of managing the contest member list, recommending books, or helping judge the contest. Make him a veteran and a hero. He’ll feel special, and the other kids won’t feel so discouraged.

Photo courtesy of Bull City Dogs.