The Vircomm2012 Summit - A community of community folk
It was streamed live on the day so I know plenty of people not based in London on Thursday were able to hear some of the insights. For those of you unlucky not to attend, you can search Twitter for some nuggets using the hashtag #vircomm12 - obviously after you have read my summary of the day ;)
Having been to a lot of community and social media events over the years, I have to say this one was my first dedicated community event and was so relevant for me. As Tamara Littleton, CEO of eModeration - and my boss said: "It has never been a better time to be a Community Manager."
So let me give you a flavour of some of the debates and panel discussions that took place:
The User Behaviour slot was lively and debated the hot issue of tools and the role they play in community management. It was felt tools can play a role when the scale of activity is too much but they will not be able to replace the human interaction. Tools help with automation but you still need the community manager to provide the human touch with the members. It was great to hear topics such as how to deal with suicide threats being debated with honesty and practicality: this was a panel and audience accustomed to dealing with this daily, and the lack of kid gloves made it a refreshing change.
The Gaming and Community panel, which was chaired by eModeration's Head of Community Management and Engagement, Blaise Grimes-Viort, debated the issues around scalability and how important it is to get the processes, procedures in place that can grow as your audience gets bigger. The panel agreed that a Gaming Community Manager is different from the traditional B2B and B2C ones - as they need in-depth knowledge of the game, be the voice of the community for internal departments, be the funnel into development and provide lots of feedback.
In the Legal session, we learnt it makes no difference where your servers are based or where your company is based, the website you work on has to take reasonable care to take down any unlawful information. The legal experts warned Community Managers not to be scared of the Community reaction if you take down unlawful content but to take reasonable steps to take down the offending content to avoid any liabilities for companies. (Btw, check out the 'legal' tags on this blog - we've got plenty of guidance on current social media legal issues).
The Managing Online Communities panel (presided over by the huge - and hugely entertaining - Skype screen-god Patrick o'Keefe) talked about how companies are choosing to build their communities on third party sites, rather than building their own forums. Tamara Littleton, CEO of eModeration, argued there has never been a better time to be a Community Manager, as they are at the heart of the company - playing a role in customer service, crisis management, product development and marketing. It was agreed technology can never replace Community Managers but technology can be put in place to help automate some of the repetitive tasks. You need to put in the processes and workflow in place so Community Managers can focus on interaction and communication with members. While you cannot thank all of your members all of the time, if you thank some of them, then the goodwill will spread.
The Community and Marketing session centred on the debate of creating the balance between marketing and overt selling. While some agreed that you should never overt sell, other panellists agreed that it is about managing expectations of being honest, transparent and explaining the rules of the community. One panellist stated if you have the engagement, then the members will want to buy your products - high trust is proven to give you more sales.
The final session of the day was Social Media, Content and Community. The panel agreed that successful communities should let their members speak for themselves, so it is their community with their opinions. By allowing this to happen, there is no need for a content strategy as the community decides. There were stories of companies investing more in the technology, rather than spending the money on a good Community Manager. The line between Community Managers and social media staff is still blurred, with too many people thinking entry level tweeters are community managers. The Community Management process is still upside down, while there are important tools to satisfy senior management, community managers are not high enough within the organisation. Organisations are still deciding where Community Managers should sit within the overall structure but the reality is that Community Managers have to work within every department to make a success of their community.
If the panel had more money ....? They would take on more Community Managers to run their communities :) Of course they would.
Between panels there were some excellent slots by Joshua March from Conversocial, Dom Sparks from Tempero and Peter Maude on behalf of Crisp.
My own thanks for getting this event organised go to Rebecca Newton of MindCandy (chair of e-mint), Oxana Morozowska of Ginger Events, and of course my own company, eModeration, who sorted out the well-lubricated aftershow party.
So what did you think of the summit? I’d love to hear your thoughts and feelings on the day.
There are plenty of you out there that followed #Vircomm12. 1,033 tweets generated 1,589,940 impressions, reaching an audience of 304,042 followers within the first 24 hours - wow!
To see the agenda and list of speakers and panellists, check out the link here http://virtualcommunitysummit.com/
Update:
The on-demand videos are now available on the site from VirComm - http://live.virtualcommunitysummit.com/VOD/index.php
The login details are:
Username: vircomm2012
Password: london
Lisa Barnett, Community Manager at eModeration
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