Passion is often the difference between a successful community and one that dies. Passion from the community manager. Passion from the community members.
Too often, that passion gets hidden at the times when the community manager most needs to show it: During the regular interactions with the members of the community. During those daily to do list items that we are all tempted to buzz through first thing in the morning to get to the “real work”.
FeverBee’s piece today is a great example. If you are a community manager, you have certain emails that you need to send (the example in this piece is a password reset). How long has it been since you evaluated those emails? Is there something quick and easy that you can do to make those communications something personal instead of something canned?
Using canned emails for daily tasks does save you time, I will grant you that. But if your main job is to save time, you probably aren’t taking the time to connect as you could. Efficiency is great. It is needed in a large community. But when that efficiency replaces the personal connection and the passion, your community will start to die.
Check out the example email in the Amplify’ed piece. What other examples can you come up with? What can you change in your work flow that connects you to your community on a regular basis?
What Would A Passionate Community Manager Do?
If there is one single trait between communities that succeed and communities that don’t, it’s the passion of the person in charge.
Communities developed by amateurs (unpaid, but passionate, hobbyists) succeed because of the amateur’s passion. The amateur is convincing when reaching out to people. They participate in their spare time.
