Untitled. Note: This blog post outlines upcoming changes to Google Currents for Workspace users. For information on the previous deprecation of Google+ for users with personal Google accounts, please see this post. What's Changing We are nearing the end of this transition. Beginning July 5, 2023, Currents will no longer be available. Workspace administrators can export Currents data using Takeout before August 8, 2023.
Beginning August 8th, Currents data will no longer be available for download. Although we are saying goodbye to Currents, we continue to invest in new features for Google Chat, so teams can connect and collaborate with a shared sense of belonging. This month, we’re enabling new ways for organizations to share information across the enterprise with announcements in Google Chat.
Announcements in Google Chat Managing space membership with Google Groups In-line threaded conversations Discover and join communities with up to 8,000 members Who's impacted Admins and end users Why it’s important. Is time-on-site a useful measure for online communities? | Social media agency London | FreshNetworks blog. I’ve read a few posts and articles this week discussing a report from showing that Facebook users spend more time on site than Twitter’s. These articles make the assumption that increased time-on-site is a good thing; that it is a sign of greater engagement and involvement with the site. It is certainly true for social networks that there are significant benefits to be gained from increasing time-on-site. Perhaps not for the immediate benefits of greater engagement, but more because it is a sign of the increasingly important role that any particular social network is playing in a user’s life. We’ve written in the past how Facebook’s valuation is possibly related to a shift in our use of the internet to put social networks at the heart of a user’s experience.
And in this context, time on site is important. But in an online community, where we are interested in shared ideas and experience rather than share of time online, is time-on-site a useful measure of engagement? Are online communities all a game? | Social media agency London | FreshNetworks blog. Maximising the insight you get from your online community | Social media agency London | FreshNetworks blog.
Comparing paid and organic search strategies for online communities | Social media agency London | FreshNetworks blog. Should anonymous comments be allowed in an online community? | Social media agency London | FreshNetworks blog. Should people be allowed to leave anonymous comments in online communities and forums? It’s a question that has been debated many times and people have different perspectives on it.
Some say that “No, if people don’t say who they are then its easy for discussions to get out of hand”, whereas others say “Yes, if you want people to be honest you need to allow them to be anonymous”. The issue of anonymity when commenting in online communities is actually more complicated than some arguments would suggest. And the answer is both yes and no. What do we mean by anonymity? When talking about anonymous comments we need to consider two types of anonymity: If the commenter should be anonymous to other members of the communityIf the commenter should be anonymous to the site owner and community manager These two aspects of anonymity are often confused.
This of course works both ways – in a successful online community neither party should be anonymous to each other. 4. Moderation and safety | Social media agency London | FreshNetworks blog. 2. Champions, active users and trolls | Social media agency London | FreshNetworks blog. Image by alistair_35 via Flickr As an online community manager, you will have a gut’ understanding of who makes up your community. Their rough interests, probably the gender split and a fairly good grasp of age.
But this will largely be based on who is posting, what they’re posting and how often. The real shape of the community will be far more nuanced. The 90-9-1 rule The 90-9-1 rule, or 90-9-1 principle, is a really handy way of remembering who does what on your community. It’s also a helpful way of gauging how traffic visiting your site will translate to people posting on your site and engaging with the community. In brief: 90% of community users are passive members.
With more low-effort forms of activity becoming commonplace, such as clicking to rate a piece of content, the ratio of editors to lurkers is likely to rise. Community champions They are likely to: These are your community champions. Active users There will always be a large number of lurkers. The Toxic Team Think about it: Why you shouldn’t join every conversation about your brand online | Social media agency London | FreshNetworks blog. When brands start social media monitoring, the ability to get real-time alerts whenever your brand is mentioned can be enlightening. Your inbox is suddenly filled, almost in real time, with every mention of your brand. The good, the band, and the ugly. The temptation can be to respond to all of these. To counteract every negative comment. The real benefit of social media monitoring for brands is that it allows you to be aware of and listen in to conversations that you might not have known were going on otherwise.
Doing nothing is often the most difficult thing to do. If you have nothing to add, don’t say anything, and if you will only inflame a situation then stay out of it Overall, brands should be careful about engaging online and have a clear process of when to respond, and when not to respond. In all other instances you should be more circumspect about getting involved. How to react if somebody writes about your brand online | Social media agency London | FreshNetworks blog. For our first post of the new year, I wanted to touch on two questions that often crop up when we talk to clients about their online presence and how they are and could use social media: “If somebody talks about us online, should we respond?” “If we respond, what is the best way of doing this?” This can be a difficult set of questions for brands to answer.
If they engage they fear they may open the metaphorical floodgates and end up having to find and then respond to every mention of their brand online. If they don’t engage they fear that they are losing control of the brand. Of course, this still leaves a lot of unanswered questions about how to act in specific circumstances and what we’ve really wanted is to have a crib sheet for these brands.
I really like this approach, for four reasons: It recognises that it is not always appropriate to “join the conversation”. 5 things to consider when engaging social media influencers online | Social media agency London | FreshNetworks blog. Image courtesy of Jack Monson With the launch of our social media influencers report this Friday 3rd December, we thought it would be useful to think more about how to engage with influencers online.
Our report road tests how well nine of the leading social media monitoring tools – Attensity 360, Brandwatch, Radian6, Alterian, Scoutlabs, Sysomos, Synthesio, PeerIndex and Social Radar – can identify social media influencers. But once you have identified your influencers, how do you go about engaging them online? Here a few things we feel that all brands and businesses should consider before engaging with their influencers: 1. Before you jump in and start engaging with your influencers, be sure listen to the conversation that is taking place on the blog, forum or social media platform where you are going to engage with them. This will help you use the appropriate tone and content for engaging with your influencer when the time is right. 2. This will call for you to use your own judgement. 3.
How word of mouth grows online communities | Social media agency London | FreshNetworks blog. This has been a great week at FreshNetworks for one of the online communities that we have built and manage for a client. The community had not yet been publicly launched, in fact it was in semi-private beta until the new year whilst we’ve been seeding some activity. Over the last two weeks we started to grow the community and this week that growth happened. In fact in a matter of days we saw an increase in members from just a few hundred to many thousands. This growth was a result of the way we grow and manage our communities during these early stages. A delicate time when you are trying to get traction whilst also growing the community to meet the needs and adapt with every new member to join. We know that this is the stage at which you can really get things right (and of course get them wrong) and that this is a process where a great community management team really adds value.
So what led to this week’s growth? When thinking of an online community we never think of it in isolation. What’s the biggest mistake a community manager can make? | Social media agency London | FreshNetworks blog. Image coutesy of shutterstock Weve put the question to leading community managers across the world, and they have outlined the classic community clangers that we should all avoid. Lack of engagement Toby Metcalfe, Community Manager and Social Networker, is straight to the point on this: The big mistake is to not be engaged – to have a forum and not be interacting with those in the community. Not listening to the community: building in features for your product, service, site, or forum. Game producer, Frank van Gemeren, agrees: Having a CM who doesn’t post anything. Christoph Geissler, Podcast Author and Senior Forum Moderator agrees: No communication = worst communication possible.
I always had the impression that a community manager [or] moderator is meant to communicate with the people – I mean it’s probably the most important part of their duty. Saying I’m currently busy, but I’ll get back to you later is, in my opinion, better than just saying I’m busy so I won’t reply The ten commandments of managing online communities | Social media agency London | FreshNetworks blog.
At FreshNetworks we know that good community management is critical to the growth and success of any online community. That’s why this week’s Required Reading looks at some of the principles of community management. The presentation below comes from Julius Solaris and details ten ‘commandments’ of managing online communities: from consolidating activities to having an offline presence for your online community.
This is a great set of activities that I think help to define what a community manager does and what community management is. It is much more than just moderation of forums, also including strategic elements, such as considering how you monitise a community, or how you work with the different groups to grow and shape the conversations and the benefits all parties are getting. For us, however, the most important part of community management is really to appreciate that as a community manager you can never control a community. When does the online community manager’s job begin? | Social media agency London | FreshNetworks blog.
Image by Compound Eye via Flickr Many community manager positions advertised online ask for someone to help supervise and develop a newly launched community. In my opinion this is far too late to look at employing a community manager. They should be involved from an early point in the development cycle, ideally when plans for the community are still being developed. There are a number of reasons why ensuring the online community manager is onboard from this early planning phase: When that go live date passes and you offer your community out to the world, having a community manager who has been given a chance to familiarise themselves with the environment and build internal relationships before the traffic arrives will only help with the long term success of the community. Dark Community Management : faire tomber les FanPages. 15 Essential Articles For Online Community Managers | B2C Marketing Insider.
To celebrate [this past week's] second annual Community Manager Appreciation Day, we’ve brought together 15 essential articles for online community managers and social media managers. From why community managers should get involved with their online community before it is even launched, through how to manage and grow a community, to how to measure the impact you are having.
This collection of articles, resources and thinking should have something for everybody to learn from or to add to. We’d love your thoughts on these and also your own favourite community manager articles and resources. When does a community manager’s job begin? Editor’s note: several dead links were removed from the original article.