Tips for managing big communities
Evan Hamilton shares his insights with ACM members at Swarm Conference
It can be rewarding to build thriving communities. But what happens when your community gets big? As communities get bigger, they require new tech solutions, communications strategies, and more.
Evan Hamilton is Director of Community at Reddit, a community platform with over 300 million members. He shared his tips for managing and protecting your communities as they grow.
Set your strategy
As your community grows, it can be easy to focus on the present instead of the future. You might spend your days answering urgent emails or dealing with antagonistic community members. If you want to grow your community, or need to plan to support that growth, don’t get bogged down in these day-to-day operations. Instead, think: how are you going to build the space that looks like what you want six months from now? A year?
Tips:
Take time away from your laptop. When you need to think strategy, find your happy place and get out your notebook.
Use the 10 ideas exercise. Think about 10 ways to solve a problem and write them down. Don’t be afraid to come up with out-there answers: this exercise may lead you to creative solutions that actually work.
Find a mentor who’s going to push you. This mentor might be a boss, colleague, or a friend.
Build a communications strategy around your plan. This might mean setting a regular posting cadence, adding coming soon links to your UI, making clear statements about your roadmap to the future, or holding calls with stakeholders like community leaders.
Scale your work
As your platform grows, you’ll need new solutions to existing or emergent problems. What works now may not work when your community triples in size, particularly if you have to manage lots of sub-communities.
Tips:
Consider bots and automation. Think: What would $X in developer time save in me time?
Crowdsource when relevant. Do it when your users have more context than you on a problem and they’re motivated to fix it.
Don’t just ask for help. When requesting more resources, think: What would I do with more help? Would I be able to get back to VIP members within 24hrs? Would I be able to start new projects and generate more creative solutions to problems? Alternatively, if you don’t get more resources, what won’t you be able to do? What work won’t you be able to take on? Visualise and communicate this information to your boss or colleagues.
Communicate your work
Community work can be invisible. Your boss likely doesn’t have time to figure out what you’re doing, and if they don’t know what you’re doing, they can’t advocate for you or support your growth needs. Communicate with your colleagues effectively to ensure they understand your work is relevant and worth mobilising resources for.
Tips:
Manage up: send a weekly email to your boss discussing goals, what went well, what didn’t go well, and what you’re doing next week
Manage out: Let everyone else know what you’re doing. What experiments have you run? What situations have you resolved? Utilise internal communities or send internal emails to communicate key insights into your work.
Write down everything you do. Create a document and write in it every time you accomplish something.
Create OKRs (objectives and key results) to measure your success.
Translate community manager speak. Every department has their own priorities. For example, some in business might prioritise customer retention rather than delighting people. But maybe delight causes retention: communicate these insights to your colleagues by speaking their language. Don’t forget to back up these statements with data.
Manage influence
You are already an expert on community. But sometimes good community work is not enough, especially when you need to mobilise resources to build the community you want. Expand your influence to protect your community
Tips:
Make the time to connect with people. Build social capital by learning more about the work your colleagues do and finding opportunities to help them. Create reciprocal relationships with your colleagues so when you need something, they’ll be more likely to help you.
Understand what your company cares about: high-level goals, the project of the moment, or the CEO’s interests. Find opportunities to tackle these areas of interest and make yourself indispensable.
Get on top of problems before they come to you. Build relationships with key stakeholders and your community members to anticipate issues before they arise.
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