How Rohit Bhargava is helping me nurture a community

Have you come across Rohit Bhargava (pictured in pink above)?

If you haven’t, first things first go and check out his excellent blog, Influential Marketing Blog and head out and beg, borrow or buy his thoroughly interesting book, Personality Not Included (not an affiliate link).

This post is about what I’ve learned from Rohit about personality moments and gives an example of where I’ve put those learnings into practice on this blog. A hat-tip here must go to Matt (@mister_black) for challenging me to be more specific about detailing what I do as a community manager on a daily basis. Thank you Matt, and while this isn’t quite the daily detail you were asking for, it is a step in the direction of providing examples of the community manager’s work. I hope to be able to provide many more in future posts.

Personality moments, or why every touch point is a chance to be remarkable

In Personality Not Included Rohit Bhargava introduces the concept of personality moments:

“They are the dozens of small occurrences that happen during an interaction between you and your customer, both before and after you make a sale or provide a service. [...] they represent pivotal moments in which you can build customer loyalty and stand apart from competitors.” (2008, p. 161)

As a community manager it’s important that you pay attention to the details of the interactions with and between community members, while keeping the bigger picture in view and tending to the overall health of the community. The ability to identify and capitalise on personality moments is an integral skill all community managers should develop and hone. Personality moments can be a potentially efficient way of adding significant value to the individual relationships within the network and to the network as a whole.

Case Study: how Come Together is looking to value add by capitalising on a personality moment

The value of comments

As the 90-9-1 principle highlights, comments are very valuable as they represent a significant investment of time on behalf of the commenter. Firstly to read and critically digest your writing, and then to form a (hopefully) coherent and thoughtful response. I also believe that the commenter puts their social reputation on the line every time they go on record in a comment, and that this risk has an inherent value that shouldn’t be underestimated either. With this thought in mind I was keen to create more value for the commenter than they had given. It’s a fundamental belief of mine, and one which is succinctly articulated in the first part of a great two-part interview with Tim O’Reilly by Joshua-Michéle Ross, in which Tim cites Brian Irwin (a former colleague of his) as saying:

“Create more value than you capture .” (Work on Stuff that Matters: Part 1 – 1:15)

This could almost be my personal mantra and is a very valuable insight for all community managers and marketers to keep in mind.

Identifying a personality moment

I am always humbled when visitors to Come Together decide to leave a comment, especially when so many of them are very thoughtful and stimulating. The moment when a new visitor to your community decides to participate is a very special one and deserves to be rewarded. That moment is a chance for you, the community manager, to demonstrate the values upheld by your community and to make that new visitor feel appreciated. That moment is a personality moment,

“[...] a point in time when you have the chance to build your relationship with your customer, or when you are in danger of losing it.” (Bhargava 2008, p. 160)

There are a few Wordpress plugins that allow you to auto-send a message to people that comment on your Wordpress blog, a nice touch if that person has commented for the first time and you want to thank them for their time. I wanted to build on a simple thank you, however, so I decided to provide additional value to new commenters on Come Together by sharing some valuable information with them in that thank you email.

Going beyond the simple thank you

Here is an image showing the email that gets sent out to first-time commenters: I installed the Wordpress plugin Thank Me Later by Brendon Boshell. It’s an excellent plugin thanks to the level of customisation available in the settings and suited my needs perfectly. I then set about customising my thank you message.

So much of what I write is influenced by the smart people whose work I read on a daily basis, so I decided that sharing my influencers with new commenters would be of value. I faced the difficult (and slightly political) decision about who to include in my list of influencers. I stuck with people who have really shaped my way of thinking, but also resolved to change the list every month to fairly represent the diverse influences on my approach.

I also added a link to my Google Reader Shared Items list, as that shows a daily digest of thinking that I’m mulling over.

Lastly, I took the opportunity to highlight for the first-time commenter the different ways they can get involved in the blog in the future. This counts as marketing for my blog’s features I guess, but I also see it as a community service.

A community manager’s perspective

You never know with these sorts of initiatives how the first-time commenter will react, even though you have their best interests at heart. That’s why it was particularly pleasing to hear from a fellow community manager, Angela Connor (author of the excellent ebook 18 Ways to Engage Users Online – link to PDF download):

“Scott: this is an AMAZING method for outreach and attracting repeat visits. And the fact that you are promoting other bloggers is awesome. LOVE this approach. May have to copy for my blog, Online Community Strategist. Have a great day, and you just got yourself a subscriber!”

Thanks Angela!

… and it’s over to you!

Saying thank you is a nice thing to do, a great way to show potential community participants that you value their time. But it’s also a personality moment, a chance to be remarkable and to show your brand’s true colours, whether you’re a multinational or an individual.

Are you capitalsing on personality moments and trying to add more value than you capture? I’d love to hear from you if you are.

And of course I’d love to hear what you think of my email. It’s a work in progress and I’m sure it can be vastly improved. What suggestions do you have for adding value through this channel and capitalsing on this particular personality moment?

[Header image of Rohit pinkified from an original courtesy of Steve Hall from AdGabber]

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